Notes for session 1: Reading the classics

For tomorrow's class we are reading two classics that you will find referred to again and again in subsequent readings - Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific and The Gift by Marcel Mauss. The purpose of this assignment is to give you first-hand acquaintance with these texts, but you are not expected to absorb all the ethnographic details. Instead, you should become familiar with the main elements of key ethnographic cases that have been so central to anthropological theorising on value and exchange, such as the kula ring and the ‘potlatch’. Feel free to read summaries or commentaries on these works in order to get the gist.

These writings also represent the beginnings of major theoretical debates in ‘economic anthropology’ that revolved around a series of dualisms: the ‘gift’ or reciprocity versus market exchange; society and individual; cultural norms versus rational choice; and so on. The chapters from Graeber sketch out some of the background of these debates.

For class, be prepared to discuss these questions:  What are the different ways in which anthropologists have understood value? Why have ritual exchange systems such as the kula been so central to anthropological theorising on value? How did Mauss and other early anthropologists theorise the relation between persons, objects and their meanings, and social structures in ‘gift economies’ or ‘primitive’ societies? What is the relation between circulation, sociality, and value creation in these examples?