Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The concepts of exchange and reciprocity are closely related. This much is
clear from the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines exchange as the action,
or act of, reciprocal giving and receiving, and reciprocity as mutual action,
influence, giving and taking. Indeed the words are often used as synonyms.
However, in the anthropological literature over the past century the term
reciprocity has acquired a special meaning, and a distinction between
exchange and reciprocity of great theoretical importance has arisen. The
distinction turns on fine differences in meaning between the words mutuality,
giving, receiving and taking, and to understand these nuances it is
necessary to situate the anthropological theory of exchange in the broader
historical and theoretical context from which it has emerged.
The general theory of exchange is concerned with analysing acts of
exchanging things, people, blows, words, etc. Exchange is a total social
phenomenon, to use Mausss (1990 [1925]:3) famous expression, and, as such,
its study involves the fields not only of economics but also of law, linguistics,
kinship and politics, among others. Most anthropological theorizing about
exchange, however, has been restricted to exchanges of wealth. But what is
wealth? The answers to this question fall into three broad categories. For
economists of the nineteenth century wealth consisted in commodities, whereas
for those of the twentieth, it consists in goods. Either way, it is stuff which is
valued by the market. For anthropologists, on the other hand, wealth consists
above all in gifts, products that are valued according to the non-market
principle of reciprocity. The notion of reciprocity, then, is at the heart of
theoretical debates concerning the distinction between market and non-market
forms of valuation. But ethnographers have also found the principle of
reciprocity operating in tribal trading systems and peasant markets, and these
findings have led to a revision of the theory of commodity exchange itself.
To understand the anthropological concept of reciprocity, it is necessary to
compare and contrast economic and anthropological theories of the exchange
911
SOCIAL LIFE
of wealth. I propose to do this under the following five headings. Under the
first, Commodities as wealth, I briefly discuss the nineteenth-century political
economy approach to exchange. This is followed, under the heading, Goods as
wealth, by a discussion of twentieth-century economic theories of exchange. In
the third section, Gifts as wealth, I provide an overview of the anthropological
notion of reciprocity. This is followed by a discussion of Barter and other
forms of counter-trade, in which I introduce some anthropological revisions to
the theory of the commodity. In the final section, on Market-place trade, I
show how anthropological work also requires certain revisions to the theory of
market exchange.
COMMODITIES AS WEALTH
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
prevails, Marx (1954 [1867]:43) declares in the first sentence of Capital,
presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities. This notion of
wealth was part of the conventional orthodoxy of eighteenth- and early
nineteenth-century European thought, and all the leading theorists of the
timeQuesnay, Smith, Ricardodeveloped their particular conceptions of
the principles regulating the market within this general paradigm. The truly
radical break came in the 1870s with the development of the theory of goods
and, with it, a new set of answers to the fundamental questions of market
exchange: What is profit? What determines relative prices? What determines
the level of wages? In this section I present, in very general terms, the answers
developed within the commodity-theory paradigm; in the next section these
will be set in contrast to the answers given by the goods-theory paradigm.
The notion of a commodity has its origins in the Aristotelian idea that a
product has two distinct values: a value in use and a value in exchange. Shoes,
for example, are useful because they protect ones feet when walking over rough
ground. This value is called use-value and is quite distinct from the value
shown on the price-tag of a pair of shoes displayed in a shop window. The
price-tag value is called exchange-value, and it was value in this sense that
pre-twentieth-century commodity theorists sought to explain; the study of the
useful properties of objects, and that of the manner in which they satisfy
human wants, were regarded as falling outside the scope of political economy
(Marx 1954 [1867]:43). Within the overall commodity-theory paradigm many
different theories of exchange-value were formulated. Quesnay, the eighteenthcentury French physiocrat, found the answer in the natural productivity of
land; Adam Smith, the so-called father of economics, opposed this theory and
developed a labour theory of value in its place; this theory was developed, in
turn, by Ricardo and Marx, among others.
Marxs contribution to the theory of the commodity, though it hinged upon
the labour theory of value, gave it a new twist. Marx (1954 [1867]:53) claimed that
he was the first to point out that labour, too, possesses a use-value and an
912
SOCIAL LIFE
his theory on the opposition between wage-labour and capital. These class
relations of production were seen to be crucial because they gave exchange
relations their particular form and content. In other words, the classical
political economists conceptualized exchange as an expression of underlying
power relations.
GOODS AS WEALTH
Following the marginalist revolution of the 1870s, which saw the fall of the
theory of commodities and the rise to dominance of the theory of goods,
exchange came to be seen as an expression of the subjective preferences of
individuals rather than of underlying power relations. This change in thinking
was reflected in a new concept of wealth. The marginalists, or neoclassicals, as
they are sometimes called, no longer saw the unit of wealth as a commodity but
as a good whose magnitude was measured by its subjectively attributed utility.
In other words, the concept of a commodity, with its distinction between usevalue and exchange-value, was replaced by the concept of a good with an
undifferentiated utility value.
This new concept of wealth quite literally affected the way people viewed
the world. Emphasis was placed on consumption and scarcity rather than on
reproduction, and on choice and subjective preferences rather than on
objective class relations of production. The new paradigm also provided a novel
conceptual framework for posing, and answering, the old questions concerning
wages, prices and profit. This can be seen by examining, in a little more detail,
the notion of a good.
Despite appearances to the contrary, the word utility does not mean the
same as use-value. Use-values refer to the objective properties of things and are
a function of the technological and scientific knowledge available to a society at
a given point in its history. For example, the discovery of photography in the
nineteenth century meant that silver acquired a new use-value to complement
its other uses as a store of value, as jewellery, as cutlery, and so on. Utility, on
the other hand, refers back to the subjective preferences of an individual
consumer. A cup of tea, for example, has positive utility to a thirsty person, but
that utility will be less for each additional cup consumed. Thus the marginal
utility of the tea declines, until the point is reached when the consumers thirst
is quenched and she desires no more; at this point the tea ceases to be a good
and, logically speaking, becomes a badalthough this term is rarely used.
The utility of a good, then, derives from its ability to yield subjective
satisfaction. It refers to individual psychological feelings about scarce objects
and not to the objective properties of different things. As Robbins (1932:47) has
noted, Wealth is not wealth because of its substantial qualities. It is wealth
because it is scarce. This conception of wealth is obviously very different from
its classical precursor. Among other things it contains the paradoxical
915
SOCIAL LIFE
language of the theory of goods shares a common grammar and lexicon which
have nothing in common with those of the language of the theory of
commodities. The terms good and commodity epitomize this difference, the
etymology of the former suggesting a subjective approach to value, the latter an
objective approach.
The new language in which economists began to talk around the 1870s can
be likened to Esperanto, and the old language of the commodity theorists to,
say, German. This is not to say that one is better than another. Indeed, there is
no meta-theory by which they can be compared and evaluated. The two
paradigms have different consequences for understanding human life which
can only be evaluated in specific contexts. This implies some notion of
adequacy in relation to practical aims. To pursue the language analogy, do we
try to overcome the communication problems of the world by teaching people
Esperanto or do we try to learn some particular languages in order to develop
our general ideas from a comparative analysis of them? Needless to say,
anthropologists have tended to find the latter path more attractive, and few
have embraced the Esperanto of the theory of goods.
In this sense, then, anthropologists took up the implicit questions left
unanswered by the commodity theorists: What, in positive terms, does noncommodity exchange mean, and by what principles is it governed? What
principles govern the circulation of commodities on the periphery of tribal
communities? Is commodity exchange the end of an evolutionary sequence?
Does it have a corrosive influence on other forms of exchange? And are these
the right questions to be asking anyway?
The fieldwork tradition pioneered by Malinowski, Boas and others has
provided us with the means to answer these questions. It is ironic that at the
very time that these means were becoming availablein the era of European
capitalist imperialism (18701914)economists ceased to be interested in the
concrete problems posed by the theory of commodities and turned instead to
the abstract and formal problems posed by the new paradigm of goods. Many
of the theories formulated within the latter paradigm contained ill-considered
assumptions about the workings of tribal economies, and these provided
ethnographers such as Malinowski (1922) with easy targets to criticize in the
course of developing their own ideas. But fieldwork anthropologists, for the
most part, remained ignorant of the classical tradition of economic thought and
of the challenging questions that lay waiting to be answered. (It was not until
the 1970s, when neo-Marxist anthropology flourished, that anthropologists
took the theory of commodities seriously.) But it is now possible, with the
benefit of hindsight, to see that anthropologists have provided implicit answers
to the questions posed by the commodity theorists and, in the process, have laid
the foundations for a whole new approach to the theory of exchange of wealth
by posing many new questions.
917
SOCIAL LIFE
GIFTS AS WEALTH
Though the terms wealth and valuables are often used in anthropological
literature in the common dictionary sense of riches and abundance, they also
take a more precise and anthropologically specific meaning. The word gift
captures this meaning in a very general way and, like the words commodity
and goods, it signifies a distinct paradigm (see Belshaw 1965, Sahlins 1972,
Gregory 1982, Strathern 1988 and Weiner 1992 for analytical overviews of the
literature).
The notion of gifts as wealth has assumed a variety of concrete forms, most
of which are now very familiar: the celebrated coppers and blankets of the
Kwakiutl, the armshells and necklaces of the Trobriand Islanders, the brass
rods and cowrie shells of the Tiv of Nigeria, the pigs and pearlshells of the
peoples of the Papua New Guinea Highlands, and so on. Many of these objects
are nowadays valuable in conventional money terms. In the Trobriand Islands,
for example, a vigorous trade in real and counterfeit (plastic) necklaces goes on
outside the tourist centres. However, the most highly prized shells are quite
literally priceless, and have remained in circulation in the kula ring throughout
the colonial period despite the attempts of outsiders to buy them (Campbell
1983). The reasons for this are complex, but it would seem that they have as
much to do with the intricacies of local-level politics as with subjective
preferences. What is clear, though, is that these objects, when exchanged as
gifts, are valued by transactors according to a standard that has quality rather
than quantity as its basis.
Consider Campbells (1983) discussion of the ranking criteria used for
Trobriand armshells (mwari). Five named categories are distinguished and
these are ordered according to their personal history, personal name, colour,
and size. Shells of the top category, mwarikau, have personal names and
histories; they have red striations and are the largest of all. Shells of the lowest
category, gibwagibwa, have neither names nor personal histories; they are white,
unpolished and small in size. Necklaces (vaiguwa) are ranked in a similar way.
The ranking system, then, is ordinal rather than cardinal.
Ordinal ranking systems are ethnographically widespread and their
character is commonly captured in anthropological literature by the expression
spheres of exchange. Bohannan (1959), for example, uses this expression to
describe the ranking system of the Nigerian Tiv. Among the Tiv objects are
classified as belonging to one of three spheres. The first, and lowest sphere, is
what the Tiv call yiagh. This includes locally produced foodstuffs, some tools,
and raw materials which are traded at the markets. The second sphere
comprises items of a kind that carry prestige (shagba) and whose transaction is
independent of the markets. Slaves, cattle, horses, white (tugudu) cloth, and
brass rods circulate within this sphere. The third sphere, considered supreme,
contains a single item: rights in human beings, especially women and children.
The theoretical significance of this distinction between quality and quantity
918
SOCIAL LIFE
SOCIAL LIFE
Table 2
SOCIAL LIFE
Figure 2 Modified model of reciprocity and residential sectors. (After Ingold 1986:232)
SOCIAL LIFE
Lvi-Strauss shows that alliance relations based on the bilateral marriage rule,
that a man should marry a woman in the combined kinship category of
mothers brothers daughter and fathers sisters daughter, take this form. The
notion of sister exchange, which is often used to describe this form of
reciprocity, precisely captures the essence of restricted exchange. The
perspective is, of course, from the male point of view (compare Strathern 1988
and Weiner 1992), but this is as much the indigenous males point of view as it
is the ethnographers. In other words, Lvi-Strausss perspective on exchange
is that of the powerful men who do the exchanging, rather than that of the
women whose place of residence is usually changed as a result of marriage. He
draws illustrative examples from ethnographic studies of the Australian
Aborigines, among whom dual organization is widespread. This conception of
restricted exchange corresponds exactly with Polanyis correlation of
reciprocity with a symmetrical kinship structure, the difference being only that
Polanyi was mainly concerned with the exchange of objects rather than the
exchange of persons (i.e. sisters or daughters).
By contrast to restricted exchange, generalized exchange takes the following
form:
926
Marriage with the fathers sisters daughter, the patrilateral rule, is consistent
with exchanges of this type, in which the direction of exchange is reversed
rather than repeated in each successive generation.
These three forms of exchange are all of the elementary type. Lvi-Strauss
sees in such elementary structures of kinship the basis for the gift exchange of
things. A bridewealth exchange, for example, is a process whereby the woman
provided as a counterpart is replaced by a symbolical equivalent (1969 [1949]:
470). A transformation such as this can only occur, however, if the marriage is
of the generalized or delayed kind. All three elementary forms, in LviStrausss scheme, are then opposed to complex structures which leave the
determination of the spouse to other mechanisms, economic or psychological
(Lvi-Strauss 1969 [1949]:xxiii). Lvi-Strausss great divide, between
elementary and complex structures of kinship, can be mapped onto Polanyis
between non-market and market exchange. The fit is by no means perfect, but
the degree of correlation is high.
These different forms of exchange, argues Lvi-Strauss, are an expression
of the incest taboo, the supreme rule of the gift (1969 [1949]:22). As he put it,
the prohibition of incest is less a rule prohibiting marriage with the mother,
daughter or sister, than a rule obliging the mother, sister, or daughter to be
given to others (1969 [1949]:22). This is not only Lvi-Strausss answer to
Mausss question about the basis of the obligation to give, it also underwrites
his theory of cultural evolution. Lvi-Strauss argues (1969 [1949]: ch. 28) that
it was mans desire to maximize the kinship distance between himself and his
wife that saw society progress through different evolutionary stages of
development.
There is, in sum, a sense in which the theories of Mauss, Lvi-Strauss,
Polanyi and Sahlins, taken together, provide a conceptual framework which is
the mirror image of Marxs. Whereas the gift theorists begin their analyses with
the direct gift exchange of people and then progress through various mediating
forms to the generalized gift exchange of things, commodity theorists like Marx
begin with the direct commodity exchange of things and progress to the
generalized commodity exchange of labour (Gregory 1982:68). This method of
analysis is evolutionary to the extent that it is making claims about actual
historical processes, but it can also be seen as a logical historical method
(Meek 1967), a mode of reasoning employed in the process of developing an
abstract conceptual framework. This distinction is important because the
logical historical method makes no claims about actual historical processes.
Thus, an evolutionary theory can be rejected without affecting the legitimacy
of the logical historical method. The importance of this distinction should
927
SOCIAL LIFE
become clear in the course of the following discussion of barter and other forms
of counter-trade.
BARTER AND OTHER FORMS OF COUNTER-TRADE
Counter-trade is the general form of non-monetized commodity exchange.
Barter, the simultaneous exchange of commodities (C-C), is the best known
example of counter-trade, but there are many other non-simultaneous forms
(e.g. delayed barter exchange). The latter necessarily involve a time element
and, in consequence, some notion of credit. In formal terms they are analogous
to delayed exchanges of gifts, and in practice it is often impossible to
distinguish between gift and commodity components of a counter-trade
transaction.
The phenomenon of counter-trade poses two questions: What is the
evolutionary status of barter? And what determines the rate of exchange?
For both classical and neoclassical economists barter is the origin of all
exchange. They believe that the original economy was a natural one based on
an elementary division of labour and lacking any form of money. This
inefficient system gave way to money-based exchanges with the progressive
division of labour and the development of markets. Thus the invention of
money was the answer to the problem of barter. This origin myth, as Hart
(1987) has aptly called it, is based on a priori logical reasoning about an
imagined past rather than on contemporary ethnographic evidence. The myth
was repeatedly attacked by early anthropologists as ethnographic evidence on
actual barter exchanges began to accumulate. The evidence shows that different
forms of exchange co-exist rather than following one another in a temporal
sequence. An object can participate in many different forms of exchange in the
course of a day. For example, a pig may begin the day by being sold in a market
for cash, then be bartered for another commodity, later resold at a profit, then
given away as a gift, and finally consumed as a good.
The first reliable evidence to point along these lines came from Malinowskis
(1922) classic study of the tribal economics of the Trobriand Islanders. From a
comprehensive list of gifts, payments and commercial transactions he
distinguished seven types of exchange, and showed how they were interrelated
in the concrete ecological and social context of the Trobriand Islands in the
early part of this century. His study showed that much geographically based
barter trade took place within the framework of the annual kula gift-exchange
ritual. Recent studies from the Milne Bay area show that these gift exchanges
continue to take place today under the umbrella of the world market economy.
This complexity poses few problems for indigenous transactors in the region,
who know exactly what type of transaction they are entering into, but it has
posed many theoretical problems for anthropologists who have tried to
comprehend what is going on.
Mauss was one of the early synthesizers. He recognized the implications of
928
Malinowskis data for the economists theory of barter and developed the
alternative thesis that gift exchange preceded commodity exchange. He
proposed a three-stage theory: first came the restricted exchange of gifts within
a tribe, next came generalized gift exchange, and finally the money economy
originated when the ancient Semitic societies invented the means of
detachingprecious things from groups (1954 [1925]:94).
It is interesting to note, in passing, that barter exchange is re-emerging in
the heartland of international financial capitalism as the hegemony of the
United States wanes and with it the value of the dollar. Barter has long been a
major component of international trade between East and West (i.e. on the
boundaries of United States power), but now many multi-national companies
are resorting to it to safeguard losses from deals involving a declining dollar;
within the United States the rise of computerized exchange, where debts can be
cancelled without the aid of money, has begun to worry the Internal Revenue
Service (Hart 1987:197).
The ethnographic and historical evidence, then, does not support any
simplistic theory of the evolution of economic forms. This is not to say that the
logical historical method, which organizes concepts in a sequence from simple
to complex, is invalid. To the contrary, as the above discussion has shown, it has
underlain all the significant conceptual developments in the theory of exchange
over the past two centuries.
Let me now turn to consider the question of exchange-rate determination.
Classical political economy, as we have seen, proposed the labour theory of
value as the key to understanding the exchange-rate of commodities. It was
argued that two heterogeneous commodities can be equated in value because of
the equality of the labour time contained therein. Neoclassical economists, on
the other hand, proposed that scarcity and utility determine the prices of
goods. What contribution have anthropologists been able to make to this
debate?
The controversy has been uppermost in the minds of many ethnographers
as they observed and collected quantitative data on tribal systems of barter and
counter-trade. Godelier (1977), for example, explicitly addressed the debate on
the theory of value in his article on Salt money and the circulation of
commodities among the Baruya of New Guinea.
The Baruya are a people of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea for
whom the production of sweet potatoes is the principal economic activity. They
are also specialists in the production of vegetable salt which is redistributed
among relatives within the tribe and bartered for various products and services
beyond its borders. The latter exchanges were conducted in pre-colonial times
by daring individuals who made contact with hostile neighbours and managed
to establish trade and protection pacts with certain members of the host
groups. Trading partners would feed and protect their guests and do their best
to find the merchandise which the latter desired. Salt was a highly desired
prestige item which was stored above the hearth to be used on ceremonial
929
SOCIAL LIFE
931
SOCIAL LIFE
SOCIAL LIFE
examine some of the factors which have been used to explain the observed
patterns (such as the predominance of periodic market traders in the rural areas
of poor countries, of hierarchical markets in China, of C-M-C markets in
Central India, and so on), it is necessary to consider some of the many different
types of spatio-temporal organization found in periodic markets.
Periodicity concentrates the demand for a product to a certain place on a
specified day between set hours. A trader can, by repositioning him or herself at
regular intervals, tap the demand of a market area and obtain an income from
commerce that is adequate for survival. From the point of view of farming
households the periodicity of markets reduces the distance they must travel in
order to sell their produce and to buy goods for consumption. In effect,
periodicity disperses the central market-town throughout the countryside and
converts sleepy backwaters into thriving commercial centres for a few hours
each week. This pattern of dispersal is a function of the availability of
transport: for rich market-town traders there is a limit to how far they are
prepared to drive each day, and for poor farmers there is a limit to how far they
are prepared to walk.
The distribution of periodic markets over time and space poses a problem
that can be expressed in mathematical terms. Christallers (1966 [1933]) classic
application of central place theory is one such expression that has proved very
influential with geographers and with some anthropologists (e.g. Skinner
19645). However, rather than elaborating on formal models of this kind, it is
more appropriate here to give some indication of the actual variations found in
the spatio-temporal organization of marketing systems.
In China market schedules are usually based on a ten- or twelve-day week.
This structure allows for the development of cyclical systems of great
complexity. For example, the 12-day cycle yields three regular cycles of 12-day,
6-day and 3-day market weeks; within these cycles many further possibilities
for scheduling are found. Six different schedules make up the 6-day week for
example: the first consists of the 1st and 7th day of the cycle, the second of the
2nd and 8th day, the third of the 3rd and 9th day, and so on. If town A chooses
the first schedule, town B the second, town C the third and so on, then it can be
seen that a farming household living equidistant from these three towns has 3
markets close by on 6 of the 12 days of the market week; towns D, E, F, G, etc.
will provide the household with a range of more distant markets to choose from
on the other days of the week.
In Central India the system is comparatively simple. The market week is a 7day one. The major market is held on Sundays at the central market town;
intermediate level centres hold their markets on Fridays, Saturdays and
Mondays; and small centres hold their markets on the remaining days. In West
Africa there is a standard market week of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 days in length, such
that all markets in a given locality are based on the same cycle.
In areas where vertical commodities predominate, space becomes ordered in
a hierarchical way with market centres of various sizes constituting the nodal
934
SOCIAL LIFE
notes, develop a social structure that enables them to bring informal sanctions to
bear on their members. In these localized power systems coercion and
collaboration create solidary relations which bring benefits to the in-group and
problems for the out-group. One of the greatest benefits to the in-group is access
to credit. This provides members of the in-group with initial capital and the
ability to accumulate more. Whereas debt can enchain a consumer, for merchants
it is their lifeblood, for without it they cannot expand their capital. It is obvious
that credit will not be extended where there is neither trust nor sanction and, in
periodic market systems, this marks the boundary between the in-group and the
out-group. Thus we find that credit for merchant capital expansion flows upon
the foundations laid by consanguinity and territoriality. Here, then, is an
important factor behind the observed hierarchies found in market places and,
when considered in the light of the particular history of a merchant class, it goes
some way towards explaining the wealth of some and the poverty of others.
Deweys argument, for which a wide range of supporting evidence can be
marshalled, amounts to the claim that positive reciprocity asserts itself in unique
ways in the heartland of negative reciprocity, the market place.
This argument seems to contradict Sahlinss theory of positive and negative
reciprocity. However a distinction must be maintained between the analysis of
abstract principles of exchange and the analysis of exchange in concrete
situations. The theories developed by scholars such as Smith, Ricardo, Marx,
Malinowski, Mauss, Polanyi and Sahlins are abstractions which must be
recognized as such and applied with caution to the analysis of concrete reality.
The message of Deweys argumentand of the growing body of literature
concerned with applying the theory of the gift to European history (White
1988), literature (Hyde 1984), economy (Zelizer 1989) and culture (Agnew
1986)is that concrete reality is riddled with contradictions. This means that
any attempt, say, to characterize the European economy as a commodity
economy and the Melanesian economy as a gift economy, is bound to fail
because positive and negative reciprocity is at work in both economies. The
notion of reciprocity, then, can be defined in the abstract but its real meaning
will always depend on the concrete political context.
REFERENCES
Agnew, J-C. (1986) Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American
Thought, 15501750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Belshaw, C.S. (1965) Traditional and Modern Markets, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.
Bohannan, P. (1959) The impact of money on an African subsistence economy, The
Journal of Economic History 19:491503.
Bohannan, P. and Dalton, G. (eds) (1962) Markets in Africa, Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press.
Bromley, R. (1979) Periodic Markets, Daily Markets, and Fairs: A Bibliography
936
937
SOCIAL LIFE
FURTHER READING
Belshaw, C.S. (1965) Traditional and Modern Markets, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall.
Bohannan, P. and Dalton, G. (eds) (1962) Markets in Africa, Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press.
Dalton, G. (ed.) (1967) Tribal and Peasant Economies, Austin: University of Texas Press.
Geertz, C. (1963) Peddlars and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in
Two Indonesian Towns, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Godelier, M. (1977) Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gouldner, A. (1960) The norm of reciprocity: a preliminary statement, American
Sociological Review 25:16178.
Gregory, C.A. (1982) Gifts and Commodities, London: Academic Press.
Gregory, C.A. and Altman, J.C. (1990) Observing the Economy (ASA Research Methods
in Social Anthropology, 3), London: Routledge.
Humphrey, C. and Hugh-Jones, S. (eds) (1992) Barter, Exchange and Value: an
Anthropological Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leach, J. and Leach, E.R. (eds) (1983) The Kula: New Perspectives on Massim Exchange,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
938
939