1. Excerpts from THE GIFT By Marcel Mauss ADAO, PEREZ, TABLANTE, TAN, YAO
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2. Marcel Mauss ( )
French sociologist
Nephew of Emile Durkheim
Most famous book is “The Gift” (1923)

3. The Gift (1923)
In all societies, gifts, which are supposed to be given voluntarily, are actually OBLIGATORY.
All social phenomena are connected with each other, therefore they are total, and all kinds of institutions are expressed through them.
In archaic societies, a gift must be paid back, otherwise this whole is broken. The question that Mauss puts at the beginning and the one he tries to answer throughout the book is: According to which legal principle in archaic societies must the gift be obligatory reciprocated? Which power exists in the gift and makes its recipient pay it back?
The method he uses is the comparative and the regions on which he concentrates are: Polynesia, Melanesia, and North West America.

4. CHAPTER 2
Section 3 - 7

5. Honour and Credit (North-West America) Gift economy (Gift exchange)
Functions in a manner at once interested and obligatory
The obligation takes the form of interest in the objects exchanged.
The objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them, and the communion and alliance they established.
The obligation is expressed in myth and imagery, symbolically and collectively.

6. Honour and Credit (North-West America) Gift economy (Gift exchange)
Direct expression of the manner in which sub-groups within segmentary societies of an archaic type are constantly embroiled with and feel themselves in debt to each other
Indian societies of the American North-West
Barter is unknown there
Only the formality of the POTLATCH
Barter is unknown there even after contact with Europeans

7. Indian Societies of the
American North-West
Tlingit and Haida of Alaska, and the Tsimshian and Kwakiutl of British Columbia
Depend on fishing than hunting, do not practice agriculture
Livelihood – still very wealthy
Most substantial houses than all American tribes

8. Indian Societies of the
American North-West
Live on the sea or on the rivers
Depend more on fishing
Most substantial houses
Highly evolved cedar industry
High standard of material culture
Depend on fishing than hunting, do not practice agriculture
Livelihood – still very wealthy
Most substantial houses than all American tribes
Canoes are good, although seldom venture out to sea, they are skillful in managing around their islands and in coastal waters.
Excellent carvers and craftsmen

9. Indian Societies of the
American North-West
Winter: concentrate in towns
Social life becomes intense
Feasts of long duration
Reckless consumption of everything which has been amassed during the course of summer and autumn
At the end of spring, they disperse and go hunting, gathering and fishing

10. Indian Societies of the
American North-West
Associations (e.g. Banks of Islanders of Melanesia)
Part of the gifts and counterprestations to pay one’s way into the successive steps of the associations
Prestations are the type of gift exchange between groups; appear “disinterested and spontaneous” but are obligatory and enacted under a highly specific system of reciprocity
Potlatches are given in all directions, corresponding to other potlatches to which they are the response
Give-and-take

11. Potlatch is Gift-Exchange
Potlatch is really nothing other than gift-exchange.
The only difference are in the violence, rivalry and antagonism aroused, in a lack of jural concepts and in a simpler structure.
The collective nature of the contract is more apparent than in Melanesia and Polynesia.

12. Credit and Honour Credit
Time has to pass before a counterprestation can be made.
Thus the notion of time is logically implied when one pays a visit, contracts a marriage or alliance, makes a treaty, etc.
Is there a notion of credit in traditional societies?
Yes, of course.
Two traits more in evidence here than in Melanesian potlatch or in the more evolved and discrete institutions of Polynesia.

13. Credit and Honour
In contrast to modern ideas of legal and economic theory that claims…
“in primitive societies, barter alone is found; in those more advanced, direct sale is practiced. Sale on credit characterizes a higher stage of civilization…” (Cuq, 1910)
In fact, the origin of credit is different.
A gift necessarily implies the notion of credit.
Barter arose from the system of gifts given and received on credit, simplified by drawing together the moments of time which had previously been distinct.
Akala ng modern ideas, credit came from the notion of sale. But we found out that actually even before sale was known, there is already credit in the gift-exchange economy.
Likewise purchase and sale and the loan derive from the same source.

14. Credit and Honour Honour What do they do?
No less important is the role which honour plays in the transactions of the Indians.
The prestige of an individual is closely bound up with expenditure, and with the duty of returning with interest gifts received in such a way that the creditor becomes the debtor.
What do they do?
PAYABANGAN!

15. Credit and Honour
In some potlatch systems one is constrained to expend everything one possesses and to keep nothing.
The principles of rivalry and antagonism
Everything is conceived as a war of wealth.
The rich man who shows his wealth by spending recklessly is the man who wins prestige.

16. Credit and Honour
Sometimes there is no question of receiving return: one destroys simply in order to give the appearance that one has no desire to receive anything back.
Wealth is continually being consumed and transferred.
The rich man who shows his wealth by spending recklessly is the man who wins prestige.

17. Credit and Honour
Progress up the social ladder is made in this way not only for oneself but also for one’s family.
Such transfers are aristocratic types of commerce characterized by etiquette and generosity. When it is carried out in a different spirit (i.e. immediate gain), it is viewed with the greatest disdain.
The notion of honor exists even in the most primitive of peoples and the potlatch consists of considering the mutual services rendered as acts of honor.

18. Potlatch is a total phenomenon
Religious, mythological and shamanistic
chiefs taking part are incarnations of gods and ancestors
Economic
assess the value, importance, causes and effects of transactions
A phenomenon of social morphology
reunion of tribes, clans, families, and nations
A contractual form (jural point of view)
material objects of the contracts have a virtue of their own which causes them to be given and compels the making of counter-gifts

19. The obligation to give
One of the important ways for a chief to keep his authority is to demonstrate his fortune by expending it to the humiliation of others, by putting them "in the shadow of his name"
"It is said that one of the great mythical chiefs who gave no feast that he had a "rotten face”
"For to lose one's face is to lose one's spirit"

20. The potlatch - the distribution of goods - is the fundamental act of public recognition in all spheres, military, legal, economic and religious.

21. The obligation to give
It is the veritable persona which is at stake, and it can be lost in the potlatch (not just in wars, in gift-giving, or error in ritual)

22. The obligation to give In all these societies one is anxious to give;
There is no occasion of importance when one is NOT obliged to invite friends to share the produce of the chase or the forest which the gods or totems have sent.
To redistribute everything received at a potlatch
To recognize services from chiefs, vassals or relatives by means of gifts

23. The obligation to give
To fail these obligations corresponds to violation of etiquette and lost of rank (esp. for nobles)
The obligation to invite is particularly evident between clans or between tribes, fateful results can happen if neglected

24. The obligation to receive
One does not have the right to refuse a gift or a potlatch. To do so would show fear of having to reply, and of being abased in default.
In certain circumstances, however, a refusal can be an assertion of victory and invincibility
The one who refused must carry out a potlatch. more particularly, he has to contribute to the "fat festival" in which a ritual of refusal may be observed.
The chief who considers himself superior refuses the spoonful of fat offered to him, fetches his copper and returns with it to "extinguish the fire"

25. The obligation to receive
However, you must speak your appreciation of food offered to you but you accept a challenge at the same time.
You receive gift "on the back". You accept the food and you do so because you mean to take up the challenge and prove that you are not unworthy.
Failure to give or receive, like failure to return gifts, means a loss of dignity.

26. The obligation to repay
Normally, the potlatch must be returned with interest like all other gifts. The interest is generally between 30 and 100 percent, a year.
Example:
If a subject receives a blanket from a chief, he must return two in any occasion of the chief's family.

27. The obligation to repay
The obligation of worthy return is imperative. Face is lost forever if it is not made, or if equivalent value is not destroyed.
The sanction for the obligation to repay is enslavement for debt.
The person who cannot return a loan or potlatch loses his rank and even his status of a free man.

28. The Power in Objects of Exchange
There is a certain power that forces the objects to circulate, to be given away and repaid. (among the Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, etc)
Property is distinguished into two:
Ordinary items of consumption and
Valuable family property
Ex. Talismans, decorated coppers, skin blankets, etc.
Treated with the same solemnity as that of giving women away for marriage

29. The Power in Objects of Exchange
These things are loaned rather than sold and ceded (the transactions are not economic, not done to maximize profit or minimize loss)
Similar to distinctions made by the Haida
They reify (concretize) a being called the “Property Woman”, whom they believe to be the mother, the founding goddess
Precious family articles are considered to have been given by the spirits to their founding hero

30. The Power in Objects of Exchange
Each one has its own name, quality, and power
Everything is considered to have their own voices, their own personalities, not just inanimate objects built by the chief and his people
The house personally welcomes and casts out spirits and people
Each of these precious things are replicas of the never ending supply of tools; they are both a surety of life and a surety of wealth

31. Money of Renown
Decorated coppers are the most important articles in the potlatch
Considered a living being, object of cult and myth
Identified with salmon, another object of cult
Has its own name and individuality in respect with each of the clan chiefs’ families, and its own value

32. Money of Renown
Coppers are believed to attract other coppers, as wealth attracts wealth, and as dignity attracts honors
With the Haida and Tlingit, coppers are “fortresses” for the princess who owns them
Elsewhere, a chief who owns them is rendered invincible
“flat divine objects” of the house

33. Money of Renown
Myth identifies coppers together with the spirits who gave them away, the owners, and the coppers themselves
It is believed to speak and demand to be given away or destroyed
Covered with blankets to keep it warm just as a chief is smothered in the blankets he is to distribute

34. Money of Renown
We also see the transmission of wealth and good fortune
The spirits of an initiate allow him to own coppers and talismans, which allow him to get more of those, more wealth, a higher rank, and more spirits
A man who obtains wealth obtains a spirit which in turn possesses him, allowing him to overcome obstacles heroically
Then the man is later paid for shamanistic services, ritual dances and trances; from here the cycle repeats

35. Money of Renown
Everything is tied together; things have personalities, and personalities somehow permanently own the clan
Talismans, titles, coppers, and spirits of chiefs are homonyms and synonyms, having the same nature and function
The circulation of goods is the same as that of people, festival ritual, ceremonies and dances, jokes and injuries

36. Money of Renown
Things are given and returned because one gives and returns “respects” and “courtesies”
More than that, in giving them, a man gives himself and he does so because he owes himself (along with his possessions) to others

37. Primary Conclusion
From the study of four groups, we find the potlatch, along with its leading motive and its typical form, in two or three of them
In all groups we see the archaic form of exchange – the gift and the return gift
In these societies we note the circulation of objects alongside the circulation of persons and rights

38. Primary Conclusion
The spirit of gift exchange is characteristic of societies which have passed the phase of “total prestation” (between clan and clan, family and family) but have not yet reached the stage of pure individual contract, the money market, sale proper, fixed price, and standard currency.

39. “Through studies of this sort we can find, measure and assess the various determinants, aesthetic, moral, religious and economic, and the material and demographic factors, whose sum is the basis of society and constitutes the common life, and whose conscious direction is the supreme art – Politics in the Socratic sense of the word.”
-Marcel Mauss 39