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163 eight Primitive Circles In the beginning there was Boas. Then there was Thurnwald. Then there was Malinowski. And in the last days there came one named Mauss to proclaim the good news of the gift, which descended from exotic Polynesia and Melanesia to the decadent capitalist West. For centuries, Europeans and Americans had encountered “primitive ” or “savage” tribes and puzzled over their practices regarding gifts and exchanges. Portuguese explorers came bearing gifts for the tribesmen they encountered on the coast of West Africa. Many conquistadors snickered at the folly of the “Indians” who accepted trinkets in place of real valuables. Gifts were exchanged as tokens of good will and signs of peace, and occasionally some observed that gifts played other social functions as well. Nicklaus Federmann led a large expedition of a couple of hundred to Venezuela and Columbia in 1530. Trading with the Caquetios, he realized that he could become rich by trading axes, knives, and hoes for the abundant gold that the Indians possessed, but he also observed that “they gave us so many gifts and presents from good will, and only to prove their magnificence to us, and not, as in the other hamlets and nations visited, from fear.”1 Already in 1764, Thomas Hutchinson of Massachusetts Bay Colony knew of the “Indian gift” as “a proverbial expression signifying a present for which an equivalent return is expected.”2 Eighteenth-century Europeans who visited New Zealand sometimes made the mistake of admiring a Maori pendant. The owner would force it on the admirer as a gift, and soon after would be smiling and speaking in praise of the recipient’s coat or gun.3 164 ⌣ gratitude With the rise of anthropology, such passing comments in travelogues, accounts from discoverers and colonists, and missionary accounts were given more systematic theoretical treatment. For our purposes, the result was a dramatic renewal of reciprocity. The circle was back. Gifts before Mauss In his studies of the Kwakiutl Indians who lived on the coast of British Columbia, Franz Boas described the institution of the potlatch that later became famous through Mauss’ book.4 Others had observed and recorded the potlatch ceremony before Boas, but none had analyzed its place in Kwakiutl society as he did and none had tried to discern the logic of what appeared to Western observers to be a tremendous waste of resources. Through intensive studies of social organization, myths, religion, and rituals, Boas discovered a regular oscillation in Kwakiutl social life. During the greater part of the year, the tribe was rigidly hierarchical, but during the winter the clans broke down into secret societies segregated by sex, and it was during this period that the tribe celebrated its potlatch ceremonies. Boas discerned the competitive edge of the giving and destruction of wealth during the potlatch, recognizing that the most excessive givers and destroyers enhanced their status in the tribe. He also described the potlatches as loan exchanges. A recipient of a potlatch gift was expected to return the gift at the next year’s potlatch. Marriage customs were entwined with the potlatch as well. A man was able to gain the hand of a woman by potlatch exchanges with her family.5 In his studies of the Banaro tribe of New Guinea, Richard Thurnwald discovered a similar principle of reciprocity that explained the social order of the tribe down to the spatial arrangement of the families. The Banaro, he found, consisted of four villages, each of which could be subdivided into smaller “hamlets.” Each hamlet had a “goblin hall” divided into two sections that represented the blood relations that needed to be reconciled. The goblin halls were homes to the spirit. Thurnwald was struck by “the symmetry in the arrangement of the goblin-hall,” which he described as the “expression in space-terms of the principle of social reciprocity or the ‘retaliation of like for like.’” Thurnwald was willing to generalize: reciprocity “pervades the thought of primitive peoples, and often finds its expression in their social organization.”6 Sexual life and marriage among the Banaro displayed the same principles. Women were fairly independent, but their sexual lives were ordered by a defined series of relations, not only with their husband but also with their husband’s relations. A Banaro man had corresponding sexual encounters with his wife’s relations.7 As a result, Thurnwald argued, “all members of the tribe are connected with, and dependent on, each other.” [3.146.221.52] Project MUSE (2024-04...

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