gift economy

Some brilliant writing/thinking about gift-giving vs. 'exchange' (market) economy from
http://www.gift-economy.com/athanor/athanor_003.html [bolds mine]:

The two logics, exchange and gift giving, also produce different kinds of subjectivities. The practice of exchange creates an ego-oriented ego according to its logic of self interest while the practice of gift giving promotes more other-orientation. Exchange is a gift turned back upon itself, doubled and made contingent. It requires quantification while gift giving is mainly qualitative. Exchange is ego oriented and gives value to the self, while gift giving is other-oriented and gives value mainly to the other. Exchange places the exchangers in adversarial positions as each tries to get more than the other out of the transaction. The values of patriarchy are implicit in exchange, and drive Capitalism, as each contender struggles to reach the top of the hierarchy to own more and to become the Big Man. The kind of ego that is based on the exchange logic is necessary for the market, while the gift giving personality is eliminated, or is easily victimized and becomes the host of the exchange ego.

One superstructural consequence of this kind of ego formation is that consciousness itself is considered in the light of exchange as self reflecting, in a sort of equation of value with itself. The subconscious is thus placed in the gift giving position. We might say that our idea of consciousness in its capacity for self-evaluation is made in the image of preparation for exchange. It floats upon the gifts of the subconscious and of experience, without a clear indication of how those gifts come into the mind. Similarly the market floats on a sea of gifts without a clear indication of where they come from and how they constitute profit.

In individuals, the coexistence and conflict, as well as symbiosis of these two kinds of ego structures, can be seen as a result of the exchange paradigm, not its cause. That is, it is not that human beings are greedy and therefore create the market and capitalism. Rather, the system has an existence that is over and above that of its individual participants. The market and capitalism create the human ego structures that are well adapted to their needs. Greed is one of the human qualities that is functional to the maintenance and development of the market as such. Competition for narcissistic self aggrandizement and dominance are played out on the economic plane because otherwise the market would not 'grow' and maintain its control over other possible ways of distributing goods i.e. gift giving. Patriarchy supplies the motivation that drives Capitalism and the individuals who embody the motivation, with the ego structures and belief systems that justify the embodiment. Capitalism supplies the tools and rewards with which individuals and now corporations carry out the Patriarchal agendas on the terrain of so called 'distribution' of goods to needs through exchange.

Mothering, on the other hand, involves the unilateral free distribution of goods and services to young children and a consequent creation of human bonds between givers and receivers. Society has assigned this role to women. Although it may be characterized as the distribution of goods, mothering is usually not seen as an economic category. In fact by overvaluing exchange and making it dominant, the market devalues mothering, making it dependent and subservient. The gift paradigm allows us to see that the direct distribution of goods and services to needs that is present in mothering can be understood as an example of the practice of an alternative economy. As a mode of distribution, it is present in all societies because it is required, not by the biology of women, but by the biology of children. That is, for a very long period of time, children's biology does not allow them to independently satisfy most of their own or others' needs. It requires and elicits other-orientation and unilateral gift giving from their caregivers.

And from another article by this same author, The Exemplar and the Gift by Genevieve Vaughan,
http://www.gift-economy.com/articlesAndEssays/exemplarAndGift.html:

Masculation

When children are small, the nurturing mother is the main model or exemplar for their concept of the human. They creatively receive her unilateral gifts and give some communicative gifts of their own, imitating her. (Chodorow 1978) When boys find that they belong to a gender category which is the opposite of that of the nurturing mother, and that they have another gender name, they have to give her up as exemplar and give up also her gift giving ways as the content for their identity. For young children particularly there is little else in life other than the gift giving and receiving they are doing with their mothers. What is more, as I have been saying, gift giving permeates our lives and language though we have been taught not to see it. In other words, gift giving is a necessary part of all life but boy children are being taught it is not their role. What is most evident about patriarchal fathers, the male models that are usually given to the child in place of the model of the mother, is their ability to command, perhaps to punish, their distance and independence, even their ability to be the exemplar of the category 'male' and extend it to the category 'human'. The generality of the one-to-many exemplars of concepts is probably not evident to children and may be interpreted simply as power. The misconceptions which underlie the male identity are passed down from generation to generation. Women learn to privilege the male way more than their own way with the result that they give to those in the not-giving category more than they give to those in their own gift giving category. With their many gifts they paradoxically privilege not-giving

and

The projection of the problem of categorization and gender into the market is helpful in that it displays the misplaced elements in a depersonalized arena which is visible to all. In the market as in our childhood experience, once again a one-to-many relation among an exemplar and items in a privileged category is evident. In the market, money is the exemplar of value. The 'sorting process' takes place, and some goods are allowed into the magic circle of exchange value, while others remain excluded, part of the gift giving background. Exchange for money is a way of naming the commodity as a value, not by giving to it but by giving something for it. Money functions as this "name", (similar perhaps to the word 'male') while the quantity of money that is given for the product, tells us how male the product is estimated to be.

The excerpts are somewhat random; I wanted to capture enough of the gist of these thoughts to provide a 'place holder' while I digest these new ideas and new language (new to *me*, that is.) The writing is dense and full of unfamiliar coinages. But I really like the way her mind works - she seems to skate fluidly and effortlessly from one concept to another, weaving the threads together in an over-arching tapestry that helps the Big Picture come clearer. Universal (or is it Unified?) Field Theory, here we come! We're gonna catch you yet, you elusive little bugger.