THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE Garca Coyne, Jorge Ricardo 07/11/2013

The Gift
What is a gift? What are the political, economic, religious, and social implications of the gift?

A precious object. A feast. A courtesy. A gesture from one group towards another, an extension of social relations; an invitation to friendship, a violent challenge. These movements that traverse society, that alter it and conserve it, that bind it together but can at the same time be the prelude for war; these exchanges of material objects and spiritual forces, of honours and wealth, unite under the concept of gift.

The objective of the following essay is to distil the main components of the gift, and to see the diverse consequences that it has in separable social spheres (political, economic, religious and social). In The Gift (that is the base on which this text is built), Mauss compares different tribes and clans from Polynesia and North West America. Each tribe has different customs and different exchange systems, but by tracking down specific elements that are shared among them, it is possible for Mauss to come up with a general notion of what a gift is, and the importance it has for archaic societies. This will not be a comparative analysis of the particularities of each tribe, but a sketch of the concept that surveys them, an approximation to the idea that brings them all together. The first part of the text will explain the general aspects of a gift: what it is, where and how it operates and what obligations it imposes. The second part of the text will try to explain what the political, economic, religious and social implications of the gift are.

I. The Gift

A gift is something that a person or a group gives to another. It can be a material good, wealth and property, but above all it is a courtesy. A gift is a feast, entertainments, rituals,

military assistance, women, children and dances - what is important is not so much the shape that it takes, but the way in which it operates. A gift appears under a voluntary guise, but as we will see further on, it is strictly mandatory, it is subject to rules and its refusal can lead to open warfare.

The gift is signified in this way because it is inserted in a system of exchange that constrains it and defines it. Our current system of exchange is based on the circulation of goods, wealth and produce through markets established among individuals; the type of system of exchange in which gifts operate is that which Mauss called system of total presentations. In this model, exchanges and contracts are carried out not by individuals but by groups, the chief speaks and acts in the name of the whole subgroup, tribe or clan. The exchange is not reduced to goods, wealth and things of economic value; it is, overall, an exchange of courtesies, of gifts. It is not a movement of property but a movement of the relationship between the people that take part: an exchange occurs not because a party wants to possess an object that the other party has (such as in barter), but as means to alter the relationship between the parties. A gift establishes a relation between the donor and the receiver, the receiver is obliged to make return gift to the donor. Prestations and counterprestations appear as voluntarily given, but are in fact gestures that the system renders obligatory.

There are three main obligations regarding gifts: the obligation to give, the obligation to receive and the obligation to repay. Giving is the way in which social links are formed. Internal ceremonies that bring families and subgroups together, such as marriage, are accompanied by gifts between the parts. Also external relations, between clans and tribes, are built upon the generosity that each group shows the other. Rejecting a gift is a refusal to establish a relation: to refuse to give, or to fail to invite, is -like refusing to accept [-] the equivalent of a declaration of war; it is a refusal of friendship and intercourse.1 A refusal of a gift is also understood as fear, fear not to be able to repay. If an individual or a chief refuses to accept a gift he can lose his social position and rank, even his status of free man (a gift that is not repaid, at least for the Kwakiutl, Haida and Tsimshian, is sanctioned with
1

Mauss, p. 11.

enslavement for debt). Repayment is generally met with a gift that surpasses the value of the gift it is repaying. Taonga [the object given as a gift] are asked to destroy the person who receives them; and they have the power to do this if the law, or rather the obligation, about making a return gift is not observed.2

Systems of total presentations have different forms. Some are actualized through a sea voyage by which one clan visits another; others are established seasonally, depending on the harvests, and others run parallel to markets of consumable goods. One of the most common ways in which a System of total presentation is effectuated is the Potlatch. The potlatch (originally meaning to nourish or to consume) is a festive gathering by which tribes and clans reunite. It includes banquets, fairs, markets, religious rituals, marriages and associations. The essence of the potlatch is the gift: tribes offer gifts to each other, and the values of the gifts fix the hierarchical relations, authority and respect of each tribe. Political ranks within sub-groups, tribes, tribal confederations and nations are settled in this way. The potlatch is a sort of battle of generosity fought with gifts instead of swords. The remarkable thing about these tribes Mauss points out- is the spirit of rivalry and antagonism which dominates all their activities.3 Although the gifts, contracts and sacrifices are done by the chiefs and in this sense they are mainly aristocratic-, their result will also determine the position of the entire community.

When things are given as gifts, what is given is much more than just the physical existence of the thing and property over it. Objects are first and foremost parts of the places they come from and of the people that have owned them. Things have a history, an origin, a personality and sometimes even a legend. The bond created by things is in fact a bond between persons, since the thing itself is a person or pertains to a person to give something is to give a part of oneself.4 Exchanging gifts is exchanging parts of each other; it is a construction of social links by personalized and spiritualized objects. The objects that are exchanged in a system of total presentations are generally those which the Maori call taonga. Taonga is a feminine, native and indestructible property, as opposed to the
2 3

Ibd., p. 8. Ibd., p. 4. 4 Ibd., p. 10.

masculine, foreign and consumable property of the oloa; talismans, trinkets and marriage mats are taonga, they are what defines the wealth, power and influence of a man. Taonga is closely attached to the individual, the clan and the land, it is a vehicle by which mana is gained (when given away) or lost (when the taonga is retained). The object has a spirit and an intention; it accepts to be given away but demands a return gift: The thing given is not inert. It is alive and often personified, and strives to bring to its original clan and homeland some equivalent to take its place.5

With the taonga we can see that there is a specific relation between humans, objects, gods and nature. Nature does not appear as something isolated from society, as a simple resource to explode, but as a spiritual, sacred entity that has an original property over the object. Objects seek to bring to their land something that will fill the vacuum they are leaving when being given to someone else. When in humans domain, the system of total presentations establishes a particular kind of property that the owner exerts over the object. A gift is at the same time a property and a possession, a pledge and a ban, an object sold and an object bought, a deposit, a mandate, a trust.6 In the Toaripi and Namau languages, there is a single word to cover buy, sell, borrow and lend; this illustrates the particular kind of property that operates in the system. Objects are owned in order to be given away. Keeping an object for a long time can damage the person that keeps it. This system is based on expenditure, not on accumulation. Accumulation is justified only if its aim is to be given away. The circulation of wealth is not sustained in the objects themselves, but in the social surplus that they carry with them. It is a conception of the world and of the relation between society, nature, divinities, individuals and possessions. If things are given and returned it is precisely because one gives and returns respects and courtesies. But in addition, in giving them, a man gives himself, and he does so because he owes himself himself and his possessions- to others.7

5 6

Ibd., p. 10. Ibd., p. 22. 7 Ibd., p. 45.

II. Implications of the gift

By now, it is clear that gifts are not limited to an economic sphere. They contain within them economic, political, social, religious, legal and moral features. This is what Mauss calls a total social phenomena, that in which all kinds of institutions find simultaneous expression. The following part is dedicated to trace the implications of the gift in specific institutions.

a) Political implications The system of total presentations, and more specifically in its potlatch form, is intrinsically hierarchical and aristocratic. The potlatch is the place in which political ranks are defined. Gifts are vehicles of mana, of spiritual power, authority and wealth; it is through them that these intangible goods are obtained. [The potlatch] is above all a struggle among nobles to determine their position in the hierarchy to the ultimate benefit, if they are successful, of their own clans.8

When a person has an object, specifically a taonga, he also possesses the mana that emanates from it. When that object is given to someone else as a gift, the mana of the donor increases. When the gift is repaid (with interest), the mana of the party that repaid increases, and the original donor will have to wait until the next potlatch in order to repay and increase his own mana (in the meantime, he can enjoy the object given in repayment).

Besides the friendly elements that the gift implies, the rivalry and antagonism that are also present cannot be forgotten. A gift is a challenge, since the moment it is given it carries within it the obligation of repayment. The donor obtains a kind of potential authority over the receiver. The authority will remain as a potentiality, as a possibility of realization, until the moment in which the receiver cannot repay. The fail to repay can turn that potentiality into a manifest power that explodes in open warfare.

Ibd., p. 8.

But the gift is also the mean by which peace can be bought. Be it with men or with gods, an action at the generosity level can stop a violent physical punishment.

The system of total representation is a clearly political event in the schmittean sense of the concept, the gift is the material element that sustains the political distinction: through the gift, friends and enemies are defined; through the failure to repay, the existential dimension of the separation comes into play and is expressed as war.9

a) Economic implications The system of total presentations, which would appear at first as an economic mechanism, actually subordinates economical possessions to social, political, moral and religious values. It focuses not on the material existence of objects, but on the social constructs that these contain and reproduce.

Gifts open a new dimension regarding property, where owned and borrowed, lent and sold, are indistinguishable from one another. In most tribes, objects that can be exchanged as gifts function in a specific sphere that is removed from the sphere of daily use; they are not objects of consumption but objects with magical powers and political implications (taonga). They are removed from the everyday life of the tribes, they do not appear but in specific circumstances (circumstances that break the quotidian succession of days), while the rest of the goods circulate in another way and belong to another domain. But there are some cases in which the system of total presentations also functions with regard to everyday needs: among the Trobrianders, the Kula (kind of grand potlatch) is accompanied by a different, analogous type of exchange called Wasi. In the Wasi, tribes establish exchange relations by which they become partners of a tribe that sustains its life with different resources, and exchange with them their specific consumables: an agricultural tribe becomes partner of a maritime tribe; when time of harvest, the agricultural tribe gives part of its resources to the maritime one; when fishing is good, the maritime tribe gives part of its catch to the agricultural one. In this dimension, the system of total representations integrates an element of division of labour, based not on barter and negotiation but on mutual assistance.
9

See: Schmitt, Karl, The concept of the political.

One of the main economic implications that the gift has on our modern commercial system has to do with the fact that it contradicts some of the main economic presuppositions on which our system is based. It is a general assumption that archaic, less advanced civilizations, exchanged goods by barter; more advanced societies introduces money and direct sale; and the most advanced societies, up to now, are those which include sale on credit. With a society based on gifts, this presupposition is turned upside down. We can see in the Polynesian and North American tribes studied by Mauss and others, that the notion of credit actually precedes those of barter and sale. Credit appears as intrinsically linked to the gift, because every gift must be repaid: gifts are their own guarantees. Gifts assume a repayment that will come in time (there is first a moment in which the gift is done, and secondly another moment in which the repayment will be done); what barter and sale do is simply unite these two moments in time. This particular shift in presuppositions, along with the detailed study of the system of total presentations, opens a new, viable alternative to exchange based on market and sale.

The gift system is no perfect, fraternal utopia that excludes self-interest; the rivalry and agonistic elements that it contains must not be forgotten, but its reality, functionality and specific configuration is what allows Mauss (and maussists after him) to see in it an alternative to capitalist and communist systems of exchange. In a system like our own, based on sale, individual commerce and circulation of goods, self-interest relies directly on the amount of possessions that an individual can get his hands on. In a system of total presentations, what is accumulated is not the goods (physical wealth), but the mana, the authority and the social recognition that the circulation of possessions generate. The accumulation glides from a material existence to a moral and social one. Accumulation of material possessions is only allowed if it is done in order to be given away after. The system of total presentations takes the communist element of solidarity and cooperativism in the fact that it operates not between individuals but between groups, and that the success of the chief or aristocracy is also the triumph of the whole group; but it also benefits from the self-interest element that moves capitalism: exchanges are made in order to gain mana and authority, not more material possessions, and by expenditure in feasts and markets, the material possessions that belong to the materially rich elements of society flow towards the

less fortunate members. We see that a part of mankind, wealthy, hard-working and creating large surpluses, exchanges vast amounts in ways and for reasons other than those with which we are familiar from our societies.10 Evidently, this is an enormous debate that must be analysed much more precisely, but from mentioning it we can derive at least the existence of the possibility of a different functional exchange system than the one we have nowadays.

b) Religious implications Among the first groups of beings with whom men must have made contracts were the spirits of the dead and the gods. They in fact are the real owners of the worlds wealth.11 Material possessions belong, first of all, to the gods. The gods allow objects to be appropriated by men, but they do not simply abandon them to the new owner: they remain in the objects, around their circulation and their uses. Men give objects and even themselves- to the gods, in order to maintain the relationship that exists between them. Sacrifices work as the repayment that men make to gods. The taonga, and all strictly personal possessions, have a hau, a spiritual power.12 It is not so much a power to do something, but a presence, a spirit of the gods and of the forest that is resides in the object. When the object is given, the spirit goes with the object. The spirit demands a restitution to the donor of an object that is as valuable as the gift that was made. It also has the power to punish the receiver if this repayment is not fulfilled.

An exchange implies that the benevolence of spirits, gods, animals and natural objects is also given. With totemic clans and tribes, there is no distinction between the group, the chief, the gods and the animals that they are identified with. A gift opens the entire universe of a group to another; it is a gift between men but also between gods. This profound, religious connection binds the communities in a way that exceeds all reductive materialist planes.

10 11

Mauss, p. 31. Ibd., p. 13. 12 Ibd., p. 9.

Objects that are eligible to be exchanged as gifts are generally situated in a different plane than that of quotidian, everyday consumables; they are removed from the profane sphere in which every individual can dispose of them as he pleases. Gifts are objects with magical properties that appear only in specific occasions, under specific circumstances. Their functions are strictly sacred: sacred not only in the sense that they are related to gods and spirits, but moreover as things that belong to another, different sphere from that of everyday life. Taonga, real, magical, personal and spiritual property, are concerned with the structuring aspects of social life; inside the boundaries that they define, normal consumable everyday objects circulate. This existence on the gifts in a different plane, removed from normal use and consumption, is what renders the gifts sacred.

c) Social implications From what has been stated up to now, it is not hard to deduce the constituting force that the gift has over social life. Society is built upon gift exchange: groups are united and divided through it.

Systems of total presentations exist all along the year, but it is in specific moments when they are more evident: the clearest example of this condensation or concentration of the general system is when it appears under the form of the potlatch: it is a social gathering in which everything is done, celebrated and dealt with: marriages, childbirth, circumcision, sickness, girls puberty, funeral ceremonies and trade. The social tissue is strengthened in these moments, and the strength that comes from them allows the communities to remain linked for the rest of the year.

A clear example of this concentration and dilatation of the System can be seen in some Northwest American tribes, which have entirely different forms of life during summer and winter: at the end of spring, they disperse and go hunting or recollecting, while in winter they reunite and concentrate in towns. During the concentration they are in a perpetual state of effervescence13, they visit other tribes, feast, celebrate ritual and religious occasions and give themselves in to a reckless consumption of what they gathered in
13

Ibd., p. 11.

summer. The expenditure and courtesies shown in this consumption unite the different tribes and allow them to remain together regardless of the physical separation that will come with the next spring. Mauss remembers a speech of the herald of the pitu-pilu tribe: Our feasts are the movement of the needle which sews together the parts of our reed roofs, making of them a single roof, one single world. The same things (the same thread) return.14

Bibliography: Mauss, Marcel, The Gift, The Norton Library, New York, 1967 Graeber, David, Give it away, In These Times, 2000, online publication available at: http://inthesetimes.com/issue/24/19/graeber2419.html
14

Ibd., p. 14.