WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:00:00.800 --> 00:00:06.400 Hi everyone so we're back to the second lecture in economic anthropology and today we're going to 00:00:06.400 --> 00:00:14.000 discuss something that is going to be very important in the weeks to come namely The Gift and 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:21.950 to understand what the gift is going to go into the text of Malinowski, Weiner and Mauss 00:00:21.950 --> 00:00:31.849 and again just so you see me here I am and I need to go away for me not to be too self-conscious. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:00:31.849 --> 00:00:43.099 I thought I'd start by asking you to imagine a cold winter day on outside the you know the Kiwi 00:00:43.099 --> 00:00:57.200 At John Collets plass which is a grocery store right by the university and on most days 00:00:57.200 --> 00:01:01.450 during the winter there's a woman who sits outside Kiwi in rags NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:09.650 She must be a Roma woman she smiles at those who pass by and she's offering them 00:01:09.650 --> 00:01:17.600 knitted mittens and hats for sale like winter hats and I don't know if you've seen her I've often 00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:26.650 seen her I've never talked to her but I've been a little bit intrigued at what she has understood this woman 00:01:26.650 --> 00:01:31.800 about what I am going to try to teach you over the coming NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:01:31.800 --> 00:01:41.199 weeks namely the lessons about the power and logic of gifts, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:01:41.199 --> 00:01:43.150 And NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:01:43.150 --> 00:01:49.200 the difference between gifts and commodities okay so this woman has understood something crucial 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:52.500 about that that I want you to learn. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:01:53.000 --> 00:02:06.300 remember last week and the metaphor of how what we learned from the neoliberal consensus and the view of 00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:15.300 economic motivation and economic life proposed by Milton and Rose Friedman building on Adam Smith 00:02:15.300 --> 00:02:22.750 and how we can understand that as something that gets at something NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 69% (MEDIUM) 00:02:22.750 --> 00:02:36.450 true about economic life it does understand certain truths, however it is 00:02:36.450 --> 00:02:47.900 part of a wider symphony of sounds and of insights and of elements that belong to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:56.900 the world that we're trying to understand here, and in some ways this little instrument or this 00:02:56.900 --> 00:03:04.300 this Insight that we have represented in their writings from last week is perhaps not even the major 00:03:04.300 --> 00:03:10.400 instrument if you allow me to stretch the metaphor even further it might just be a triangle or 00:03:10.400 --> 00:03:19.400 something that is not the fundamental the major thing in in economic life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:03:19.400 --> 00:03:26.700 so well this week we're going to start adding for real some more sounds to the symphony of economic 00:03:26.700 --> 00:03:35.900 anthropology and we're going to proceed in making sense of the world beyond this logic of the pure 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:43.200 self interested profit motive which is the perspective of that the Friedman's 00:03:43.200 --> 00:03:49.050 sketches out drawing on Adam Smith as we talked about last week. We'll talk NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:03:49.050 --> 00:03:58.000 in this lecture about gifts okay and we'll begin a discussion that we'll have in many lectures to come 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:05.200 and in seminars concerning the nature of gifts and the difference between gifts and commodities so 00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:13.500 before we get into that let's go back to this woman sitting outside Kiwi the grocery 00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:19.050 store at John Collets plass the roundabout next to the university. She sits there, we NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:04:19.050 --> 00:04:29.100 can all agree her aim to get money. She has a cup or she has a basket where she collects 00:04:29.100 --> 00:04:38.800 money that she wants from wealthy people that pass by. Money so that she can what do I know live up to 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:47.900 the life that she wants to have, help her family and kin but through trial and error I assume 00:04:47.900 --> 00:04:49.000 that she has NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:04:49.000 --> 00:04:55.700 Learned that it can be actually very difficult to reach this goal to separate the money from the 00:04:55.700 --> 00:05:05.800 pockets of privileged Norwegians in Ullevål Hageby just by asking for this money. There's 00:05:05.800 --> 00:05:14.700 something about asking for money directly asking for a gift that rhymes poorly with the 00:05:14.700 --> 00:05:18.600 residents or the pedestrians in one of the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:05:18.600 --> 00:05:25.300 wealthiest areas in one of the wealthiest countries on Earth. She sits right on the edge of 00:05:25.300 --> 00:05:32.300 this neighborhood and she's come up with this kind of solution for that, instead of simply asking 00:05:32.300 --> 00:05:37.900 these people for their money saying you know reaching out a hand saying please give me money I'm 00:05:37.900 --> 00:05:45.500 poor she has realized that it's much more efficient for some reason to offer people a service a 00:05:45.500 --> 00:05:49.100 commodity. Mittens and hats and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:05:49.100 --> 00:05:56.200 Whatever she knits and sells there outside the entrance to the grocery store and this by the way is just the same 00:05:56.200 --> 00:06:01.700 Insight that people who struggle with drug addiction has come to when they realize that they 00:06:01.700 --> 00:06:13.000 need to sell magazines to others pedestrians in order to make a living to get money because people 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:18.950 seem to be more comfortable NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:06:18.950 --> 00:06:26.200 comfortable for most of us to engage in a 00:06:26.200 --> 00:06:32.600 relationship with someone who needs something from us when they pretend to be selling something NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:06:32.600 --> 00:06:35.400 or when they're actually selling something. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:06:35.400 --> 00:06:43.000 so what is going on here? I find this a bit fascinating. This woman outside Kiwi she sets up 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:49.049 a relationship that resembles more or less what you find inside kiwi than their commodity exchange 00:06:49.049 --> 00:06:51.050 rather than a gift exchange NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:06:51.050 --> 00:06:56.800 so she offers a service she gives us something and we give her something in return. That's kind 00:06:56.800 --> 00:07:05.900 of the end of it, and here's the thing I suspect few of those who buy the 00:07:05.900 --> 00:07:12.800 mittens really use them. I'm willing to bet you half my salary that around Ullevål Hageby in all 00:07:12.800 --> 00:07:19.800 these houses there are dozens of unused pairs of mittens and winter hats that this woman has made 00:07:19.800 --> 00:07:21.400 and they end NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:07:21.400 --> 00:07:28.300 up being unused just like there are so many of those magazines that are sold by drug addicts that 00:07:28.300 --> 00:07:36.000 people don't read. Why is that? why do we pretend to engage in commerce or have to pretend to do 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:40.800 commerce when we're actually giving people money? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:07:40.900 --> 00:07:47.700 why don't people just like to give away gifts to strangers NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:07:47.700 --> 00:07:52.299 what is it about gifts NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:07:52.299 --> 00:07:55.700 that make them so powerful? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:07:56.100 --> 00:08:05.800 and what is about gifts and commodities that allows differently to navigate social relations. These 00:08:05.800 --> 00:08:11.950 are the questions that I hope we will have answered within a few weeks and we're going to 00:08:11.950 --> 00:08:19.900 come back directly to cmmodities but this week we're staying with gifts. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:30.450 so let's recap to put this in perspective. Remember last week NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:08:30.450 --> 00:08:41.700 we read the text by Milton and Rose Friedman laying out the neoliberal consensus and we looked at 00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:52.349 the way in which neoclassical economics that is economics reinventing or rediscovering the liberal 00:08:52.349 --> 00:08:58.150 economic ideas proposed by Smith and others NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:08:58.150 --> 00:09:07.150 how that type of Economics tended to view market exchange as the universal basis for economics 00:09:07.150 --> 00:09:18.099 based on individual human nature so it is all peoples propensity to truck, barter and exchange 00:09:18.099 --> 00:09:26.500 that produces market society, that is the foundation for society. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:09:26.500 --> 00:09:34.500 By the way one of the students wrote a fascinating email to me mentioning that when I said that 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:42.500 the word truck does not really mean anything and this triad of Adam Smith's truck barter and 00:09:42.500 --> 00:09:50.500 exchange it's not entirely correct truck actually means to give an object in exchange for another as 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:56.050 a verb in French so what Smith is saying there is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:09:56.050 --> 00:10:03.500 people have a propensity to barter barter and exchange and I think he's still just threw truck in 00:10:03.500 --> 00:10:09.400 there in order to have three rather than two that's a digression but just to clear up that from last 00:10:09.400 --> 00:10:19.850 time. You remember also how then from last week NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:10:19.850 --> 00:10:29.900 how David Harvey challenged this neoliberal consensus through the lens of political 00:10:29.900 --> 00:10:38.900 economy and we also read Karen Ho who provided her own challenge to the neoliberal consensus through 00:10:38.900 --> 00:10:49.100 the lens of an ethnography of Wall Street, and so this week we go more thoroughly to work 00:10:49.100 --> 00:10:50.000 here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:59.000 we will look at a major perhaps the major anthroplogical theory that seeks to challenge the universalizing 00:10:59.000 --> 00:11:05.400 assumptions of mainstream economic theory, from a different perspective name that directly namely the 00:11:05.400 --> 00:11:14.200 gift okay so we're trying to look at a challenge to Milton and Rose Friedman text that's just 00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:20.750 Put it clearly at that from the perspective of anthropological gift theory NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:11:20.750 --> 00:11:30.450 There are ethnographic and theoretical basis for this gift Theory and the ethnographic 00:11:30.450 --> 00:11:39.200 basis for it is most directly found over not exclusively but most directly found in the syllabus in 00:11:39.200 --> 00:11:41.850 the text by Malinowski NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:11:41.850 --> 00:11:54.500 then Marcel Mauss reads Malinowski and puts his ethnographic data to work with even more universal 00:11:54.500 --> 00:12:05.400 theory anthropoligal theory of the gift in his texts, his famous essay called exactly that 'the 00:12:05.400 --> 00:12:12.150 gift'. All right so that is where we're coming from and how this relates to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:12:12.150 --> 00:12:18.300 the reading from last week, and we're going to keep pointing out these interconnections between the 00:12:18.300 --> 00:12:23.600 and between the readings because that is the whole point of this course rather than thinking of 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:31.600 them as isolated, and it's going to get clearer as we go so let's just keep going. What is that a gift 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:40.300 then just to get going what how do we know what a gift is? why do we give gifts what do gifts tell us 00:12:40.300 --> 00:12:42.300 about human nature NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:12:42.300 --> 00:12:44.550 how do gifts shape culture NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:12:44.550 --> 00:12:49.200 what is a role of gifts in understanding the economy? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:12:49.600 --> 00:12:56.000 I think you all actually have answers to these questions, but today and in the coming weeks we'll 00:12:56.000 --> 00:13:03.700 look at some anthropologists who thought really hard about them and then the idea is that you will 00:13:03.700 --> 00:13:10.800 use that writing in those insights as a basis for discussing these questions in your study groups or 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:20.700 in your seminars yourselves, and just to remind you all these are matters that matter in real life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:30.200 the picture to the right here is a story reporting that Saudi Arabia donated or gave money to the 00:13:30.200 --> 00:13:41.400 Malaysian prime minister and this was some kind of a scandal which was linked to corruption and 00:13:41.400 --> 00:13:50.200 illegitimate use of funds to pay for someone's service which is not sup- NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:13:50.200 --> 00:13:59.700 posed to be for sale, and the Prime Minister and the parties involved here claim that this is a 00:13:59.700 --> 00:14:03.700 genuine donation here is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:14:03.700 --> 00:14:16.700 this is a genuine donation was actually not something which expected anything in return so and 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:23.000 immediately of course this whole new story is kind of assuming that we don't really believe this 00:14:23.000 --> 00:14:28.600 story that there was nothing expected in return you know with the such a massive transfer of funds 00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:33.800 from a foreign government like Saudi Arabia to the personal NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:14:33.900 --> 00:14:41.600 possession of a prime minister in a different country there's something fishy going on here it is 00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:51.900 not free money, there's no such thing as a free lunch, there's no such thing as a free gift, and that 00:14:51.900 --> 00:14:59.000 it basically the the argument of Marcel Mauss there's no such thing as a free gift, and you 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:03.550 should know this already by now you know when something is portrayed as free we NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:15:03.550 --> 00:15:10.800 Reach for our intellectual revolver we don't really believe this guy saying that this was a nothing 00:15:10.800 --> 00:15:16.600 expected in return because we have a conception of what a gift is to begin 00:15:16.600 --> 00:15:22.200 with we know that it's about getting something in return, we know that it's particular kind of sort 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:33.500 of relationship. Again we know that gifts are such powerful intriguing things and so let's now get NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:15:33.500 --> 00:15:44.450 into a little bit more systematic detail about what explains that power explains that entry and the 00:15:44.450 --> 00:15:53.200 perhaps the first and most famous anthropologist to help us understand why gifts are so powerful and 00:15:53.200 --> 00:16:00.650 what they are, the first step in this intellectual discovery that we're going to make is of course 00:16:00.650 --> 00:16:02.950 this guy Malinowski NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:16:02.950 --> 00:16:08.900 whom I assume many of you already know NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:16:10.400 --> 00:16:17.700 first of all the first thing to note about the text for today including my notes is that we are 00:16:17.700 --> 00:16:27.100 Thoroughly in ethnographic territory in other words we're reading studies of actual people and 00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:33.200 societies we're not you know reading about hypothetical people doing hypothetical things we're 00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:36.800 entering into real human territory. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:16:36.800 --> 00:16:45.100 So the first and most famous I single piece of ethnographic writing that 00:16:45.100 --> 00:16:51.700 you'll find on the syllabus that helps us understand these questions about gifts is 00:16:51.700 --> 00:17:01.450 Malinowski's description of the Kula trade. Now many of you have I think already heard the Kula ring 00:17:01.450 --> 00:17:06.250 and in the introductory course in anthropology that you've taken NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:17:06.250 --> 00:17:12.200 but here is a chance I just want to make a note here that this is a chance to actually go a bit 00:17:12.200 --> 00:17:18.300 deeper into that and it is kind of a real gem this piece that we put on the syllabus and I want you 00:17:18.300 --> 00:17:25.500 to remember that you know consider this a chance to read something that you'll likely never have to 00:17:25.500 --> 00:17:28.700 read or get a chance to read ever again NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:17:29.100 --> 00:17:37.200 open that book and shut off your phone and read it from start to finish travel to some faraway 00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:45.600 Island and see what sticks in your mind and see what connections you can make to the world outside 00:17:45.600 --> 00:17:54.800 the Trobriand islands, this is the kind of project Malinowski is doing so who is this guy? well he is one 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:57.900 of the founders of modern social anthropology primarily because he was NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:17:57.900 --> 00:18:07.000 such a Pioneer participant observation kind of a gold standard for anthropological fieldwork NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:15.500 he was as a side note also responsible for the development of functionalism as a theoretical 00:18:15.500 --> 00:18:20.700 perspective in British social anthropology that is another Association that you can have with Malinowski 00:18:20.700 --> 00:18:30.800 although one that we will not give much importance in this course where we use Malinowski in 00:18:30.800 --> 00:18:36.650 this course a lot however is in the ethnographic NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:18:36.650 --> 00:18:48.500 description of the Kula and this is a phenomena that happens in a certain place in a 00:18:48.500 --> 00:18:56.350 certain archipelago in Papua New Guinea NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:18:56.350 --> 00:19:07.700 and when Malinowski went there he's .. the straightforward thing to say 00:19:07.700 --> 00:19:13.800 about the Kula the story about the Kula is that the guy Malinowski went there he got stranded on 00:19:13.800 --> 00:19:23.300 this island and discovered that people were doing this thing this practice that he found 00:19:23.300 --> 00:19:25.700 really fascinating they were exchanging NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:19:25.700 --> 00:19:35.200 necklaces and bracelets in a ring in opposite directions, they were moving these items between 00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:44.800 themselves between these islands on canoe voyages and there was an incredible amount of cuss and 00:19:44.800 --> 00:19:51.850 gossip and organizations ceremony surrounding this practice and he was asking himself basically the 00:19:51.850 --> 00:19:56.000 the same question I think any ethnographer NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:19:56.000 --> 00:20:05.300 is asking him or herself but which we are a bit too fancy and self-conscious to admit which is the 00:20:05.300 --> 00:20:09.250 very valid research question what the hell is going on here? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:20:09.250 --> 00:20:15.700 what the hell are they doing? why they're doing what they're doing what is it about? and to understand 00:20:15.700 --> 00:20:26.400 a bit more of that let us now have a look at a video just to get some visuals for about what we're 00:20:26.400 --> 00:20:32.400 talking about before we go further, because it's often easy to forget that these are real people 00:20:32.400 --> 00:20:39.400 doing very real things. So let me see if I can get this video going. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:20:41.700 --> 00:20:45.350 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:20:45.350 --> 00:20:49.700 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:57.600 Malinowski found one of his most important examples of the rational function behind a seemingly 00:20:57.600 --> 00:21:05.000 irrational behavior in the Trobriand custom known as the Kula. The Kula was the trading 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:07.000 expeditions NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:21:07.100 --> 00:21:15.700 from island to island exchanging goods what do they exchange? exchanged apparently useless goods 00:21:15.700 --> 00:21:23.800 Armshells and necklaces. I gave you my Kula partner and arm shell you have to give me in exchange a necklace NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 69% (MEDIUM) 00:21:24.200 --> 00:21:32.500 Malinowski describes the Kula in great detail and 00:21:32.500 --> 00:21:40.200 00:21:40.200 --> 00:21:42.900 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:21:44.100 --> 00:21:46.800 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:21:53.500 --> 00:22:01.600 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:22:01.600 --> 00:22:07.900 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:22:09.000 --> 00:22:15.800 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:22.400 are excluded more and more from society sometimes temperate sometimes NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:29.200 so in Malinowskis later study exchanges or exchange system is one of the main mechanisms for 00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:36.900 controlling behavior. Understanding the functions behind Customs like the Kula helped malinowski to 00:22:36.900 --> 00:22:42.900 learn an even greater lesson that he and his fellow Europeans had more in common with the Trobriand 00:22:42.900 --> 00:22:45.900 people than they had ever imagined. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:22:45.900 --> 00:22:50.200 Final conclusion is people are pretty much the same everywhere. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:23:02.800 --> 00:23:11.900 I hope you are all able to listen to that and more importantly to see the images of what this looks 00:23:11.900 --> 00:23:20.050 like that always helps with this to me and there's important point that we get from this short video 00:23:20.050 --> 00:23:30.600 it is that Kula is an organising mechanism for the trobriand islands as it said here it is a form of 00:23:30.600 --> 00:23:32.800 social control it is a system NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:23:32.800 --> 00:23:36.800 that is terribly important NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:49.800 to people basically and my ask is trying to report on what it is about what is its logic and 00:23:49.800 --> 00:23:59.150 another important point is get off the straight Off the Mark here is that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:23:59.150 --> 00:24:08.100 we're not dealing with details of the Trobriand island customs themselves for their own purpose 00:24:08.100 --> 00:24:18.400 alone but Malinowski is trying to get at something that happens here in this system that has relation 00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:28.900 or the relevance for everything else or things that happen par outside the system things that 00:24:28.900 --> 00:24:29.600 happen in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:24:29.600 --> 00:24:31.900 the rest of the world NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:24:31.900 --> 00:24:41.000 because Kula says Malinowski challenges our conventional idea of what trade and exchange is. 00:24:41.000 --> 00:24:53.150 This is the idea that you pick up from the neoliberal consensus as explained and as we've 00:24:53.150 --> 00:24:59.199 discussed last week. He says NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:24:59.199 --> 00:25:06.850 the word trade and he calls it the Kula trade, the word trade is used in current ethnography 00:25:06.850 --> 00:25:12.550 and economic literature with so many implications that a whole lot of 00:25:12.550 --> 00:25:15.900 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:25:15.900 --> 00:25:20.800 that a whole lot of misleading preconceived ideas have to be brushed aside in order to grasp the 00:25:20.800 --> 00:25:29.800 facts correctly. Thus the a priori that is the the the notion of trade that exists before the 00:25:29.800 --> 00:25:37.500 experience before the data comes in, this notion would be that of an exchange of indispensable or 00:25:37.500 --> 00:25:44.300 useful articles done without much ceremony or regulation under stress of dearth or need, spasmodic 00:25:44.300 --> 00:25:45.650 irregular intervals NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:25:45.650 --> 00:25:54.400 and this done either by direct barter, everyone looking out ?sharply not to be done out of 00:25:54.400 --> 00:26:04.800 his do? this is the wheeling and dealing of self-interested market exchange as explained by Adam Smith. 00:26:04.800 --> 00:26:10.400 As we discovered or re integrated by Milton Friedman. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:26:10.400 --> 00:26:18.200 Malinowski says we have to realize today that the Kula contradicts in almost every point 00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:26.900 this definition of savage trade, it shows us primitive exchange in an entirely different 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:28.650 light. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:26:28.650 --> 00:26:38.500 We can keep this in the back of our minds this kind of radical comparison that Malinowski 00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:45.700 already in his 1920 something text invites us to make the way in which what happens in the trobriand 00:26:45.700 --> 00:26:54.800 islands has something to do with trade more widely understood on Wall Street, in the kinds of 00:26:54.800 --> 00:26:58.750 groups that you also read about in the syllabus NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:26:58.750 --> 00:27:12.050 Bankers, brokers, Wall Street traders and we will have a few more text to help you develop that comparison 00:27:12.050 --> 00:27:23.000 even further, but for now how does the Kula ring challenge conventional expectations of trade and 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:28.750 economics? first of all we are dealing with items that have NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:27:28.750 --> 00:27:40.500 no use value no apparent use value some of the bracelets don't even fit humans they are so thin and 00:27:40.500 --> 00:27:48.700 so narrow that they cannot put them on. The important thing is that however to exchange and they have 00:27:48.700 --> 00:27:58.300 an incredible value but there is no use value to these items, you cannot own them you will not own 00:27:58.300 --> 00:27:59.700 them NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:28:00.200 --> 00:28:09.400 permanently people do not hold onto the goods for a long time they circulate a continuously, so 00:28:09.400 --> 00:28:20.900 there's no permanent ownership. Thirdly the transactions they never finish, 00:28:20.900 --> 00:28:29.800 you enter into the Kula ring and you create Kula partners to trade and these items with 00:28:29.800 --> 00:28:31.000 you in different directions NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:33.200 for life. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:28:33.200 --> 00:28:40.200 The transaction is never finished, it is a lifelong relationship. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:28:40.800 --> 00:28:48.900 This seem to be kind of the opposite of the grocery store relationship, which is handled and 00:28:48.900 --> 00:28:57.500 arises there at the cash register but then disappears and you probably will not think about this 00:28:57.500 --> 00:29:00.650 person that you did a trade with again. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:29:00.650 --> 00:29:07.199 This on the other hand lasts for life. One transaction never finishes anything 00:29:07.199 --> 00:29:20.350 they form a permanent trading relationship, and this is the point that they last 00:29:20.350 --> 00:29:25.900 because it's the history of the relationships and the people behind the items, the relation of 00:29:25.900 --> 00:29:28.000 history that gives them NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:29:28.000 --> 00:29:35.600 value. The Kula objects have biographies themselves sometimes they 00:29:35.600 --> 00:29:42.150 even have names and the value comes from this history and prestige NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:29:42.150 --> 00:29:50.050 and it says the legend the myth of the items themselves. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:29:50.050 --> 00:30:02.100 Looking at pictures like these of 00:30:02.800 --> 00:30:16.500 people in faraway islands going out on elaborate ceremonial voyages trading shells and necklaces 00:30:16.500 --> 00:30:19.950 bracelets in opposite NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:30:19.950 --> 00:30:25.300 clockwise and counterclockwise directions across islands in the pacific NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:30:25.800 --> 00:30:36.700 By looking at this it is tempting to say "oh God how exotic strange how wondrous it is that 00:30:36.700 --> 00:30:45.400 people can do such a thing on such an exotic island" This is a tendency that 00:30:45.400 --> 00:30:53.700 Malinowski takes a clear step away from in this text, and which is very much aligned with the way this 00:30:53.700 --> 00:30:55.600 whole course is set up. The way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:30:55.600 --> 00:31:03.600 we want you to think. Because what is it about the Kula that can tell us 00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:11.800 something about how we organize societies far beyond the Trobriand islands. What are the 00:31:11.800 --> 00:31:17.700 comparisons we can make between the Kula the objects that are that are exchanged in the Kula ring 00:31:17.700 --> 00:31:25.400 and objects that are of certain value and we that we treat in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 67% (MEDIUM) 00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:33.800 Similar ways in our own society. Malinowski makes two comparisons in the text one with the crown 00:31:33.800 --> 00:31:48.200 jewels that do not have any particular use value, so that's one. They are just put on 00:31:48.200 --> 00:31:55.600 display to create kind of a hierarchy as the status and prestige. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:31:55.600 --> 00:32:09.250 The second comparison is closer to the never finished part of the description of the Kula 00:32:09.250 --> 00:32:20.300 the way in which the Kula objects travel and are in the property of certain people for a short 00:32:20.300 --> 00:32:25.550 period of time just like sport trophies that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 71% (MEDIUM) 00:32:25.550 --> 00:32:36.850 you show and they give you pride and kind of a position in a cosmological story about greatness, 00:32:36.850 --> 00:32:45.400 but you do not hold on to them. You learn them and gain them and then you give them on. A Champions 00:32:45.400 --> 00:32:55.500 League football trophy would be something that resembles that type of characteristic, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:32:55.500 --> 00:32:59.650 even those two comparisons NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:32:59.650 --> 00:33:09.600 is there perhaps something deeper here? a social logic a kind of logic to the Kula is actually 00:33:09.600 --> 00:33:18.400 Universal if we look away from the items themselves and these comparison of items is the social logic 00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:22.300 behind the items that is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 64% (MEDIUM) 00:33:22.900 --> 00:33:25.700 universal NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:31.100 is there something about.. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:33:31.100 --> 00:33:40.200 Perhaps the Kula trade is just a particularly illustrative elaboration of a general 00:33:40.200 --> 00:33:47.400 Trend that you find in all societies. This is the question that Marcel Mauss which will talk 00:33:47.400 --> 00:33:51.449 about very shortly ask himself when he reads NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:33:51.449 --> 00:33:58.850 the data of Malinowski is there something in the Kula perhaps that tells us something 00:33:58.850 --> 00:34:06.700 about problems and debates that are faced by humans everywhere in all times, so forget the items 00:34:06.700 --> 00:34:14.350 themselves but the logic and the kinds of debates that these items produce and provoke in society 00:34:14.350 --> 00:34:17.850 maybe that is something universal. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:34:17.850 --> 00:34:27.300 Malinowski was on to this already in his text that yes you seem to think that there is something 00:34:27.300 --> 00:34:38.199 universally human going on in the Kula exchange he says that although like every 00:34:38.199 --> 00:34:39.800 human being NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:34:39.800 --> 00:34:47.649 you can say that the Kula native loves to possess these nice items and therefore desires to 00:34:47.649 --> 00:34:54.600 acquire them and then dreads to see them go however the social code of rules NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:34:54.600 --> 00:35:01.900 with regard to give and take by far overrides his national acquisitive NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:35:01.900 --> 00:35:09.700 tendency, so let's linger on that first for a while. Malinowski says that basically 00:35:09.700 --> 00:35:23.800 humans are deeply cultural animals and we have social codes of rules that govern or 00:35:23.800 --> 00:35:32.550 influence our behavior and this overrides whatever natural tendency we have NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:35:32.550 --> 00:35:39.650 to like to enjoy possessing and dread losing objects NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:35:39.650 --> 00:35:46.200 so this is kind of the birth here of whole discipline of economic anthropology because what are 00:35:46.200 --> 00:35:54.850 these social codes of rules that overrides our naturally twisted tendencies? these are more important 00:35:54.850 --> 00:36:04.900 he says, so let's try and figure out what they are and to do that we need to to work out 00:36:04.900 --> 00:36:06.450 ethnographically NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:36:06.450 --> 00:36:16.000 how Society is organized from the inside out or from the bottom up. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:28.100 Malinowski is saying here that there are different social codes of rules 00:36:28.100 --> 00:36:34.300 linger on that for a second, there's different social codes of rules with regard to give 00:36:34.300 --> 00:36:40.400 and take that by far overrides our natural requested tendencies so there are different modes that we 00:36:40.400 --> 00:36:47.500 operate in and when we're in Kula mode and there are particular kind NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:36:47.500 --> 00:36:57.450 Of rules that apply but that is not the same as to say that the Trobrianders do not 00:36:57.450 --> 00:37:06.850 Barter or do market exchange, this is where the concept of gimwali comes in NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:37:06.850 --> 00:37:14.800 Malinowski claims that every detail in the Kula is fixed by tradition, however Kula is conducted 00:37:14.800 --> 00:37:22.649 side-by-side with seemingly more quote unquote economic problems of bartering market exchange known 00:37:22.649 --> 00:37:24.600 as gimwali NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 68% (MEDIUM) 00:37:24.600 --> 00:37:36.700 Perhaps one of the most fascinating sentences you have in those text is where Malinowski 00:37:36.700 --> 00:37:45.400 quotes informants who complain of others that they conduct their Kula as if it were gimwali 00:37:45.400 --> 00:37:54.150 that they really don't know what game they are playing, and that is when NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:37:54.150 --> 00:37:57.200 for instance let's say NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:37:57.600 --> 00:38:08.900 Let's say you have a friend over for dinner 00:38:08.900 --> 00:38:16.800 you're making a new friend and you have that person over for dinner, he or she comes to your home you 00:38:16.800 --> 00:38:24.900 make whatever coffee or give them a drink or make pizza whatever and as you leave you stand by the 00:38:24.900 --> 00:38:27.950 door and he or she says okay takes up their NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:38:27.950 --> 00:38:34.000 wallet and says how much can I pay you for this? This is the same point that Malinowski's informants make 00:38:34.000 --> 00:38:39.350 When they say that some 00:38:39.350 --> 00:38:46.900 people conduct Kula as if it was gimwali, they don't know the distinctions between 00:38:46.900 --> 00:38:55.200 gifts and commodities, between gift exchange and market exchange. These are concepts that we will 00:38:55.200 --> 00:38:57.800 come back to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:38:57.800 --> 00:39:08.300 in the lectures to come and it is the first piece of trying to entangle what kind of universal 00:39:08.300 --> 00:39:16.200 potential exists in this text by Malinowski. Because that is what I want you to hold on to, there is a 00:39:16.200 --> 00:39:25.000 universal potential in this text about the Kula ring and is this potential to understand the world 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:27.900 outside the Trobriand islands that Marcel NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:39:27.900 --> 00:39:37.899 Mauss picks up on and develops further in his book on the gift. Before we go and explore this 00:39:37.899 --> 00:39:44.600 this potential to understand something generally human in 00:39:44.600 --> 00:39:51.300 Malinowskis if we go and develop and understand that further let's linger for a second on a 00:39:51.300 --> 00:39:57.100 very important critique of Malinowski developed by Anette Weiner.