WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:00:01.500 --> 00:00:11.200 We're talking as you know about how the perspective in the data that Malinowski 00:00:11.200 --> 00:00:20.500 brought in stands in contrast to the type of market exchange that Adam Smith claimed was natural 00:00:20.500 --> 00:00:29.299 to man and that's why this lecture is called denaturalizing exchange. As we know Smith and 00:00:29.299 --> 00:00:31.400 By a second NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:00:31.400 --> 00:00:39.800 instance Friedman Milton and Rose Friedman claimed that markets exist and function because people 00:00:39.800 --> 00:00:49.200 have a natural tendency to barter and exchange stuff, this is our natural state of affairs and here 00:00:49.200 --> 00:00:55.550 comes Malinowski with this material which makes it seem like there is something not quite right 00:00:55.550 --> 00:01:02.000 about this summary of markets and what NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:09.600 Human economy is all about, theres something that it doesn't capture it doesn't seem so natural 00:01:09.600 --> 00:01:17.900 to people after all when we look at how the Kula functions and how the central institution is 00:01:17.900 --> 00:01:25.500 organized in ways that run counter to all these assumptions that neoclassical 00:01:25.500 --> 00:01:30.800 economics is built on. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:01:30.800 --> 00:01:38.000 Before we go on to take the next step and see how we can build kind of a different theory of 00:01:38.000 --> 00:01:48.950 economic life from this material or expand at least radically expand our model of economic life 00:01:48.950 --> 00:01:57.750 we could first consider a challenge to Malinowski himself I'll be brief here because 00:01:57.750 --> 00:02:00.699 we've already spent quite a bit of time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:02:00.699 --> 00:02:10.300 but bear with me for this critique of Malinowski and his material before we take the next step 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:20.800 and say what can we actually build, what theoretical construction can we see in this ethnography. 00:02:21.300 --> 00:02:30.050 Anette Weiner goes to the Trobriand islands in the 1970s and she NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:02:30.050 --> 00:02:42.400 re-explores the Kula exchange and the economic system basically that Malinowski had 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:53.300 described from his own studies in the early nineteen hundreds and from a feminist 00:02:53.300 --> 00:02:59.550 perspective, so she visibly starts off from something that is hardly NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:06.100 Mentioned or not devoted so much tension by Malinowski namely the fact that the Kula 00:03:06.100 --> 00:03:18.900 exchange the central economic activity in the society is a male activity and so it seems that he 00:03:18.900 --> 00:03:27.100 is saying you know that this must mean that women do not have that much influence and that much power. 00:03:27.100 --> 00:03:30.200 Their power NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:03:30.200 --> 00:03:39.950 comes from their usefulness to men and they do not seem to have so much of a say NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:03:39.950 --> 00:03:52.800 is what Weiner says that Malinowski seems to be saying, and I mean she's quite right he does go and 00:03:52.800 --> 00:04:02.500 talk to men whereas Weiner coming to this island 50 years later as a woman comes in and 00:04:02.500 --> 00:04:09.900 goes straight into questions and interests of power, gender dynamics NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:04:09.900 --> 00:04:16.200 you can read a bit in her text that she hears someone who is a bit fed up with 00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:24.600 another man going to a faraway island listening to what other old men in a village have to say 00:04:24.600 --> 00:04:32.250 about their society and then establishing an ethnographic theory of what's going on a model that 00:04:32.250 --> 00:04:36.900 surprise surprise gives women not very much importance NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:04:38.700 --> 00:04:49.200 You can hear a bit of her annoyance with what Malinowski did and what others in the 00:04:49.200 --> 00:04:54.500 discipline have done to devote only one chapter of an ethnography to women or to produce a book 00:04:54.500 --> 00:05:00.600 about the kinship system of particular society from only male informant sort of point of view is to 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:07.600 reduce the study of society and culture to an impoverished view of human interaction that is quite a 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:09.250 harsh NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:05:09.250 --> 00:05:13.600 slap in terms of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:28.400 academic exchange and so there is this all these practices that Malinowski overlooked that when 00:05:28.400 --> 00:05:39.600 Weiner takes a closer look at them she discovers that there are different kinds of exchanges that 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:44.700 Malinowski didn't see because it was a victim of his own cultural bias NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:05:46.200 --> 00:05:59.800 interestingly women because they had and have reproductive powers says Weiner are able to play a 00:05:59.800 --> 00:06:11.600 role in Trobriand society that men do not, she writes about something she calls Darla 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:16.150 identity which is an identity that men can conceive but through women only NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:06:16.150 --> 00:06:24.549 so basically it says that because men need women to be valuable and to insert their 00:06:24.549 --> 00:06:38.000 reputation to kind of extend their lineage into eternity which is important, women can use 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:46.100 this position and their role to manipulate to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:56.400 present themselves to exert their agency, because there is no regeneration of Trobriand society 00:06:56.400 --> 00:07:05.500 without women and men do not have access to eternity without women's reproductive powers you can 00:07:05.500 --> 00:07:09.700 think of it basically what she's saying as a kind of a NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:07:09.700 --> 00:07:19.350 commentary or some comparison you could draw in our own society that a man who in many 00:07:19.350 --> 00:07:29.600 places in the world a man who remains unmarried at a certain age starts to get looked down upon he 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:40.100 cannot extend his lineage kind of own property in the same way etc. without the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:07:40.100 --> 00:07:47.400 institution of marriage with a woman. Again the point being that the male search for 00:07:47.400 --> 00:07:48.900 immortality NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:07:48.900 --> 00:07:55.600 can only be fully achieved through women's control and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:07:56.300 --> 00:08:07.300 Weiner says that this has been ignored by other theorists who drew on Malinovsko also as well as by 00:08:07.300 --> 00:08:13.000 Malinowski himself it has been ignored by other theories such as Levi-Strauss NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:08:13.000 --> 00:08:24.700 who were tremendously influenced by Malinowski. That being said, however there is as we'll and as we've heard 00:08:24.700 --> 00:08:31.799 already tremendous potential for creating general anthropological theory out of Malinowski's and by 00:08:31.799 --> 00:08:43.049 Weiners text on female power, there is potential to generate NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:08:43.049 --> 00:08:52.300 theories about economic life and Human Relationships far beyond the Trobriand setting in both these 00:08:52.300 --> 00:09:01.300 texts and we'll go deeper into Malinowski's text and read it through the lens of Marcel Mauss to 00:09:01.300 --> 00:09:09.300 try to get a deeper understanding of this question that we started the lecture with namely why 00:09:09.300 --> 00:09:13.700 is it that gifts have such power and what NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 73% (MEDIUM) 00:09:13.700 --> 00:09:22.600 separates them from commodity is what makes this woman sitting outside kiwi next to Blindern, what 00:09:22.600 --> 00:09:31.900 makes her choose to go create a commodity relationship with people passing by rather a gift exchange 00:09:31.900 --> 00:09:37.599 relationship, what are the difference between those two things, these two these two modes of exchange. 00:09:37.599 --> 00:09:42.600 We'll go deeper into that with the help of another NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:09:42.600 --> 00:09:52.300 text namely Marcel Mauss famous essay on the gift in the next recording so keep with it.