Weiner's Gift Problem

Weiner mentions the gift exchange phenomenon of "primitive' societies and uses a hierarchical continuum to explain the moral and symbolic density of the various objects that are gifted. She then introduces the idea of "theft, physical decay and opportunistic exchange strategies" as being problematic for the system of moral gift exchange. That led me to wonder how the people in these societies were even capable of determining the moral weight of what they were giving one another. Was there no notion that people might be lying about who had owned the gift. Weiner uses the example that certain country's crown jewels are more valuable than others because of their histories, but the history of, say, the British Crown Jewels only makes them very famous and important because the Royal family were important and many people know the history. How could the history of gift objects be maintained and known by all when they were all trading these objects with one another? That question also makes me wonder if this type of gift-based economy was doomed to end whenever a society started to expand, because the moral exchanges would have no meaning when more vast distances were involved.