Week 3 Prompt

In the classic book The Gift, Marcel Mauss writes: "In these “total” social phenomena, as we propose to call them, are expressed all at once and at a stroke all sorts of institutions: religious, judicial, and ethical (morale)" (Introduction). Using specific examples from chapters 1 or 2 (if posting for Tue) or 4 (if posting for Thu), discuss how a practice of gift exchange comes to constitute a religion, judicial or ethical social system/phenomenon. 

Gift exchange among the Polynesians.

In describing the exchange and barter among the Polynesians, Mauss reveals a complex exchange regime where not only economically useful goods are exchanged but pleasantries, services and humans during marriages, childbirth, funeral rites and many other occasions. It was also stated that although gifts are theoretically seen as voluntary, it is ultimately compulsory and contractual. There is the obligation to give and the obligation to receive and if any or all of these are neglected, it becomes the grounds for a declaration of war. These forms of obligations justify a line of the 41st stanza of the Havamal, that “Those who mutually exchange presents are friends for the longest time”. Mauss also made mention of the fact that gift exchanges are everywhere and although exchanges can be influenced by factors like rivalry and competition, these factors were missing in Polynesia.

Week 2 Prompt: An Anthropological View of Money

This week's readings provides an introduction to how anthropologists think about money. Thinking in particular about chapter 2 and 3 of "How Would You Like To Pay," what are some of the ways in which anthropologists approach money differently than other disciplines? In other words, how does Maurer help us think anthropologically about money?

Welcome to Economic Anthro 2016!

Hi everyone in ANTH 3500 & ANTH 5500. Welcome to our class blog! You will soon receive an invitation to join as author and commentator. Use this space to post your required blog posts on the readings as well as for sharing news items that you think might be relevant to this course. I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts and in exploring the world of money, value, and economy together!

The Big Short Review

A couple of weeks ago when a couple members of the class went to watch The Big Short, I kept thinking of what I wanted to write on. I'm still not 100% positive on what I'll be writing on, but I know that I've been wanting to write a review of the movie for a long time now. The movie was actually a lot better than I originally thought it would be. It had a lot of humor and a lot of drama combined into one, which makes the movie twenty million times better.

From time to time it would be very difficult to understand exactly what the movie was talking about because it would use terms that I am not familiar with. But the directors tried to break it down by having random celebrities describe what exactly the terms mean. I mean...they tried to but it didn't really work. How is it that even with Selena Gomez and Margot Robbie (the woman in the bubble bath) trying to explain it that it was still difficult to understand?

Overall, what I got from the movie was that the financial crisis happened because certain individuals, mostly with banks, got greedy and thought it would be nice to screw everyone else over. The people that sold the bad loans to people were just as guilty as the people that decided to bet against the housing bubble. All members involved should be just as guilty as everyone else because of the greed involved. The individuals that sold the mortgage loans knew that the people they sold to would not be able to pay them back...especially as they were selling them to people that couldn't afford one house, let alone multiple. They didn't care about the people they were selling to, they just cared about themselves. The individuals betting against the bubble saw the weakness in the bubble and decided to exploit this weakness for themselves, no matter who they screwed over.

In the end, the economy collapsed because of all of the individuals involved in this scheme. Even though the government knew what happened and who played what role in the collapse, these individuals were not arrested and prosecuted. Instead, the government decided to bail the banks out because of the close ties with the politicians involved. Had the government not decided to bail the banks out and had they forced these individuals to pay back all of the money themselves, then we would not have had as bad of a crisis as we originally did.

Shame on the US Government and the big banks that were involved in this crisis!!!!!

The Mushroom at the End of the World

In chapter nine of her ethnography Anna Tsing describes the transformation of Matsutake mushrooms from gifts to commodities back to gifts. This process begins in Oregon with the mushroom pickers. Because the mushrooms are not a producible commodity they are classified as a gift. It is not until the Matsutake mushrooms go through being picked, bought and ultimately sorted and processed by hourly laborers they begin to become commodities. As Tsing says on page 127 "It is only because they have no knowledge or interest in how the mushrooms got there that they are able to purify them as inventory". The connection to the mushroom as a species and independent actor is severed. This process is similar in Japanese and Chinese gathering as well. The relationship between mushroom and picker and the picker and the community plays a vital role in mushroom value in small villages. It is only when processed in the larger towns that mushrooms become a commodity. After being processed and categorized the mushrooms are then shipped to the market (either from Oregon to Japan or the small villages to large cities) where they once again become a gift.  This transformation back into gifts first takes place with the buyer. The author discusses how buyers often describe themselves as matchmakers between the type of mushroom and the customer. However, the Matsutake mushrooms are not for individual consumption (this is actually seen as a taboo). Instead, they are a form of social currency exchange between people with varying relationship types. The mushrooms are exchanged as gifts to people the customer would like to honor. As Tsing claims "Matsutake is then a capitalist commodity that begins and ends its life as a gift. It spends only a few hours as a fully alienated commodity" (Tsing, 128).
     I still do not quite understand how the Tsing can argue that the mushrooms are gifts from the earth. In picking the mushrooms the harvester is transforming the mushroom through the addition of their labor. This does not make the mushroom into a commodity but it certainly is not a gift if you must labor for it. There is something between social relations being labor and labor being labor. The earth is not an cognitive actor therefore it cannot give a gift. The mushrooms are not choosing who to give themselves to. This part of the argument loses me. While being aware of the "earth" is necessary you cannot give a mushroom as a species the same consideration as human beings. They have no conception of social relationships. Is this really what she is saying in Part 2 and Four?

The Relationship Between Humans and Matsutake

The Relationship between Humans and Matsutake

Steven Rhue

Ch 18

They dynamic relation between matsutake mushrooms and humans is a very unique one. Although the mushrooms grow naturally, and appear in random and rather unpredictable manors, they are now very dependent on the unnatural “disturbance” by humans, due to the lost relationship between farmers and forest. Due to the intense industrial and urbanization of Japan, the forest which had been traditionally utilized and “disturbed” by the Japanese people, fell into a state of natural neglect. Without the consistent and balanced interaction, the forests became overgrown with growth and decimated by logging and development. This led not only to the loss of habitat for the matsutake, but a loss of the “old days” as one interview would put it. In a sense, the matsutake is a symbol of that relationship, on where there is a balance of human interference and nature, as well as a strong communal sense. The efforts to revitalize the forest are not only to bring back the matsutake, which is hard to predict if the efforts will succeed, but to re-establish a lost relationship among the community members and their forest. The sales and right to harvest the mushrooms also greatly fund the efforts to continue such projects, allowing the relation to be furthered and spread to the consecutive generation. Few other commodities share such a symbolism and relationship with humans. Often goods which become heavily valued develop a much darker relationship with those that harvest them. Yet the matsutake mushroom acts as an iconic symbol of balance and togetherness, maintaining their economic value as well as holding an equally as strong sentimental value for those that harvest them.