File puptcrit/puptcrit.0811, message 294


Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:01:03 -0500
To: puptcrit-AT-puptcrit.org
From: malgosia askanas <ma-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] Gift economy


Bill Elston worte:

>D=9Erer, an artist, gave gifts to a Queen. When his generosity went=A0
>unrewarded he felt that a necessary and fundamental social contract=A0
>had been broken. How is that structurally different than what we have=A0
>today?

In fact one might say that a typical family functions, internally, 
along the lines of a gift economy.  Someone cooks, someone cleans 
house, someone willingly agrees to have sex, someone tends to the 
children, someone helps someone else with homework, someone reads 
someone else to sleep, someone does the shopping, etc - all given as 
gifts.  But fueling this gift economy is a substantial body of mutual 
expectations and unwritten contracts.  When a contract gets broken - 
as when a child, after having received the generous gift of 
upbringing and education, decides to become a bum; or when a family 
members suddenly refuses to put in hir usual share of "gifts" - a 
rupture occurs in the gift-giving fabric, and the family members may 
in fact wish the economy had been quite different - one in which 
everybody gets paid for their services, the duties are defined and 
cleanly dischargeable,  and no indefinite (or infinite) debts are 
incurred.

-m

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