Introduction to Social Anthropology B

Introduction to Social Anthropology B Lecture 5

Why should people work hard and produce more than they consume? • Basic concepts of economic anthropology • Use example of Potlatch to think about it

The idea of surplus • that which is produced over and above that which the individual consumes • or that which is produced over and above that which is needed for subsistence Marxist critique of capitalist society - • surplus value is unrewarded labour and source of exploitation in capitalist society • anthropologists have applied the ideas to understanding inequalities in pre-capitalist societies

Three key questions of political economy • How is surplus produced? • How are those surpluses distributed through society? • How are those distributions justified?

In hunting and gathering societies • Only temporary surpluses were produced • These were distributed according to the principle of generalised reciprocity • The ideology of such societies is value generosity, sanction hoarding and to have no concept of private property.

In tribal societies of Highland New Guinea: • Women in households worked to raise sweet potatoes and pigs • Pork redistributed by ‘big men’ through feasts • Ideology of gender, kinship and achieved status.

Surpluses are circulated through society by: • Generalised reciprocity • Specific reciprocity • Redistribution • Accumulation

Tribal societies • Historically the shift from reciprocity to redistribution is seen as crucial to the development of chiefdoms and political systems intermediate between bands and the state. • Tribal societies are characteristically ones based on horticulture or pastoralism and organised around extended kinship groups

North West Coast Indian Societies: Kwakiutl, Tsimshian, Haida and Tlingit Live from salmon and sea Rich range of material goods including symbolic goods. Potlatch

Rank societies – every one had a place in an order of precedence – some lineages were more noble than others. Noted for their elaborate feasts giving away or destroying ever larger amounts of goods. sheldonmuseum.org/tlingitdance.htm

Shakes Island and the Chief Shakes Tribal House in Wrangell Harbor, Wrangell, Alaska.

Ranked lingeages enable every to know who is above and who below them in the system • http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/descent/unilineal/segments.html

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • Traditional NW Coast Indian potlatches were held when new high ranking individuals assumed the office of chief. • They later became a means by which persons of high status might compete for even higher status through the grandiose display and even destruction of wealth. • They were outlawed by the Canadian government but conducted clandestinely, ceremonies continue legally now among people such as the Kwakiutl.

Among the Kwakiutl it is the most important public ceremony for the announcement of significant events and the claiming of hierarchical names, hereditary rights and privileges. Such announcements or claims are always accompanied by the giving of gifts from a host to all guests. The guests are invited to witness the enactment of the claims and will be expected to subsequently validate a hosts claims. Each guest receives gifts of varying worth according to his status. http://ybc40.com/blogimages/potlatch.jpg Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97)

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • The host with the support of his family, numina (the next largest tribal subdivision) or tribe invites other equivalent groups. The size of the gathering reveals the affluence and prestige of the host. • Gifts are given to guests in the order of their tribal importance and the gift is of a value commensurate with the persons rank. High ranking chiefs receive more than lesser men. • The value and quantity of gifts reflects on the glory of the donor. The gifts he gives away – or in some cases the property he publicly destroys are marks of his wealth, rank, generosity and self-esteem. Over a period of time they also measure the power and prestige that he will be able to maintain over others of high status. For at the later potlatch each high ranking guest will try to return as much or preferably more than he received. • To keep track of the gifts distributed and the precise hierarchy of guests, each donor has the assistance of a recorder who maintains the correct social form and avoidance of offence.

Potlatch gifts vary widely from money to property. They include boats, blankets, flour, kettles, fish oil and in former times slaves. Blankets became a standard for measuring wealth More recently gifts have include sowing machines, furniture even pool tales. Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/history/blanket/history/

Probably the most valuable potlatch material has little intrinsic worth but enormous symbolic value. They are coppers – large piece of eaten sheet copper shaped like shield with a ridge running down the centre of the lower half. They are painted with black lead and a design is incised through the paint. Each copper has a name and its potlatch history determines its value. One copper called “all other coppers are ashamed to look at it” had been paid for with 7500 blankets another known as “making the house empty of wealth” was worth 5000 blankets. Coppers http://www.tlingit-haida.nl/Potlatch.htm

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • Rivalries also develop when two men compete for the same name, song, or other privilege. Each contestant recites his closest genealogical connection with the claim and tries to out do his rival in the amount of property he can give away. • The more you give the more you create obligations to return the gifts and to recognise status from others. • The guests / witnesses to these dramatic acts of the potlatch act as judges to the claims, ultimately they decide the victor. A powerful and prestigious man can sway public opinion by recognising the claim of one contestant over another at a subsequent potlatch. Indeed this is a basic principle of the potlatch, a successful potlatch in itself cannot legitimise a claim. It is the behaviour of other hosts at later potlatches that validate a claim once and for all.

The Potlatch became subject to an enormous inflation leading to destruction rather than redistribution of wealth. Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97)

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • Blankets were burnt rather than given away. • In the heat of rivalries contestants sometimes break off a piece of a copper, thereby destroying its value and give the piece to their rival. The rival might then bring out his own copper of at least equal value, break it, and give both pieces back to the opponent. • Great merit come to the man who threw his copper into the sea “drowning it” thus showing his utter contempt for property and implying that his important was such that what he destroyed was of little concern to him. In time this ostentatious destruction of property included canoes, house-planks, blankets, and even slaves in former days.

The Northwest Coast chiefdoms had originated the potlatch as one way to redistribute surplus. But the Whites, in their scramble to obtain sea-otter and fur seal pelts, pumped vast amount of fresh wealth into the system. The potlatch simply could not handle the new flood of mass produced fabrics, guns, metal kitchen utensils, cheap jewellery, steel tools, and other products of industrialised Europe and USA. Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) http://www.tlingit-haida.nl/images/cole87.jpg

So one cause for the explosion of the potlatch was the deluge of white wealth that the NW coast surplus economy did not need. A second factor was that diseases introduced by the whites trading ships and the deadly warfare due to the whites’ guns caused NW coast populations to plummet. Fewer Indians were available to share the fantastic abundance. http://www.ccthita.org/images/memorial.jpg

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • Further more, the numerous deaths left open more noble titles than there were persons of high rank to bear them. The humble man who had been among the last to receive his small present at the previous year’s potlatch suddenly found himself, though the death of those ahead of him, a contender for the role of heir presumptive to the chief. He would not be the sole contender, however, probably half a dozen other humble men had also risen for the same reason.

Sources: Farb (1969:133-152), Harris (1975:81-96) and Codere (1950: 62-97) • A bitter competition developed to give potlatches of unprecedented lavishness. The sole rationale for these potlatches was to allow one man to claim prestige over another so he could fill a vacant high rank. No longer did the potlatch serve its traditional functions of redistribution of wealth, validating rank, and making valued alliances. • The wealth of these new rich seemed limitless, more than they could ever consume at a potlatch. So they instead destroyed vast amounts of wealth before the horrified eyes of the guests, as well as the other contenders to dramatise the extent of their holdings. Fortunes were tossed into potlatch fires; canoes were destroyed; captives were killed. The competing claimants had no alternative but to destroy even more property at their potlatches.

What lessons to be learnt? • The impetus to production are social relationships and institutions • Redistribution enables the some in society to gain social prestige. • Institutionalised competition creates demands beyond those required for subsistence • Generalised reciprocity, specific reciprocity, redistribution, accumulation, are terms which give us a language with which to compare societies. • Wealth has symbolic as well as material dimension. It symbolises social relationships.

Introduction to Social Anthropology B