gift

incest taboo

nature

object of power

territory

nationality

French

occupation / innovator as

anthropologist

political anthropologist

innovator in the field of

economic anthropology

marxism

marxist anthropology

political

political anthropology

researcher

president

structuralist

anthropology

is simultaneously a relationship of solidarity (of sharing what one has or what he is) and a relationship of superiority (of forcing feelings of debt upon the receiver).

The act of giving seems to create simultaneously a two-fold relationship between giver and receiver. A relationship of solidarity because the giver shares what he has, or what he is, with the receiver... and a relationship of superiority because the one who receives the gift and accepts it places himself in the debt of the one who has given it, thereby becoming indebted to the giver and to a certain extent becoming his 'dependant', at least for as long as he has not 'given back' what he was given. [. . .] By its very nature, gift-giving is an ambivalent practice which brings together or is capable of bringing together opposing emotions and forces.' (Godelier 1999: 12)

is a not at all ubiquitous practice, even if rather common. It is undertaken because the sexual drive is fundamentally asocial and must be constrained for society to exist at all.

Where does this leave the taboo on incest' Rather than insisting that it is ubiquitous in face of the facts of history, which show that brother-sister, father-daughter and mother-son relations have in some societies, such as Ancient Egypt or Achaemenid Persia, not only not been prohibited, but even enjoined Godelier suggests that what is actually universal is something simpler. The sexual drive is fundamentally asocial: notoriously no respecter of rules, it even particularly delights in breaking them. Hence for society to review be possible at all, it must be constrained. Any society requires therefore the existence of some sexual prohibitions as such. These, however, can take any number of different forms. If taboos on incest are far the most common of these, that is because they guard the door to the parenting unit that distinguishes human from primate societies: There nowhere exist a society where the individual is authorized to satisfy all his sexual desires (and so also fantasies). And it is always at the threshold of the social units within which men and women cooperate to bring up children, whether or not they have given birth to them, that the most extreme forms of sexual permissiveness have been halted. *(Goody labyrinth 2005 36)

is a reality which humanity transforms to a greater or lesser extent by various ways of acting upon nature and appropriating its resources.

According to Godelier (1986: 28), the natural environment is a 'reality which humanity transforms to a greater or lesser extent by various ways of acting upon nature and appropriating its resources.' In other words, humans are situated in an environment that entails both a natural dimension and a culturally constructed one.

is a gift object such as a necklace which circulates not because of its value but because of its power. Also called primitive money or valuables, the circulation of these objects accounts for a separate economy from the market economy which is collapsing under capitalism.

Then I have a small program for myself as a sort of hobby. I want to work on with what I call 'objects of power,' what was called sometime primitive money, valuables, and so on. If you go back to Mauss, there is what he calls the 'power' of objects, the source of the obligation to give and then return the gift. Because I think there was something wrong with Levi-Strauss' comments on Mauss, and because I've had some experience with the encounter and interaction of capitalist money and so called primitive money. I would like to continue with this subject for the next two or three years. I'm discussing it with a group of people, and well, that's about it. (interview net) . . .Some valuable enters into the society as a commodity, a necklace produced by another tribe one five hundred kilometers away which is produced to be exported, but often as it enters into the society it is no more bought or sold. It circulates as a non-commodity, as an object of gift and power. And so you see that people know very well the difference between a market exchange economy and things coming into their society as objects of gifts, of 'God,' or valuables to be manipulated through kinship, power structures and so on. So that disjunction between the two domains is very important. And so with capitalist society the two domains are collapsing. In capitalist societies, power often takes the form of money. And so the first category fuses with the second one. There is a sort of collusion and collapse of the distinction. But in New Guinea today, natives go to a farm and buy pigs, 'agro-business' pigs... they know they are not the same as the local ones, they are the English brand of the species, weigh much more, they have nothing to do with a local pig. So New Guineans buy twenty of these English pigs with the money they earned from selling their coffee, and introduce them into the network of traditional competitive exchanges like native pigs... they transform industrial products and commodities into pigs to give. So Papua New Guineans know the distinctions, and oscillate between the two... there are modern things going on at the same time as the traditional ones... that is, before a total collapse of tradition itself. It takes a long time, as long as they can play this double game, it takes generations before the traditional logic fades away and disappears.

is a portion of nature and space claimed by a given society.

The term 'territory' is used to designate a portion of nature and space that is claimed by a given society, this society guaranteeing all, or only some, of its members stable rights of access to control and use of all or part of the resources found therein, and which (the society) is capable of exploiting. (1979: 138)

Maurice Godelier

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Maurice Godelier