Toward an Anthropolog f women dited by rayna r reiter Monthly R New York and London
156 Paula Webster 下moa△ m Artthrapolgy 0um.Ea尺以y心、 munity. I would not encourage women to confuse myth with history or exchange vision for science, for the creative energy that each affords the other should not be lost. Thus, even if Gayle Rubin feminists reject the existence of matriarchy on empirical and/ or theoretical grounds, we should acknowledge the impor- The Traffic in Women tance of the vision of matriarchy and use the debate for furthering the creation of feminist theory and action Notes on the“ Political Economy"” of Sex The literature on women-bo of women's oppression and social subordination. The ques- tion is not a trivial one, since the answers given it determine our visions of the future, and our evaluation of whether or importantly, the analysis of the causes of womens oppression forms the basis for any assessment of just what would have to be changed in order to achieve a society without gender hierarchy. Thus, if innate male aggression and dominance are at the root of female oppression, then the feminist program would logically require either the extermination of the character. If sexism is a by-product of capitalisms relentless appetite for profit, then sexism would wither away in the advent of a successful socialist revolution if the world histor of how much this free persons: Tom Anderson and Arlene gorelick, with whom I co-authored the paper from which this one evolved; Rayna Reiter, Larry Shields Ray Kelly, Peggy While, Norma Diamond, Randy Reiter Studies 340/004, for my initiation into teaching; Sally Brenner, fo heroic ty ping Susan Lowes, for incredible patience; and Enma Gold
158 Gayle Rubin ical defeat of women occurred at thc hands of an armed The Traffic in Women 159 patriarchal revolt, then it is time for Amazon guerrillas to this, see Althusser and Balibar, 1970: 11-69). Freud and Levi start training in the Adirondacks Strauss are in some sense analogous to Ricardo and Smith It lies outside the scope of this They see neither the implications of what they are sayi ained critique of some of the currently popular explanation of the genesis of se hor the implicit critique which their work can generate when eqtality-theories such as the pop lar evolution exemplified by The Imperial Animal, the alleged subjected to a feminist eye. Nevertheless, they provide con ceptual tools with which one can build descriptions of the overthrow of prehistoric matriarchies, or the attempt to e part of social life which is the locus of the oppression of tract all of the phenomena of social subordination from the women, of sexual minorities, and of certain aspects of human first volume of CapitaL. Instead, I want to sketch some ele ersonality within individuals. I call that part of social life ments of an alternate explanation of the problem the"sex/gender system, "for lack of a more elegant term. As a preliminary definition, a"sex/gender system"is the set of lack race. The one explanation is as good as the other. A arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexual- He only becomes a slave in certain rela- tions. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cot- ity into products of human activity, and in which these trans- formed sexual needs are satisfied ton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from The purpose of this essay is to arrive at a more fully devel- lese relationships it is no more capital than gold in itself is oped definition of the sex/gender system, by way of a some- money or sugar is the price of sugar"(Marx, 1971b: 28 ).One what idiosy ncratic and exegetical reading of Levi-Strauss and might paraphrase: What is a domesticated woman? A female Freud. I use the word"exegeTical"deliberately. The diction of the species. The one explanation is as good as the other. a ary defines"exegesis"as a"critical explanation or analysi woman is a woman. She only becomes a domestic, a wife, a especially, interpretation of the Scriptures. At times, my chattel, a playboy bunny, a prostitute, or a human dicta- reading of Levi-Strauss and Freud is freely interpretive, mov- phone in certain relations. Torn from these relationships, sh ing from the explicit content of a text to its presuppositions is no more the helpmate of man than gold in itself is money and implications. My reading of certain psychoanalytic texts te,What then are these relationships by which a female is filTered through a lens provided by Jacques Lacan, whose becomes an oppressed woman? The place to begin to unravel own interpretation of the Freudian scripture has been heavil the system of relationships by which women become the prey of men is in the overlapping works of Claude Levi will return later to a refinement of the definition of a Strauss and Sigmund Freud. The domestication of women. sex/gender system. First, however, I will try to demonstrate under other names, is discussed at length in both of Lh oeuvres. In reading through these works, one begins to have a sense of a systematic social apparatus which takes up female a certain clash of episteme es. In particul as raw materials and fashions domesticated women as prod ucts. Neither Freud nor Levi-Strauss sees his work in this from which worms crawl out all over the epistemological map. Rather light, and certainly neither turns a critical glance processes he describes. Their analyses and descriptions must cestors of the contemporary French intellectual revolution(see F be read, therefore, in something like the way in which Marx ault, 1970). It would be fun, interesting, and, if this were fran read the sical political economists who preceded him(on essential, to start my argument from the center of the structuralist maze and work my way out from t along the lines of a"dialectical
160 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in Women 161 the need for such a concept by discussing the failure of classi and expansion of capital. Whereas other modes of production cal Marxism to fully express or conceptualize sex oppression This failure results from the fact that Marxism, as a theory of might find their purpose in making useful things to satisfy social life is relatively unconcerned witl human needs, or in producing a surplus for a ruling nobility. in Ma of the social world n beings are workers, peasants, or or in producing to insure sufficient sacrifice for the edifica Ism is a capitalists; that they are also men and women is not seen as set of social relations-forms of property, and so forth-in very significant. By contrast, in the maps of social reality which production takes the form of turning money, things drawn by Freud and Levi-Strauss, there is a deep recognition and people into capital. And capital is a quantity of goods or of the place of sexuality in society, and of the profound money which, when exchanged for labor, reproduces and differences between the social experience of men and augments itself by extracting unpaid labor, or surplus value from labor and into itself e result of the capitalist ass is neither Marx roduct(use-value) nor a commodily, that is, a use vaiue whis There is no theory which accounts for the oppression of has exchange value. Its resull, its product, is the creation of sur- women-in its endless variety and monotonous similarity. pius-value for capital, and consequently the actual transforma tion of money or commodily into capital.. (Marx, 1969: 399; cross-culturally and throughout history-with anything like in sion. Therefore, it is not surprising that there have been The exchange between capital and labor which produces sur- numerous attempts to apply marxist analysis to the question plus value, and hence capital, is highly specific. The worker of women. There are many ways of doing this. it has been gets a wage: the capitalist gets the things the worker has made argued that women are a reserve labor force for capitalism during his or her time of employ ment. If the total value of that women's generally lower wages provide extra surplus the things the worker has made exceeds the value of his or her wage the aim of capitalism has been achieved The capi talist consumerism in their roles as administrators of family talist gets back the cost of the wage, plus an increment consumption, and so forth surplus value. This can occur because the wage is determined However, a number of articles have tried to do somethi not by the value of what the laborer makes, but by the value ch more ambitious-to locate the oppression of women in of what it takes to keep him or her going-to reproduce h e heart of the capitalist dynamie by pointing to the rela- or her from day to day, and to reproduce the entire work tionship between housework and the reproduction of labor force from one generation to the next. Thus, surplus value is (see Benston, 1969; Dalla Costa, 1972; Larguia and the difference between what the laboring class produces as a Dumoulin,1972; Gerstein, 1973: Vogel, 1973; Secombe hole, and the amount of that total which is recycled into 1974: Gardiner, 1974: Rowntree, M.& J, 1970). To do this is to place women squarely in the definition of capita The capital given in exchange for labour power is converted into the process in which capital is produced by the extractie necessaries, by the consumption of which the muscles, nerves, urplus value from labor by capital es, and brains of existing labourers are reproduced, and new Bricfly, Marx argued that capitalism is distinguished from the individual consumption of the I other modes of production by its unique aim: the creation bourer, whether it proceed within the w op or outside it
The Traffic in Women 163 whether it be part of the process of production or not, forms therefore a faclor of the production and reproduction of capital by the capitalist. But to explain women's usefulness to capi machinery does. ..(Marx, 1972: 572) alism is one tiing. To argue that this usefulness explains the genesis of the oppression of women is quit Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in precisely at this point that the analysis of capitalism ceases to is reproduction of hinself or his maintenance. For his nain explain very much about women and the oppression of nance he requires a given quantity of the means of sub- nce,.. Labour-power sets itsclf in action only by working Women are oppressed in societies which can by no stretch etc, is wasted, and these require to be restored..(Ibid.: 17 of the imagination be described as capitalist. In the Amazon valley and the New Guinea highlands, women are frequently a, The amount of the difference between the reproduction of kept in their place by gang rape when the ordinary mecha. or power and its products depends, therefore, on the d isms of masculine intimidation prove insufficient. "We tame Termination of what it takes to reproion on the basis of the ur women with the banana, "said one Mundurucu man Marx tends to make that determin (Murphy, 1959: 195). The ethnographic record quantity of commodities-food, clothing, housing, fuel with practices whose effect is to keep women "in their place which would be necessary to maintain the health, life, and nen's cults, secret initiations, arcane male knowledge, etc strength of a worker. But these commodities must be con- nd pre-capitalist, feudal Europe was hardly a society in sumed before they can be sustenance, and they are not imme- which there was no sexism. Capitalism has taken over, and diately in consumable form when they are purchased by Lhe wired, notions of male and female which predate it by age. Additional labor must be performed upon these things centuries. No analysis of the reproduction of labor power efore they can be turned into people. Food imust be cooked under capitalism can explain foot-binding, chastity belts, or clothes cleaned, beds made, wood chopped, etc. Housework any of the incredible array of Byzantine, fetishized indig is therefore a key element in the process of the reproduction ties, let alone the more ordinary ones, which ha of the laborer from whom surplus value is taken. Since it is inflicted upon women in various times and places. TI usually women who do housework, it has been observed that ysis of the reproduction of labor power does no it is through the reproduction of labor power that women are why it is usually women who do domestic work in the home, rticulated into the surplus value nexus which is the sine qua non of capitalism. It can be further argued that since no In this light it is interesting to return to Marxs discussion wage is paid for housework, the labor of women in the home of the reproduction of labor. What is neccssary to reproduce contributes to the ultimate quantity of surplus value realized he worker is determined in part by the biological needs of the human organism, in part by the physical conditions of work has cen the place in which it lives, and in part by cultural tradition tion of whether or not housework is "predutctiv is not ordinarily "productive"in Marx observed that beer is necessary for the reproduction of se of the term(I. Gough, 1972; Marx, 1969: 387-413) the English working class, and wine necessary for the French the number and extent of his (the worker'sI may not be productive, in the sense of directly producing surplus value: and capital, and yet be a crucial element in the production of modes of satisfying them, are themselues surplus value and capit the product of historical development, and depend therefore to a great extent on the degree of civilization of a country,more
164 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in Women 165 duction of immediate life. This again, is of a twofold character: le habits and degree of comfort in which labourers has been formed. In contradistinction n the one hand, the production of the means of existence, of Ise of other commodities, there enters into the food, clothing, and shelter and the tools necessary for that pro- the value of labour- power a historical and moral element rction; on the other side, the production of hunman beings (hei (Marx, 1972: 171, my italics) elves, the propagation of the species. The social organization under which the people of a particular historical epoch and a It is precisely this "historical and moral element" which live is determined by both kinds of pro determines that a wife"is among the necessities of a duction: by the stage of development of labor on the one hand orker that women rather than men do housework, and that and of the family on the other..(Engels, 1972: 71-72; my Ladies) apitalism is heir to a long tradition in which women do not inherit, in which women do not lead, and in which women do This passage indicates an important recognition-that a ot talk to god. It is this "historical and moral element' human group must do more than apply its activity to reshap- which presented capitalism with a cultural heritage of forn ing the natural world in order to clothe, feed, and warm of masculinity and femininity. It is within this"historical ar itself. We usually call the system by which elements of the moral element"'that the entire domain of sex, sexuality, and natural world are transformed into objects of human con sex oppression is subsumed. And the briefness of Marx's com umption the"economy. " But the needs which are satisfied ment only serves to emphasize the vast area of social life by economic activity even in the richest, Marxian sense, de which it covers and leaves unexamined. Only by subjecting not exhaust fundamental human requirements. A human this "historical and moral element"'to analysis can the struc group must also reproduce itself from generation to genera ture of sex oppression be delineated tion. The needs of sexuality- and procreation must be satisfied much as the need to eat, and one of the most obvious deductions which can be made from the data of anthro. pology is that these needs are hardly ever satisfied in any In The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the natural"form, any more than are the needs for food State, Engels sees sex oppression as part of capitalism's heri Hunger is hunger, but what counts as food is culturally deter tage from prior social forms. Moreover, Engels integrates sex mined and obtained. Every society has some form of orgar and sexuality into his theory of society. Origin is a frustrating zed economic activity. Sex is sex, but what counts as sex is ook. Like the nineteenth-century tomes on the history qually culturally determined and obtained. Every society marriage and the family which it echoes, the state of the also has a sex/gender system -a set of arrangements by which evidence in Origin renders it quaint to a reader familiar with the biological raw material of human sex and procreation more recent developments in anthropology. Nevertheless, it is shaped by human, social intervention and satisfied in a con- a book whose considerable insight should not be over ventional manner no matter how bizarre some of the conven- shadowed by its limitations. The idea that the relations of tions may be s n and should be distinguished from the "rela- tions of production"is not the least of Engels'intuitions According to the materialistic conception, the determining fac- demonstrates the point that sexuality is expressed through tor in history is, in the final instance, the production and repro vention of culture (see Ford and Beach, 1972). Some exam chosen from among the exotica in which anthropologist
166 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in WOmen 167 The realm of human sex, gender, and procreation has been subjected to, and changed by, relentless social activity for Other names have been proposed for the sex/gender system. The most common alternatives are"mode of repro- and fantasy, concepts of childhood-is itself a social product duction and "patriarchy. 'It may be foolish to quibble We need to understand the relations of its production, and about terms, but both of these can lead to confusion. All forget, for awhile, about food, clothing, automobiles, and three proposals have been made in order to introduce a dis. transistor radios. In most Marxist tradition, and even in tinction between"economic"systems and"sexual"syster Engels' book, the concept of the"second aspect of material and to indicate that sexual systems have a certain autonomy fe"has tended to fade into the background, or to be incor and cannot always be explained in terms of economic forces porated into the usual notions of"material life. Engels'sug Mode of reproduction, " for instance, has been proposed in gestion has never been followed up and subjected to the re- opposition to the more familiar"mode of production. "But finement which it needs. But he does indicate the existence is terminology links the"economy to production, and the and importance of the domain of social life which I want to xual system to"reproduction. It reduces the richness of call the sex/gender system either system, since "productions"and"reproductions"take lace in both. Every mode of production involves reproduc- Among the Banaro, marriage involves several socially sanctioned sexual Lion-of tools, labor, and social relations. We cannot relegate all of the mulLi-faceted aspects of social reproduction to the sex system. Replacement of machinery is a examp reproduction in the economy. On the other hand, we cannot mans partners include his wife, the wife of his sib- friend and the wif limit the sex system to"reproduction""in either the social or f his sib-friendl's son(Thurnwald, 1916). Multiple intercourse is a mor biological sense of the term. A sex/gender system is not ronounced custom ng the Marind Anim. At the tie of e bride has intercourse with all of the members of the groom's clat simply the reproductive moment of a mode of production. The formation of gender identity he groom coming last. Every major festival is accompanied by a prac- y is an example of produc tice known as otiubom bari, in which semen is collected for ritual p tion in the realm of the sexual system. And a sex/gender system involves more than the relations of procreation, emen is collected in coconut-shell buek reproduction in the biological sense tercourse during initiation(Van Baal G The term "patriarchy" was introduced to distinguish the s a year(Kelly, 1974 forces maintaining sexism from other social forces, such as copulation and think that it will kill them if they engage in it without capitalism. But the use of "patriarchy"obscures other dis- (Glasse, 1971: Meggitt, 1970). Usually, such ideas tinctions. Its use is analagous to using capitalism to refer to of feminine pollu tion express the sul on of wonen. But modes of production, whereas the usefulness of the term contain internal contradict whose logical extensions capitalism"lies precisely in that it distinguishes between the o inversions of the pro ons on which a system is base to be feared b 's fcar of sex is so extreme that rape appears different systems by which societies are provisioned and or ganized. Any society will have some system of"political ho flee fro economy. " Such a system may be egalitarian or socialist. It grooms who are reluctant Goodale and Chowning, 1971).Other may be class stratified, in which case the oppressed class may teresting su:xual variations can be found in Almon(1963)and K Gough( 1959). consist of serfs, peasants, or slaves. The oppressed class may consist of wage laborers, in which case the system is properly
168 Gayle rubin The Traffic in Women 169 labeled"capitalist. " The power of the term lies in its implica when he located the subordination of women in a develop tion that, in fact, there are alternatives to capitalis ment within the mode of production. To do this, we can Similarly, any society will have some systematic ways to imitate Engels in his method rather than in his results. Engels deal with sex, gender, and babies. Such a system may be approached the task of analyzing the"second aspect of ma ial life"by way of an examination of a theory of kinship stratified, as seems to be the case for most or all of the syslems. Kinship systems are and do many things. But they known examples. But it is important-even in the face of a depressing history-to maintain a distinction between the p of, and reproduce, concrete forms of socially organized sexuality. Kinship systems are observable and em- ty to the empirically oppressive ways in which sexual worlds have pirical forms of sex/gender systems. been organized. Patriarchy subsumes both meanings same term. Sex/gender system, on the other hand, is a Kinship term which refers to the domain and indicates that (On the part played by sexuality sion is not inevitable in that domain, but is the product of in the transition from ape to man") the specific social relations which organize it. To an anthropologist, a kinship system is not a list of Finally, there are gender-stratified systems which are not biological relatives. It is a syslem of categories and statuses equately described as patriarchal. Many New Guinea soci which often contradict actual genetic relationships. There are eties(Enga, Maring, Bena Bena, Huli, Melpa, Kuma, Gahuku dozens of examples in which socially defined kinship statuses Gaa, Fore, Marind Anim, ad nauseum; see Berndt, 1962 take precedence over biology. The Nuer custom of"woman Langness, 1967: Rappaport, 1975: Read, 1952; Meggitt, marriage"is a case in point. The Nuer define the status of 1970; Glasse, 1971; Strathern, 1972; Reay, 1959; Van Baal, fatherhood as belonging to the person in whose name cattle 1966; Lindenbaum, 1973)are viciously oppressive to womer bridewealth is given for the mother. Thus, a woman can b But the power of males in these groups is not founded on married to another woman and be husband to the wife and their roles as fathers or patriarchs, but on their collective father of her children, despite the fact that she is not the adult maleness, embodied in secret cults, men's houses, war inseminator(Evans-Pritchard, 1951: 107-09) fare, exchange networks, ritual knowledge, and various initia- In pre state societies, kinship is the idiom of social inter- tion procedures. Patriarchy is a specific form of male domi- ction, organizing economic, political, and ceremonial, as nance, and the use of the term ought to be confined to the as sexual, activity. One's duties, responsibilities, and Old Testament-type pastoral nomads from whom the term comes, or groups like them. Abraham was a Patriarch-one Engels thought that men acquired wealth in the form of herds and old man whose absolute power over wives, children, herds nd dependents was an aspect of the institution of fath right" in favor of patriline right was the world historical defeat of the fer hood, as defined in the social group in which he lived Whichever term we use, what is important is to develop servitude: she became the slave of his lust and a mere instrument f concepts to adequately describe the social organization of production of children"(Engels, 1972: 120-21: italics in original). As exuality and the reproduction of the conventions of sex and der. We nced to pursue the project Engels abandoned ocial authority in societies practicing matrilineal inheritance Schneider and Gough, 1962)
170 Gayle Rubin The Traffic in Women 171 rivileges vis-a-vis others are defined in terms of mutual ki biological proc n. It is permeated with an awareness of ship or lack thereof. The exchange of goods and services ality in human society. It is a descrip- production and distribution, hostility and solidarity, ritual tion of society which does not assume an abstract, genderless and ceremony, all take place within the organizational struc- human subject, On the contrary, the human subject in Levi ture of kinship. The ubiquity and adaptive effectiveness of Strauss's work is always either male or female, and the diver. kinship has led many anthropologists to consider its inven- nt social destinies of the two sexes can therefore be traced Lion, along with the invention of language, to have been the developments which decisively marked the discontinuity be Since Levi- Strauss sees the essence of kinship systems to lie in an exchange of women between men, he constructs an im- een semi-human hominids and human beings (Sahlins 1960: Livingstone, 1969; Levi-Strauss, 1969 plicit theory of sex oppression. Aptly, the book is dedicated While the idea of the importance of kinship enjoys the to the memory of Lewis Henry Morgan. status of a first principle in anthropology the internal work gs of kinship systems have long been a focus for intense vile and precious merchandise ontroversy Kinship systems vary wildly from one culture to -Monique Wittig e next. They contain all sorts of bewildering rules which The Elementary Structures of Kinship is a grand statement govern whom one may or may not marry. Their internal complexity is dazzling. Kinship systems have for decades pro on the origin and nature of human society It is a treatise on the kinship systems of approximately one-third of the ethno- voked the anthropological imagination into trying to explain raphic globe. Most fundamentally, it is an attempt to discern incest taboos, cross-cousin marriage, terms of descent, rela the structural principles of kinship. Levi-Strauss argues that tionships of avoidance or forced intimacy, clans and sections the application of these principles (summarized in the last taboos on names-the diverse array of items found in deserip chapter of Elementary Structures ) to kinship data reveals an of actual kinship systems. In the nineteenth intelligible logic to the taboos and marriage rules which have several thinkers attempted to write comprehensive accounts perplexed and mystified Western anthropologists. He con- of the nature and history of human sexual systems(see Fee structs a chess game of such complexity that it cannot be 1973). One of these was Ancient Society, by Lewis Her capitulated here. But two of his chess pieces are particu Morgan. It was this book which inspired Engels to write The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Engels' larly relevant to women-the "gift"'and the incest taboc whose dual articulation adds up wu his concept of the heory is based upon Morgan's account of kinship and mar ange of women. The Elementary Structures is in part a radical gloss on another famous theory of primitive social organization oppression from the study of kinship, we have the advantage Mauss' Essay on the Gift( See also Sahlins, 1972: Chap. 4).It of the maturation of ethnology since the nineteenth century was Mauss who first theorized as to the significance of one of We also have the advantage of a peculiar and particularly the most striking features of primitive societies: the extent to appropriate book, Levi-Strauss' The Elementary Structures which giving, receiving, and recipro catia of Kinship. This is the boldest twentieth-century version of cial intercourse. In such societies, all sorts of things circulate the nineteenth-century project to understand human mar in exchange-food, spells, rituals, words, names, ornaments riage. It is a book in which kinship is explicitly conceived of tools, and powers as an imposition of cultural organization upon the facts of
72 Gayle Rub The Traffic in Women 173 Levi-Strauss adds to the theory of primitive reciprocity the ams that you have piled tip you nay not eat. other pe idea that marriages are a most basic form of gift exchange, in mothers, other peoplc's sisters, other peoplc's pigs, other pe" which it is women who are the most precious of gifts. I yams that they have piled up, you may eat.(Arapesh, cited in argues that the incest taboo should best be understood as a Levi-Strauss, 1969: 27) mechanism to insure that such exchanges take place betweer In a typical gift transaction, neither party gains anything. In families and between groups. Since the existence of incest the Trobriand Islands, each household maintains a garden of taboos is universal, but the content of their prohibitions vari ams and each household cats yams. but the yams a house- able, they cannot be explained as having the aim of prevent hold grows and the yams it eats are not the same. At harvest ing the occurrence of genetically close matings. Rather, the time, a man sends the yams he has cultivated to the house- incest taboo imposes the social aim of exogamy hold of his sister; the household in which he lives is pro Ion the biological events of sex and procreation. The incest visioned by his wife's brother(Malinowski, 1929). Since such taboo divides the universe of sexual choice into categories of a procedure appears to be a useless one from the point of permitted and prohibited sexual partners. Specifically, by iew of accumulation or trade, its logic has been sought else- forbidding unions within a group it enjoins marital exchange where. Mauss proposed that the significance of gift giving is that it expresses, affirms, or creates a social link between the partners of an exchange. Gift giving confers upon its partici- pels them to be given in ants a special relationship of trust, solidarity, and mutual time it establishes a rig m aughter or sister of this aid. One can solicit a friendly relationship in the offer of a The woman whom one does not take is, for that very gift; acceptance implies a willingness to return a gift and a easol, offered up. (Levi-Strauss, 1969: 51) nfirmation of the relationship. Gift exchange may also be the idiom of competition and rivalry. There are many ex- The prohibition of incest is less a rule prohibiting marriage with amples in which erson humiliates another by giving the mother, sister, or daughter, than a rule obliging the mother more than can be reciprocated. Some political systems, such sister, or daughter to be given to others. It is the supreme rule of as the Big Man systems of highland New Guinea, are based on the gift ...(Ibid. 481) exchange which is unequal on the material plane. An aspiring The result of a gift of women is more profound than the Big Man wants to give away more goods than can be recipro- esult of other gift transactions, because the relationship thus cated. He gets his return in political prestige stablished is not just one of reciprocity, but one of kinship Although both Mauss and Levi-strauss emphasize the soli- The exchange partners have become affines, and their de dary aspects of gift exchange, the other purposes served by scendents will be related by blood: Two people may meet in gift giving only strengthen the point that it is an ubiquitous iendship and exchange gifts and yet quarrel and fight in means of social commerce. Mauss proposed that gifts were later times, but intermarriage connects them in a permanent the threads of social discourse, the means by which such manner"(Best, cited in Levi-Strauss, 1969: 481). As is the societies ld together in the absence of specialized case with other gift giving, marriages are not always so simply governmental institutions. The gift is the primitive way of activities to make peace. Marriages may be highly competi achieving the peace that in civil society is secured by the Live, and there are plenty of affines who fight each other. slate,,. Composing society, the gift was the liberation of Nevertheless, in a general sense the argument is that the culture: "(Sahlins, 1972: 169, 175) taboo on incest results in a wide network of relations, a set of
