ANTA02H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Matrilocal Residence, Matrifocal Family, Social Fact
Document Summary
Lec 06: february 9, 2016 gifts & kinships. Structuralist: social and cultural systems have elements that are functionally related. Society is like an organism; when one part changes, the rest adapts too. There is no such thing as a free gif. What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back: gif causes imbalance between giver and recipient. Each gif binds the giver and recipient in a moral relationship (reciprocal exchange) Hau: the spirit of the gif , its force, that demands it must be returned. Mana: kind of a spiritual authority derived from having a wealth of resources to give to others to bind them into reciprocal obligations (when you give a gif and it hasn"t been reciprocated yet) Person who gives the most has the most power, accrues the most mana. Random acts of kindness people reciprocate this by paying it forward. Charity you are reciprocated by feeling good about what you did.
