Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Exchange is the transfer of things between social actors. The things can be human or animal, material or immaterial, words or things. The actors can be individuals, groups, or beings such as gods or spirits. Cast this broadly, exchange pervades social life. Villagers getting foodstuffs at a local market, like city-dwellers at a supermarket, are engaged in exchange.
Corporations that contribute to political parties, enemies who hurl insults at each other, hunters who placate the spirit of their prey, and parents who prepare meals for their children, all are engaged in exchange. It should be no surprise that some argue that exchange is a key to social life. For *Lévi-Strauss, true human existence begins when groups begin to exchange women in marriage, while for †Mauss exchange is the earliest solution to the †Hobbesian war of all against all.
Exchange is a central topic in anthropology, but it is more important in the ethnography of some regions than in others. Likewise, exchange is central to all people’s lives, but its consequences and cultural elaborations are more marked in some regions than in others. It is in *Melanesia that people and anthropologists have stressed exchange most, and many of the examples used here are drawn from the ethnography of that region.
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