3. The Gift: Care & Reciprocity

 Welcome to Week 3 of Transforming Lives through Care. 

Last week, we saw how care can be analysed in terms of the kinship. Now we are going to another classic anthropological concept--The Gift--in order to understand care. Now we are going to look at communication as care.  Say "hello" to your mum from me. Why is passing on a "hello" important for some people? Arnold thinks that communication is not just about passing along information. Actually, it can be a gift and a form of care.

🎯 Learning Goals

You should be able to:

• analyse gift-giving practices using the concepts of the Gift and reciprocity

🚦 Introduction

The gift a crucial concept in anthropology. When we get a present from someone we feel (if we are social people) at least a tiny obligation to give something back. This means that an object, say flowers or a card, is actually a form of currency for social relations. The idea here is that much of the care that humans provide for each other takes the form of gifts as well. These gifts can be things--like care packages. They can also be services--like doing the dishes. And perhaps even, as Arnold argues, passing on your best wishes to someone. Either way, if we want to understand care, we need to understand gifts.

📚 Recommended Materials

Read my abridged version of Arnold, Lynnette, Communication as Care

Read my blog summarising Arnold's "Communication as Care". This might help if you're having difficulty following Arnold's article 

📘 Essential Materials

Read the entire article: Arnold, Lynnette. “Communication as Care across Borders: Forging and Co‐Opting Relationships of Obligation in Transnational Salvadoran Families.” American anthropologist 123.1 (2021): 137–149. 

Watch Herriman, "Reciprocity"

Read "Objects & Social Relations" from Pourntney & Marich Introducing Anthropology.

Watch "The Gift: Communication & Care". Here are the slides.

🗣️ Interactive tasks

🎁 Assessment 2.5%: Mapping Prestations and Care

Upload your Prestations & Care diagram:

• On your family or kinship network use squiggly lines to show who gave you gifts during your most recent birthday, Christmas, or other culturally significant gift-giving event.
•  Feel free to include friends or others who aren’t strictly “family”—this is your social world.
• You might also want to indicate who you give gifts to, and how these exchanges relate to care in your life.

When you're done, take a photo or export the diagram and upload it.

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2. Take a moment to reflect: Did your prestations diagram feel like it represented your care relationships accurately?

 Yes / No

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3. ✍️ Write 2–3 sentences explaining your answer.
   This reflection will help you—and us—think about what prestations and diagrams can and can’t capture about care. I’ll read your responses and share a summary of the results (anonymously—so you can see how others experienced the task too!).

🏁 Conclusion

Summary

In summary we have seen how caring can be a form of the Gift. 

Significance

This week's analysis has widened our understanding of care both the forms it can take (as greetings and offerings) and the parties involved (living people, spirits, animals). This weeks analysis has also enabled us to deepen our analysis of care. As a service, it can be exchanged as a commodity or as a gift. 

What's next

Next, we consider how this plays out in our relations with non-human animals. 

🔎 Further Research

Read my blog post summarising Mauss's classic, The Gift. This might give you a deeper understanding of the Gift.

Read my summary of Malinowski on Kula. This summarises the classic exposition of the gift trade in necklaces and armbands of Australia's northeast coast.

Read the section Potlatch in my summary of Boas. This describes the famous gift-giving ceremonies of Kwakwaka-wakw life. 

Read my summary of Bohannan & Bohannan describing the 3 kinds of Tiv economy.

Read my summary of Marx on the commodity. This reading shows that it is not only gifts that are full of spirit, but also the commodities we buy!

Read my summary, in in this blog of the article Transnationalism: A New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.  Arnold reading this week, is the first time we have come across the term transnationalism. This concept will also be crucial to the week in which consider aged care workers in the international carescape. introduced the concept for anthropologists.