Biography marshall sahlins reciprocity

Exchange of goods or labour

In cultural anthropology, reciprocity refers to the non-market exchange of goods or labour ranging from direct barter (immediate exchange) to forms of gift exchange where a return is eventually expected (delayed exchange) as in the exchange of birthday gifts. It is thus distinct from the true gift, where no return is expected.

When the exchange is immediate, as in barter, it does not create a social relationship. When the exchange is delayed, it creates both a relationship as well as an obligation for a return (i.e. debt). Hence, some forms of reciprocity can establish a hierarchy if the debt is not repaid. The failure to make a return may end a relationship between equals. Reciprocal exchanges can also have a political effect through the creation of multiple obligations and the establishment of leadership, as in the gift exchanges (Moka) between Big Men in Melanesia. Some forms of reciprocity are thus closely related to redistribution, where goods and services are collected by a central figure for eventual distribution to followers.

Marshall Sahlins, an American cultural anthropologist, identified three main types of reciprocity (generalized, balanced and negative) in the book Stone Age Economics (1972). Reciprocity was also the general principle used by Claude Lévi-Strauss to explain the Elementary Structures of Kinship (1949), in one of the most influential works on kinship theory in the post-war period.

The history of the "norm of reciprocity" in European economic thought

Annette Weiner argued that the "norm of reciprocity" is deeply implicated in the development of Western economic theory. Both John Locke and Adam Smith used the idea of reciprocity to justify a free market without state intervention. Reciprocity was used, on the one hand, to legitimize the idea of a self-regulating market; and to argue how individual vice was transformed in

Dr. Sylvia Gale, Executive Director, and Dr. Derek Miller, Assistant Director, Community Relationships and Community-Engaged Learning, Bonner Center for Civic Engagement
October 2019

In civic engagement and higher ed, reciprocity has long been a god term – a guiding reference point, constantly evoked yet whose meaning is left decidedly vague. In a concept review on this topic published in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning in 2012, Lina Dostilio and her co-authors argued that such vagueness lends the concept – meant to be, in their words, vibrant and robust – to being "applied as dogma" (18).

The CCE's executive director Sylvia Gale (SG) sits down to unpack this dilemma with Derek Miller (DM), who, since 2018, has helped to connect University of Richmond faculty with community organizations in our region.


SG: Before coming to the CCE, you taught anthropology here at UR. How does your field invite us to complicate our understandings of the idea of reciprocity?

DM: It is a funny thing, I was just went back to read one of my favorite books, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value by David Graeber, and in it he comments how reciprocity is so widely used that it is almost meaningless. So different discipline, same challenges. I do think it is fair to say that reciprocity is one of the most discussed concepts within the field of anthropology.

Much of this debate really started with Marcel Mauss' famous essay The Gift. In this, Mauss looks across cultures and notices that gift giving and not barter is the most common form of exchange. He goes on to argue that gift giving is about creating society and not maximizing individual value. While it is clearly much more complicated than that (hence the 100 years of anthropological debate on this subject), I think it is clear why reciprocity resonates within the CBL world as it is a term that looks at exchanges no

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