Bellow's “Indian Givers”: Humboldt's Gift

1981 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-238
Author(s):  
Judie Newman
Keyword(s):  
American Indians ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Loss Of Face ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Central Activity ◽  
The Gift

Emerson's essay on “Gifts” perceptively highlights the ambivalence felt in gift-giving or receiving, an ambivalence which lies at the heart of Saul Bellow's most recent novel, Humboldt's Gift. The importance of literal gift-giving has been insufficiently recognised as a factor which governs the action of the novel, our understanding of which is enhanced by an examination and application of the sociological analysis of gift-exchange.Gift-exchange has been most extensively studied in relation to the North-West Coast American Indians, notably the Kwakiutl, in whose culture the “potlatch” is a central activity. The term “potlatch” is applied to a variety of gift-giving ceremonies, involving both the giving away of quantities of possessions and their wilful destruction. The whole of a man's worldly goods may be dispersed or destroyed in this fashion, in an attempt to maintain status. To eclipse a rival chief, for example, a man may destroy all his own accumulated wealth. While in theory the “gift” is spontaneous and disinterested, in practice it is based on political or economic self-interest.The gift of property implies an obligation in the recipient which, if not fulfilled, results in his loss of face.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

Rembrandt’s Art as Gift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Art World ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Gift Economy ◽  
The Gift

This chapter examines Rembrandt’s embrace of gift exchange over his career and analyzes the works he created to function as gifts among favored patrons, collectors, and intimates. Rembrandt’s gifts to important patrons and other figures in the 1630s largely conform to the conventions and courtesies expected of gift transactions. From the late 1640s through the 1660s, as Rembrandt’s primary supporters shifted to liefhebbers, gentlemen-dealers, and cultured members of the burgher class, however, he intensified his engagement and became more experimental with gift giving. Through highly distinctive prints designed to circulate as gifts, Rembrandt enlisted the gift economy to nurture ties with his inner sanctum, harnessing the ethics of gift giving to cultivate a unique position in the Dutch art world.

Gift-giving in Byzantine Diplomacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-165
Author(s):  
Jorg Kustermans
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The North ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Crucial Part

Summary Gift exchange was an integral and crucial part of Byzantine diplomacy. The practice of Byzantine gift-giving varied with diplomatic context. The main division is that between Byzantine diplomacy with Muslim rulers and Byzantine diplomacy with (Christian) rulers to the North and West. While the former happened on a more egalitarian footing, the latter was structured in more explicitly hierarchical terms. This difference was reflected in the practice of gift exchange: in who participated, how they comported themselves and the nature of the objects being exchanged. Even so, in both contexts, the function of diplomatic gift-giving was to claim and justify authority, be that the authority of the One (Byzantine Emperor) over the Many (Christian rulers, people of the Roman lands), or the authority of the Few (Byzantine Emperor and Muslim Caliph) over the Many (their respective subordinates).

Religious Ethics, Gift Exchange and Capitalism

2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARCEL HENAFF
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Gift ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spirit Of Capitalism ◽  
Catholic Ethic

This study intends to reread Max Weber's Protestant Ethic with the following question in mind: where is the Catholic ethic with respect to “the spirit of capitalism”? The few short comments that Weber makes on this topic nevertheless suggest an interesting notion which he had developed in earlier texts, i.e., the “religious ethic of brotherhood”. I intend to show here that this notion could be further illuminated by the findings of the anthropology of gift giving since Marcel Mauss. This would enable us to understand how the problem of grace, so central to the debate between Protestants and Catholics, is linked to the history of the transformations in the gift giving practices; we will also discover that this problem was at the origin of the schism. While such a hypothesis leads to a different reading of Weber, it is confirmed by a work of the historian B. Clavero which brings out the complex links that existed in 16th century Catholic Spain between the order of business and that of charity. Besides the antagonism that has marked the two Christian traditions in the West, what seems to be at issue is the way in which economic practices weight on the social bond. These questions invite us to rethink the connections between them.

Gift-giving in the great traditions: the case of donations to monasteries in the medieval West

1995 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana F. Silber
Keyword(s):  
Symbolic Dynamics ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Other ◽  
Western World ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Religious Orientations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Impact

Focusing upon donations to monasteries in the medieval Western world, this paper expands upon extant discussions of religious gift-giving in the ‘great traditions’ , and of its relation to more archaic forms of gift-exchange, hitherto largely based on non-Western and mostly Asian anthropological material. While displaying many of the social functions familiarly associated with the gift in archaic or primitive societies, donations to monasteries are shown to have also entailed a process of immobilisation of wealth not extant in the gift circuit of ‘simpler’ societies. While donations to monasteries clearly attested to the impact of otber-wordly religious orientations, they also entailed a range of symbolic dynamics very different from, and even incompatible with, those analysed by Jonathan Parry with regard to the other-wordly ‘pure’ gift. The paper then brings into relief the precise constellation of ideological ‘gift-theory’, socio-economic ‘gift-circuit’, and macrosocietal context, which enabled this specific variant of the gift-mechanism to operate as a ‘total’ social phenomenon in the two senses of that term suggested, though not clearly distinguished and equally not developed, in Mauss’ pathbreaking essay on the gift.

scholarly journals The institution of gift exchange among the Ob Ugrians in the anthropological discourse

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 546-555
Author(s):  
E. Р Martynova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Past ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Global World ◽  
Trade Deals ◽  
Theoretical Developments

Introduction: the work is written in the discourse of economic anthropology. The relevance of the institute of gift-giving among the Ob-Ugric peoples is determined by the interest in the study of their traditional culture, as well as the desire to determine its role and functions in the modern global world. Objective: to consider and analyze different types of gift exchange and related communications among the Ob-Ugric people in the past and in modern practices. Research materials: the author’s field materials collected among different groups of Ob-Ugric people; works of authors of the second half of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries, containing descriptions of trade deals with the participation of the indigenous population of the Ob North. Results and novelty of the research: on the materials about the Ob Ugrians the kinship and friendship gifts connected with the custom of guesting, exchange of gifts in the rites of transition, gift exchange with spirits, gift exchange with the authorities during the period of integration into the system of Russian statehood and elements of gift exchange relations in trade are studied. The essence of the institution of gift-exchange is revealed through the theoretical developments of the classics of economic anthropology, first of all, M. Moss. Gift-giving in Khanty and Mansi culture has both real and symbolic value. The first one is equivalent to the value of things or services, and the second is determined by the fact that gifts are perceived as a pledge of success and prosperity in the future. The gift was a peculiar mechanism of maintaining ties both between different collectives within the community and with the outside world, including otherworldly forces.

scholarly journals Diphtheria infection in North West Canada, 1969, 1970 and 1971

1972 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Jellard
Keyword(s):  
American Indian ◽  
American Indians ◽  
North American ◽  
White People ◽  
North West ◽  
North American Indians ◽  
The North ◽  
Caucasian Origin ◽  
Health Significance ◽  
North American Indian

SUMMARYIn three years,Corynebacterium diphtheriaewas isolated from 1238 people, consisting of 820 North American Indians or Metis, 318 people of Caucasian origin, 97 Eskimos and 3 Asiatic Indians. Diphtheria infection of the throat, nose, ears and skin was common in the North American Indian and Metis people, but rarely caused severe symptoms. The infection occurred less often in white people but was more serious; of 27 cases of toxic respiratory diphtheria, 25 were white people. The public health significance of the endemic infection of the North American Indian and Metis people is discussed.

Gift Giving at the Court of Henry VIII: the 1539 New Year's Gift Roll in Context

2005 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 126-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hayward
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Other ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
The Gift

The exchange of gifts at the New Year was a very significant social, political and financial event at the court of Henry VIII, just as it would have been at the courts of his English predecessors and European contemporaries. The process of gift exchange, including who made, received and gave gifts, was recorded each year in the gift roll. This article presents a detailed analysis of the 1539 gift roll, now in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC, in the context of the other extant rolls for 1528, 1532 and 1534. Areas for discussion include a consideration of the range and significance of the gifts given and received by Henry and the role of the goldsmiths who made the king's gifts, including the weight, style and shape of the pieces commissioned. The article is supported by a full transcript of the 1539 gift roll, which is accompanied by extensive references comparing this gift roll to the other surviving gift rolls.

Edward Sapir et la recherche anthropologique au Musée National du Canada 1910–1925

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 397-412
Author(s):  
Hélène Bernier
Keyword(s):  
American Indians ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Extensive Collection ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Systematic Collection ◽  
Edward Sapir

Summary In 1910, a Division of Anthropology was created within the Geological Survey of Canada; it was the beginning of the Canadian National Museum. Its first chief was Edward Sapir, who had been strongly recommended by his former teacher Franz Boas. Sapir soon established two major objectives of his new post, namely, to introduce a professionalism into the hitherto amateurish manner anthropology had previously been practiced in Canada, and to engage in an extensive collection of linguistic and ethnographic data among the different indigenous peoples of Canada whose cultural heritage was threatened by Western civilization. In order to attain the first goal Sapir sought the employment of university trained researchers, mainly coming from Britain and the United States. He engaged himself in fostering contacts with the scientific community, both nationally and internationally, encouraging at the same time the establishment of departments of anthropology at Canadian universities. His second objective was probably his greatest success. In order to realize the broad and systematic collection of cultural material among the American Indians and the Inuits of Canada, he hired a number of researchers, several of which became subsequently leading figures in North-American anthropology, Marius Barbeau, Harlan I. Smith, James A. Teit, and later Thomas F. McIlwraith collected data on West-Coast Indians. The Athabaskans of the North-West were visited by Diamond Jenness and J. Alden Mason, the Sioux and the Cris of the Prairies by Wilson D. Wallis and Leonard Bloomfield. Paul Radin and Albert B. Reagan were doing research on the Ojibwa of Ontario whereas Barbeau, Alexander Goldenweiser and Frederic Waugh concentrated their attention on the Hurons of Ontario and Quebec. Groups of the Eastern Provinces were studied by William H. Mechling and Cyrus MacMillan. Jenness, Christian Leden, and E. W. Hawkes took a particular interest in the customs of the Inuit. In 1925 Sapir relinquishes his post as chief of the Anthropological Division, but not before having firmly established the basis of what was to become the National Museum of Man in Ottawa, Canada.

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