Understanding the Gift Economy, II

When I was preparing to write my piece on the gift economy for the Dictionary of Ethical Politics, I read a few essays by others but quickly abandoned that approach to ensuring that I was fully up-to-speed on the current thinking. As I explained with my customary lack of sensitivity, diplomacy, and fairness:

Unsurprisingly, [the gift economy] is a topic that appeals to well-meaning, good-natured, spiritually curious people. Unfortunately, this results in treatments that are often long on fuzzy-headed feel-good and short on rigor. I’m sure there are some very good essays on the gift economy to be found with a simple Google search; but I really had no stomach for a needle-in-haystack exercise that would subject me to the level of penetrating analysis found in the average Hallmark greeting card.

After I published my synopsis of the gift economy, I received a superb essay from my good friend, Manoj Pavithran, with a very different approach to the subject. Manoj is that rare and spectacular combination of deeply thoughtful and utterly brilliant; and his careful analysis is constructed with the considerable philosophical rigor one might expect from him. It represents a significant contribution to the growing, evolving appreciation of the gift economy.

Manoj is not simply a theorist of the gift economy; he is a practitioner. He lives in Auroville, a community founded, in part, on both collectivist and cooperativist gift economy ideals. He also played a direct and influential role in the gift economization of two significant product initiatives of Upasana Design Studio: the Tsunamika dolls and the Small Steps cloth shopping bags.

With his permission, I offer Manoj’s essay for your consumption and reflection.

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A Cup of Coffee

It is 8:00 am at the Indian Coffee House. Breakfast time. Yoo-Mi and I have taken a table in the “Ladies and Families” room, and are sipping fresh lime juice while we wait for our food. Shortly after we sit down, a woman takes the table next to us and orders a coffee. Though the clientele of the ICH is as class-diverse as just about any eating establishment I can think of in India, the woman is more shabbily dressed and unkempt than anyone I have ever seen there. She is barefoot, her saree is not clean, and her hair is just beginning to regrow after a recent shaving. Whether she has been widowed or had a ritual shave at a temple like Thirupathi, we cannot know. Her demeanor is deeply introspective and transparently sad. The waiter brings her an extra-full cup, setting it before her with a gentleness possibly never-before witnessed at ICH. It is as if to say he wishes he could do more for her.

Celebrating Humbug: the ethics of misers and ritual gift-givers

It wouldn’t be particularly novel or interesting for me to assail the crass commercialism of the holiday season. Most of us do it this time each year.

And yet the pattern of insane consumption continues. Why? Because most folks who decry Christmas materialism nevertheless continue to feed the economic machine by participating in the purchase and exchange of generally useless gifts.