AN    INTERNATIONAL     JOURNAL     OF
CULTURAL  AND SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Volume 45, no. 1 (Winter 2006)

WHY SPHERES OF EXCHANGE?

Paul Sillitoe
University of Durham

Spheres of exchange, a classic anthropological topic, is briefly reviewed. The concept prompts looking at implied spheres of production. All production is not the same; different arrangements characterize different spheres, as with subsistence goods compared to wealth items. The implications are significant for acephalous political orders that eschew any section of society exercising control over resources or capital needed by others for livelihood, so exerting hegemony over them. Spheres of exchange intimate the disconnection of subsistence from wealth production, effectively inhibiting relations of domination, promoting egalitarian distribution of livelihood resources. The introduction of (all-purpose) money, in the process of historically interrelated colonial, globalizing, and economic development interventions ruptures the insulation of spheres, marking the arrival of capitalist market arrangements and associated antithetical hierarchical rich and poor relations. (Economic anthropology, spheres of exchange, production, acephalous politics).

CULTURE AND ECONOMY: THE CASE OF THE MILK MARKET IN THE NORTHERN ANDES OF ECUADOR

Emilia Ferraro
University of St. Andrews

In a Quichua area of Ecuador milk marketing has traditionally been in the hands of nonindigenous people. In recent years the market has come into the hands of indigenous people, who use their kin relations to take it from mestizo intermediaries. The changes in the economy are paralleled by sociocultural changes in the villages, and in notions of what constitute the economy, fair transactions, and market relationships. There is no sharp division between market and traditional exchanges; rather, market exchanges are understood in terms of traditional reciprocity. (Ecuador, market exchange, reciprocity, structural adjustments).

POLYGYNY, RANK, AND RESOURCES IN NORTHWEST COAST FORAGING SOCIETIES

M. Susan Walter
Saint Mary's University

Polygyny involving high ranking men and women facilitated the mobilization of resources in food, wealth, and labor in Northwest Coast societies. Men were more involved with food procurement and women with food storage. Senior wives of polygynous chiefs supervised the labor of junior wives and slaves, and the creation and allocation of food stores. Greater freedom from mundane tasks gave elite women time to manufacture valuables such as textiles and baskets used in trade and potlatching. Chiefs depended on their wives' relatives for assistance in potlatching, trade, and defense. Polygyny created and reinforced alliances and increased the numerical strength of households and villages, providing economic and political advantages in an area of frequent warfare. Cross-cultural tests for relationships between women's subsistence contributions and polygyny have neglected consideration of food processing and food storage among foragers like Northwest Coast peoples. (Northwest Coast, polygyny, women's economic importance, marriage alliance).

BONE AND FLESH, SEED AND SOIL: PATRILINY BY FATHER'S BROTHER'S DAUGHTER MARRIAGE

N. Serpil Altuntek
Hacettepe University

Behind patrilineal descent is an asymmetrical descent structure based on sex, and father's brother's daughter marriage. Because it is a means of constructing the patrilineage, patrilateral parallel cousin marriages continue to exist. The Kurds in eastern and southeastern Turkey illustrate this apparent paradox with the position of women in the patrilineage and their structural relationship with the mother's brother. (FBD marriage, patriliny, Turkey, Kurds).

CHRISTIANITY, IDENTITY, POWER, AND EMPLOYMENT IN AN ABORIGINAL SETTLEMENT

Carolyn Schwarz
University of Connecticut

This essay examines Aboriginal people's expression of Christian ideologies, values, and behaviors in regard to personhood. Christian practice in Galiwin'ku is a repertoire of individualization that fosters self-reliance and self-actualization, which relate to employment benefits and positions of political authority. Christianity is an important and equivocal site for staging opposition between community residents and for the expression of indigenous political agency within and beyond the settlement. Examining how Christianity informs the production of identities sheds light on some of the ways in which Aboriginal people negotiate tensions arising from a market economy and an egalitarian ethos. (identity, Christianity, indigenous agency, Aboriginal Australia).