French anthropologists, moustaches, going to the pub, and poor widows...

Until recently, my interest in Marcel Mauss stretched little past his amusing name and very French moustache. But then I read his 1925 book, ‘The Gift’, which examines the nature of social gift structures in Polynesian society. Mauss suggests that society operates on a system of gift exchange, enacted in three-part sequence of obligation:

1. The obligation to give.

2. The obligation to receive.

3. The obligation to give in return.

The everyday examples of this are, of course, many; and the underlying system of relationship embodied by this system is deeply felt by lots of people, especially when it s broken.

I have many more than two thoughts on Mauss, who I find thrilling – but two I will write here.

Firstly, I find the second part the hardest.

The Christian tradition’s emphasis on the receipt of gift comes through its concepts of ‘grace’. I see the gift of grace as something like an enlightenment, where one’s view of the world and oneself changes, and one (at least in Christian terms) seeks to commit oneself to the pattern of Christ’s life through learning the practices of discipleship.

I think that Christ would have let people buy him drinks and not immediately sought to buy them one back, or have accepted the kind words of someone else without seeking to repay them. Not that these are bad things or bad responses to gifts, but they insist that grace is a transaction, which I find difficult.

Many Christians talk of being ‘saved’ as a transaction, where for one’s faith in Christ is ‘rewarded’ by being welcomes into God’s fold, usually through a substitutionary model of human sin and Christ’s death. I acknowledge the significance of this model in Christian tradition, and the importance it holds for many people, yet I find it rather cosmic and mythical, and rooted ultimately in transaction, rather than grace.

I would offer a different construal of being ‘saved’, as the process through which one comes to see the world in a way different to one’s evolutionary and social hardwiring has taken place, particularly towards self-obsession and idolatry (see my earlier post on Nicholas Lash). When one’s desires are purified after the example of Christ’s self-giving, made especially known on the cross.

My final point here leads seamlessly onto the second suggestion. Perhaps this purification of desire as the receipt of salvation/grace/gift (from that which we call ‘God’) does require giving in return but not in a transaction model. Most obviously this is done through the enaction of one’s salvation in the lives of others through compassionate, justice-seeking action and mercy.

My second point regards a recent interpreter of Mauss, Maurice Godelier. Again, after an initial period of name amusement and moustache contemplation, I found Godelier’s work exciting as well.

Godelier distinguishes between two types of gift: alienable, and inalienable. Alienable gifts are exchanged through transaction, and can be ‘alienated’ from their current owner – eg, I bought my mum some jewellery for Christmas from a nice shop where I live. I have no attachment to the gift, other than that I bought it for my mother. Inalienable gifts, though, are of a much deeper significance, such that their transfer of ownership does not ‘alienate’ their current owner from the gift – the best example is the transferral of tribal land from one generation to another: the former owners are inalienable from the gift’s significance, which is not conceived in transaction value. A wedding ring is another example.

I think the NT has an interesting example of gift giving, in Luke 21:1-4:

[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said: “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

Question: is the woman’s gift alienable, or inalienable?

On one level, it is certainly alienable – money is a rational form of quantified transactional exchange, and is transferable between different people without loss to their identity. But I suggest the actual substance of her gift is not two small coins, but commitment to the values of self-sacrifice and costly giving, putting in ‘all she had to live on’. Godelier’s insight that gifts need not be physical, quantifiable or transferable is sharp – giving to God of these things makes them all the more significant in these terms.

This poor widow has been saved. Saved from our social hardwiring that tells us to take, rather than give. Saved from the conception that her small offering is worthless against the heftier gifts of the rich. Saved from the conception that her low status render her incapable or unworthy of participating in the religious life of the community. Her inalienable gift express her values in the same way as a tribal head passes on land to his eldest son – her commitment to the demands of discipleship: Christ-like self-giving.