What distinguishes commodities from gifts?
If a child got given a paintbrush by their parent, it would be hard to foretell what effect this mass-produced object would have on them. Yet, this paintbrush could represent a ‘need’ insofar as the school might have asked the child to come to school equipped with a paintbrush, or a ‘want’ whereby the paintbrush is an object desired by the child to further artistic aspirations. In these two distinct situations, the same banal object comes to be seen under two different lights; as a commodity or as a gift. This begs the question of how it is that we have come to be able to distinguish an object from an object; to give utility to one and meaning to the other.
This essay will assess the ways in which conceiving gifts as the antithesis of commodities informs yet limits our understanding of gifts. It will first look at the role of ideology in distinguishing objects from objects. It will then focus on the ways in which gifts go ‘beyond’ commodities, by shifting the emphasis from gifts as an idea to gifts in practice. Lastly it will broaden the scope of the question and ask whether gifts exist in the way we think they do.
In EuroAmerican societies the perfect gift exists… conceptually. There seems to be a generalised understanding of what gifts are by nature. As such, a gift is something that is wholly given; free and uncoerced and that juxtaposes the identity of the donor transmitted through the gift and the possibility of identification with the gift by the donee. It is not given by way of purchase or as compensation, rather it is a disinterested testament of the love and affection between giver and recipient (Carrier, 1990). A gift, freely given, supposedly leaves the donee free – the gift is ‘given and that is that’ (Laidlaw, 2000). Beaudrillard (1981) notes that gifts make sense in relation to context, an object’s significance is ‘inseparable from the concrete relation in which it is exchanged… the gift is unique, specified by the people exchanging and the unique moment of the exchange’.
Objects thus become distinguishable from objects when they are intrinsically linked to identity. While it is easy to own objects by buying them in capitalist societies, they are often mass produced and impersonal. And while the objects we might buy for ourselves are embedded in public structures of meaning and identity thus enabling a form of ‘status marking’, giving an object that is inherently socially charged with meaning does not equate giving an object personally charged with meaning, given that the ‘status marking’ object is identical to various others, thus creating a relation between perfect strangers instead of speaking to the relation between giver and recipient. Impersonal objects are as such rendered unsuitable as gifts. Hence, for an object, a commodity, to become a gift, it must move away from ownership to possession, it must be infused in some way with identity and meaning. In the ideology of the gift, there is this idea that it is because of this transformation of a commodity into something special and personal that it can be given (freely) out of love, because individuals believe that there is as much pleasure in giving than receiving a gift. It is however worth noting that this ideology is rendered fragile by the reality of distance in gift giving dynamics. Indeed, it can be observed that the ‘innate selflessness’ of the gift is replaced by attention to reciprocity and equality of value when gifts are exchanged between more distant kin for example. However, Carrier (1990) argues that beyond the circle of kin the nature of the gift is altered and for instance, when gifts are given at office parties or from pupil to teacher, the concern for reciprocation disappears. In other words, ‘as we move away from th[e] core the social relationship becomes more distant and the pattern of giving changes as people transact in ways that reflect different locations in the range from intimacy to anonymity’. Thus, objects can be thought of as being on a spectrum where intimacy is parallel to gifts and anonymity parallel to commodities.
Further, behind the idea of a gift is the idea that it is immaterial by nature, that the monetary value is superseded by the sentimental value, by the thought behind the gift. In fact, a ‘perfect’ gift is priceless. Carrier uses the example of gift giving in America to show that despite the supposed materialism of American society, there seems to be a norm regarding money and gifts; that is that money should not be addressed in the context of gift giving lest it break the illusion that the object given is in fact a gift and not a commodity. It would be improper to ‘[crow] over the cheap price of the expensive-seeming gift, like openly comparing costs of gifts given and received, [as it would] cross a line that is important, the line that separates people from an open recognition of the contraction between commodities and gifts’ (Carrier, 1990).
In light of this, it is worth considering how the pretence that the gift is something else entirely than a commodity is kept up through categories of thought. Here we will briefly address how time and language enable a form of ‘de’-commodification of objects.
Time can be a powerful factor in asserting that the material and monetary aspects of gifts are relatively insignificant. For instance, Christmas and birthdays are times when individuals have come to expect to get gifts. In regard to Christmas, Christmas shopping is seen as time consuming and frantic and therefore taking the time to pick the ‘right’ gift for the right person is already seen as an effort to make an impersonal object personal. In the case of birthdays, time helps maintain the illusion that gifts are uninterested and freely given insofar as people on their birthdays are not expected to reciprocate the gift giving because it is their ‘special day’. Time and reciprocity in these instances interlace in interesting ways to the extent that while it is customary to exchange gifts for Christmas, to have a gift to give when one is received; people who receive gifts on their birthdays are not expected to give gifts in return on their ‘special day’ yet it is implicitly acknowledged that they will give back to those who have given when their birthdays come around. Outside of these ritualised instances of gift giving, Bourdieu (1994) raises the point of the importance of the time interval in gift exchange. He contends that gift giving almost always implies gift reciprocating; but to keep up the pretence that gifts are given freely and without expectation for anything in return, the interval between receiving a gift and giving on back is crucial as it allows for two perfectly symmetrical acts to appear as ‘unique and generous ones in themselves’.
Language can also strongly contribute to the ideology of the gift. Laidlaw (2000) addresses this when talking about the Jain renouncers in India. The gift of food from households to renouncers is made to seem altruistic through the language that is used to characterise it. By using a word different to ‘food’ (khana) to refer to what renouncers eat (gocari) and even avoiding using the verb ‘to give’ (dena) contributes to reinforcing Derrida’s idea that a ‘true’ gift must not be perceived or received as a gift. In this context, the ‘gift’ is not to give but to abandon; the fact that renouncers are given something to eat ‘ought to remain unspoken’.
Similarly, in the context of organ and tissue donors, Strathern argues that the simple fact of using the word ‘donor’ as opposed to a more neutral term (i.e. ‘provider’) inscribes the process of giving something that is a commodity in a gift narrative which conceals this commodification of the body. Further, organs and tissues are not referred to as what they are but rather as what they do, how they transcend their materiality; they are the ‘gift of life’. This common phrasing as such stresses the idea of ‘something voluntarily yielded’, casting a shadow on the ‘tyranny’ of this gift (Fox and Swazey 1992). Consequently, the commodification of the body is concealed, and language confers a positive quality to organ donation.
In this next part, the ensnaring of gifts in webs of relations, identity, meaning, language, time and how this confers to them an intrinsic power that commodities don’t acquire, will be looked at.
To conceive of gifts as the antithesis of commodities is to restrict to idea of a gift to something one buys, makes their own and gives. It is mentioned above that the perfect gift exists but only conceptually. Indeed, in practice, gifts create and produce relationships, and due to the fact that relationships that are simply one sided are usually not sustainable in the long term, gifts acquire a form of power. Gift exchange creates a form of dependency, summarised by Gregory (1980) as ‘an exchange of inalienable objects between people in a state of reciprocal dependence.’ Here we can focus on Guttierez Garza’s work on domestic and sex workers in London to better understand the complex relationship gift giving produces. She takes the example of a sex worker called Vanessa who has a Sugar Daddy called Mark and a husband called Giorgio. However, their relationship is a complicated one because her marriage to Giorgio, enabling her to stay in the UK, was only able to happen because Mark ‘gifted’ her the money for the wedding. Thus Vanessa became ‘immersed’ in a series of gifts and other exchanges with both these men, leaving her emotionally vulnerable as well as with very little income (insofar as Mark payed for her flat with Giorgio, groceries and the like, and Giorgio was very jealous of Vanessa still seeing men as a way to earn a living). Vanessa thus was indebted to both these men with her ‘livelyhood’ dependent on Mark, who could ‘withdraw his help and gifts when he wanted’ and her ‘legal status in the hands of Giorgio who could do the same’.
These gifts that have enabled her to accomplish her dream of marrying a European, live a lifestyle in accordance with her taste and potentially start a family, are also burdens in the sense that is in debt to mark because of all his ‘generous’ gifts yet can’t form a meaningful relationship with Giorgio because of the presence of mark and the dependency he creates.
This points to the idea that the debt that gifts create is not always monetary, because sometimes gifts cannot ‘counter-gifted’ with something of equal value, but rather a moral one.
The issue of morality is prevalent in all forms of gift exchange. Carrier notes that people often think of themselves as moral persons ‘constrained by a structure of identity and obligation that links them to others.’ People are not ‘bound by law’ to give but, although they might live sufficiently private and anonymous lives that neighbours wouldn’t take interest in whether or not they reciprocate gifts, it would still be a ‘dereliction’. As such, in contrast to the idea of American culture’s individualism, people do feel constrained by their social relationships.
Additionally, moral dilemmas regarding gift exchange are particularly salient in care labour relations. Guttierez Garza uses the example of gifts given to domestic workers to address the complexity of gift giving and ethics. Felipa, who worked as a domestic worker for Fiona for 6 years, explained that she had gotten a lot of material benefits over the years through gifts given such as furniture and clothes, but more than that, Fiona’s family actually helped Felipa, in ways a ‘material’ gift could not, by paying for an immigration lawyer in order to sort out her citizenship. Felipa stated that she felt she was ‘in their debt forever’, yet she did not qualify this debt as burdensome but rather she felt morally indebted to the family. As such she would ‘help out’ Fiona by babysitting her kids when she needed, for no economic remuneration. As such, Fiona started to ‘pay’ Felipa with gifts whenever she needed help. These gifts could take the form of hand me downs, which can be interpreted as a marker of class, but here Felipa noted that to her, these gifts were personal insofar as they belonged to a family she considered herself to be part of. This echoes Carrier’s idea that ‘what makes the gift is the relationship within which the transaction occurs.’
And indeed, the relationship within which gift exchange occurs is what separates in a sense a gift from a ‘gift’. For example, in relationships wherein intimacy is trying to be created or facilitated, objects given can become gifts (see Don Kulick’s work on transgendered prostitutes in Brazil, 1998). Interestingly, some sex workers refuse to have a sugar daddy who give them gifts or refuse to develop relationships with clients. Amanda’s impression of sex work is that of a pretence, a ‘simulation of intimacy sold at a price’. Gifts given in the context of sex work to her were simply an attempt to normalise something that was ‘no more than business’ by likening it to a relationship. Gifts in this context resemble more strategies to obtain free sex rather than forge an emotional connection by morally implicating the sex worker in the lie.
In the same vein, gifts can create inequalities. Although gifts in domestic and sex work can be given from a place of genuine affection, some critic the idea of gift giving in these relationships at all as it highlights the ‘sexualised and gendered relations that existed between clients and sex workers’ and ‘[mirror] class, racial and social differences’ existing between domestic workers and employers.
Consequently, another way by which we can distinguish gifts from commodities is through their ambiguity. Gifts are never as pure as they are conceptually, creating an impossible dichotomy between interested exchanges and disinterested gifts. The fact that there is no straightforward answer to the question of when an object becomes a gift, underlines the necessity for boundaries in gift giving. This is best exemplified in care work delivered in hospices. Huss states that what caregivers bring to their work is what is described by many as a ‘gift’, or a ‘painfully earned capacity to be with the suffering and dying’. Here boundaries become important insofar as it is the only way to separate personal experience from the basic requirement of care, to stop their care from transforming itself into an emotionally draining ‘gift’. Hospice workers were asked to perform an impossible task, ‘to give completely, yet never to lose as pure vessels of compassion, to provide an endless supply of generic love’, creating care that was on the edge between ‘gift’ and ‘commodity’. This highlights how boundaries between gifts and commodities are never clear cut and must be constantly redefined, especially in relations of care.
Trying to define what a gift truly seems a near impossible task. To reconcile the common uses of the word ‘gift’ and the ideological aspirations of the concept of the gift is complex given the subjectivity of the gift. For example, in western conceptions, a gift giving is intrinsically linked to identity, to meaning, to finding a way to express a personal relation with someone, giving it a moral dimension of reciprocity either fuelled by affection or a sense of obligation. Yet, maybe the gift truest to the ideology is one that eludes this conceptualisation. Perhaps, a true gift, is one that is simply given away not given to. This brings into question the place of anonymity in gift giving. Coming back to the issue of organ and tissue donors, one could question whether or not a donor is the truest form of gift giver in so far as what they give is abandoned, not give, there is not intent for recognition or thanks. This echoes Derrida’s idea that a gift should not be perceived or received as a gift.
Yet, the lack of recognition is precisely the problem of donor gifts. A gift needs to be recognised in some sense otherwise it can become too much to handle morally what with so much identity juxtaposed with anonymity makes it not a gift, but a sacrifice, changing the relation one has with the ‘gift’.
To conclude, gifts come in many forms and not all are inscribed in antithesis to commodities. Gifts are inherently multifaceted because they are subjective and infused with meaning. Gifts become so because of our categorisation, because of the way we look at and think of the world. As soon as they fall into the category of the gift, they transcend the commodity simply because they become subject to morality, inequality, power, dependency. In a way, any commodity can be a gift, insofar as a gift is pretence, but not all gifts are commodities.
Bibliography
Carrier, J. 1990 ’Gifts in a World of Commodities: The Ideology of the Perfect Gift in American Society’, Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 29. pp.19-37
Gutierrez-Garza, AP. 2019 ‘The Intimacy of the Gift’ in Care for Sale: An Ethnography of Latin American Domestic and Sex Workers in London (New York, NY: Oxford University Press) pp. 119-139
Russ, A J. 2005 ‘Love's Labor Paid for: Gift and Commodity at the Threshold of Death’ Cultural Anthropology 20 (1) pp. 128-155
Laidlaw, J. 2000 ‘A free gift makes no friends’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (4) pp.617-634.
Strathern, M. 2012. ‘Gifts money cannot buy’ Social Anthropology20 (4), pp. 397– 410.
Bourdieu,1944, Raisons pratiques, sur la théorie de l’action, Edition du Seuil, p177-178