Affiliation:
1. The Australian National University
Abstract
ABSTRACTHere I offer a challenge to some of the theoretical truisms that have developed concerning gift exchange, which has been a topic of scholarly debate for almost a century. Much discussion has focussed on how giving creates obligations and increases the power of the giver. Taking the case of the Lelet of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, I examine how people use magic to usurp the agency of the giver, thus forcing them to give through ‘coercive exchange’. Magic, I argue, has the capacity to upend how obligation is understood to operate. People give, not because of the customary social obligation, but because magic has been used to extract their wealth.
Subject
History and Philosophy of Science,Anthropology