Monday, 17 January 2011
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Am I becoming a feminist??!!
Laura has also put me onto both of these which I am really looking forward to. Got my place booked on the workshop and its just up the road from college. It also kind of follows on nicely from my send and receive. The ecourse sounds great and I have signed up for that too but have yet to find the time to actually do it.. Ha! typical! I cant find time to learn how to make time grrrr!!
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Paper Heart - Official Trailer [HD]
I have just watched this film that Laura gave me, really enjoyed it. I like the idea of going around and getting different peoples ideas and stories of the meaning of just one word or concept "LOVE" I also love the innocence and openness of it and the simple puppetry in between to illustrate folks stories of love.
Very cool :)
Papergirl Leeds.
Ok so Laura has set up Papergirl Leeds which is fantastic I think she is going to do a brilliant job of organizing it. Really excited. She has great leadership skills.
I have asked if I can film it again which would also be fab.
I have some ideas I would like to try. But this time I would like to document the whole thing. Laura said that "once people have learned to do something they should pass on information about how they learned it." Which I totally agree with, so documenting the whole group and the progresses and unfolding of the whole thing would be great.
I wonder how the video would look with a bit of the event its self first then showing the all the prep and pre-exhibition building to the ride itself after. I would like to try that. Bits of animation too. A few documentaries I have watched recently have used animation in amongst real video footage, with a really pleasing effect. It would be nice to get a few people filming and sound and interviews etc.
Sounds like Laura has been well busy emailing people involved in papergirl and setting up blogs, face book pages, looking at venues, and designing logos! But to top it all off we are having our first meeting on Monday at her place and she is baking a cake!
This is going to be muchos muchos fun!
I have asked if I can film it again which would also be fab.
I have some ideas I would like to try. But this time I would like to document the whole thing. Laura said that "once people have learned to do something they should pass on information about how they learned it." Which I totally agree with, so documenting the whole group and the progresses and unfolding of the whole thing would be great.
I wonder how the video would look with a bit of the event its self first then showing the all the prep and pre-exhibition building to the ride itself after. I would like to try that. Bits of animation too. A few documentaries I have watched recently have used animation in amongst real video footage, with a really pleasing effect. It would be nice to get a few people filming and sound and interviews etc.
Sounds like Laura has been well busy emailing people involved in papergirl and setting up blogs, face book pages, looking at venues, and designing logos! But to top it all off we are having our first meeting on Monday at her place and she is baking a cake!
This is going to be muchos muchos fun!
Wikipedia on 'thegift.'
In the social sciences, a gift economy (or gift culture) is a society where valuable goods and services are regularly given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards (i.e. no formal quid pro quo exists).[1] Ideally, simultaneous or recurring giving serves to circulate and redistribute valuables within the community. The organization of a gift economy stands in contrast to a barter economy or a market economy. Informal custom governs exchanges, rather than an explicit exchange of goods or services for money or some other commodity.[2]
Various social theories concerning gift economies exist. Some consider the gifts to be a form of reciprocal altruism. Another interpretation is that social status is awarded in return for the gifts.[3] Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect concern for the well-being of others, it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.
A gift economy normally requires the gift exchange to be more than simply a back-and-forth between two individuals. For example, a Kashmiri tale tells of two Brahmin women who tried to fulfill their obligations for alms-giving simply by giving alms back and forth to one another. On their deaths they were transformed into two poisoned wells from which no one could drink, reflecting the barrenness of this weak simulacrum of giving.[4] This notion of expanding the circle can also be seen in societies where hunters give animals to priests, who sacrifice a portion to a deity (who, in turn, is expected to provide an abundant hunt). The hunters do not directly sacrifice to the deity themselves.[4]
Many societies have strong prohibitions against turning gifts into trade or capital goods. Anthropologist Wendy James writes that among the Uduk people of northeast Africa there is a strong custom that any gift that crosses subclan boundaries must be consumed rather than invested.[5] For example, an animal given as a gift must be eaten, not bred. However, as in the example of the Trobriand armbands and necklaces, this "perishing" may not consist of consumption as such, but of the gift moving on. In other societies, it is a matter of giving some other gift, either directly in return or to another party. To keep the gift and not give another in exchange is reprehensible. "In folk tales," Hyde remarks, "the person who tries to hold onto a gift usually dies."[6]
Carol Stack's All Our Kin describes both the positive and negative sides of a network of obligation and gratitude effectively constituting a gift economy. Her narrative of The Flats, a poor Chicago neighborhood, tells in passing the story of two sisters who each came into a small inheritance. One sister hoarded the inheritance and prospered materially for some time, but was alienated from the community. Her marriage ultimately broke up, and she integrated herself back into the community largely by giving gifts. The other sister fulfilled the community's expectations, but within six weeks had nothing material to show for the inheritance but a coat and a pair of shoes.[7]
Additionally, in some kinds of gift economies, gift recipients are expected to give something in return, such as political support, military services and general loyalty, or even return gifts and favors. This was common in warrior societies where kings and chieftains gave freely to their followers and could expect their loyal service in return. Such systems have social sanctions built in to punish freeloaders or miserly chiefs. A default punishment would be to halt gifts or services from one party to the alleged party in wrong. Typical sanctions might also include a bad reputation, formal eviction from the lord's hall, a challenge to a duel, or public ridicule.
History
The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins writes that Stone Age gift economies were, as evidenced by their nature as gift economies, economies of abundance, not scarcity, despite modern readers' typical assumption of objective poverty.[8]
Lewis Hyde locates the origin of gift economies in the sharing of food, citing as an example the Trobriand Islander protocol of referring to a gift in the Kula exchange ring as "some food we could not eat," even though the gift is not food, but an ornament purposely made for passing as a gift.[9] The potlatch also originated as a 'big feed'.[10] Hyde argues that this led to a notion in many societies of the gift as something that must "perish"
Examples
[edit] Social structures
There are many examples of how a gift economy works in modern culture within a mixed economy, such as marriage, family, friendship, kinship, and social network structures.
[edit] Societies
[edit] Pacific islanders
Pacific Island societies prior to the nineteenth century were essentially gift economies.[citation needed] This practice still endures in parts of the Pacific today - for example in some outer islands of the Cook Islands.[11] In Tokelau, despite the gradual appearance of a market economy, a form of gift economy remains through the practice of inati, the strictly egalitarian sharing of all food resources in each atoll.[12] On Anuta as well, a gift economy called "Aropa" still exists.[13]
There are also a significant number of diasporic Pacific Islander communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States that still practice a form of gift economy. Although they have become participants in those countries' market economies, some seek to retain practices linked to an adapted form of gift economy, such as reciprocal gifts of money, or remittances back to their home community. The notion of reciprocal gifts is seen as essential to the fa'aSamoa ("Samoan way of life"), the anga fakatonga ("Tongan way of life"), and the culture of other diasporic Pacific communities.[14]
[edit] Papua New Guinea
The Kula ring still exists to this day, as do other exchange systems in the region, such as Moka exchange in the Mt. Hagen area, on Papua New Guinea.
Native Americans
Native Americans who lived in the Pacific Northwest (primarily the Kwakiutl), practiced the potlatch ritual, where leaders give away large amounts of goods to their followers, strengthening group relations. By sacrificing accumulated wealth, a leader gained a position of honor.
[edit] Mexico
In the Sierra Tarahumara of North Western Mexico, a custom exists called kórima. This custom says that it is one's duty to share his wealth with anyone.[15]
[edit] Spain
In place of a market, anarcho-communists, such as those who inhabited some Spanish villages in the 1930s, support a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as "payment" for their production of goods and services.
[edit] Religious gift giving
Main articles: Sacrifice and Ritual
[edit] Buddhism
Main article: Alms
In Southeast Asia, Theravada Buddhists continue to sponsor "Feasts of Merit" that are very similar to potlatch. Such feasts usually involve many sponsors and occur mainly before and after the rainy season.[17]
Hinduism
Main articles: bhiksha and karmkand
Bhiksha is a devotional offering, usually food, presented at a temple or to a swami or a religious Brahmin who in turn provides a religious service (karmkand) or instruction.
Islam
Main article: Zakat
In Islam, the free gift of alms is a religious requirement, which has made social foundations an important part of Muslim communities.[18]
[edit] Judaism
Main article: Tzedakah
According to the Hebrew Bible, tzedakah is a religious obligation that must be performed regardless of financial standing. It is considered as one of the three main acts that can annul a less than favorable heavenly decree.
[edit] Information gift economies
Information is particularly suited to gift economies, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost.[19][20]
[edit] Science
Traditional scientific research can be thought of as an information gift economy. Scientists produce research papers and give them away through journals and conferences. Other scientists freely refer to such papers. All scientists can therefore benefit from the increased pool of knowledge. The original scientists receive no direct benefit from others building on their work, except an increase in their reputation. Failure to cite and give credit to original authors (thus depriving them of reputational effects) is considered improper behavior.[21]
[edit] Filesharing
Markus Giesler, in his ethnography "Consumer Gift Systems" has developed music downloading as a system of social solidarity based on gift transactions.[22]
[edit] Open-source software
In his essay "Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer programmer Eric S. Raymond opined that open-source software developers have created "a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away".[23] Members of the Linux community often speak of their community as a gift economy.[24]
[edit] Wikipedia
Millions of articles are available on Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia, and almost none of its innumerable authors and editors receive any direct material reward.[25]
[edit] Social theories
Various social theories concerning gift economies exist. Some consider the gifts to be a form of reciprocal altruism. Another interpretation is that social status is awarded in return for the gifts.[3] Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect concern for the well-being of others, it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.
Hyde
According to Lewis Hyde, a traditional gift economy is based on "the obligation to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate," and that it is "at once economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, and mythological."[26] He describes the spirit of a gift economy (and its contrast to a market economy) as:[27]
The opposite of "Indian giver" would be something like "white man keeper"... [W]hatever we have been given is supposed to be given away not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move in its stead... [T]he gift may be given back to its original donor, but this is not essential... The only essential is this: the gift must always move.
Hyde also argues that there is a difference between a "true" gift given out of gratitude and a "false" gift given only out of obligation. In Hyde's view, the "true" gift binds us in a way beyond any commodity transaction, but "we cannot really become bound to those who give us false gifts."[28]
Hyde argues that when a primarily gift-based economy is turned into a commodity-based economy, "the social fabric of the group is invariably destroyed."[29] Much as there are prohibitions against turning gifts into capital, there are prohibitions against treating gift exchange as barter. Among the Trobrianders, for example, treating Kula as barter is considered a disgrace.[30] Hyde writes that commercial goods can generally become gifts, but when gifts become commodities, the gift "...either stops being a gift or else abolishes the boundary... Contracts of the heart lie outside the law and the circle of gifts is narrowed, therefore, whenever such contracts are narrowed to legal relationships."[31]
[edit] Mauss
Sociologist Marcel Mauss argues a different position, that gifts entail obligation and are never 'free'. According to Mauss, while it is easy to romanticize a gift economy, humans do not always wish to be enmeshed in a web of obligation. Mauss wrote, "The gift not yet repaid debases the man who accepts it,"[32] a lesson certainly not lost on the young person seeking independence who decides not to accept more money or gifts from his or her parents.[33] And as Hyde writes, "There are times when we want to be aliens and strangers."[34] We like to be able to go to the corner store, buy a can of soup, and not have to let the store clerk into our affairs or vice versa. We like to travel on an airplane without worrying about whether we would personally get along with the pilot. A gift creates a "feeling bond." Commodity exchange does not.
Kropotkin
Anarchists, particularly anarcho-primitivists and anarcho-communists, believe that variations on a gift economy may be the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Therefore they often desire to refashion all of society into a gift economy. Anarcho-communists advocate a gift economy as an ideal, with neither money, nor markets, nor central planning. This view traces back at least to Peter Kropotkin, who saw in the hunter-gatherer tribes he had visited the paradigm of "mutual aid".
Peter Kropotkin argues that mutual benefit is a stronger incentive than mutual strife and is eventually more effective collectively in the long run to drive individuals to produce. The reason given is that a gift economy stresses the concept of increasing the other's abilities and means of production, which would then (theoretically) increase the ability of the community to reciprocate to the giving individual. Other solutions to prevent inefficiency in a pure gift economy due to wastage of resources that were not allocated to the most pressing need or want stresses the use of several methods involving collective shunning where collective groups keep track of other individuals' productivity, rather than leaving each individual having to keep track of the rest of society by him or herself.
Various social theories concerning gift economies exist. Some consider the gifts to be a form of reciprocal altruism. Another interpretation is that social status is awarded in return for the gifts.[3] Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect concern for the well-being of others, it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.
A gift economy normally requires the gift exchange to be more than simply a back-and-forth between two individuals. For example, a Kashmiri tale tells of two Brahmin women who tried to fulfill their obligations for alms-giving simply by giving alms back and forth to one another. On their deaths they were transformed into two poisoned wells from which no one could drink, reflecting the barrenness of this weak simulacrum of giving.[4] This notion of expanding the circle can also be seen in societies where hunters give animals to priests, who sacrifice a portion to a deity (who, in turn, is expected to provide an abundant hunt). The hunters do not directly sacrifice to the deity themselves.[4]
Many societies have strong prohibitions against turning gifts into trade or capital goods. Anthropologist Wendy James writes that among the Uduk people of northeast Africa there is a strong custom that any gift that crosses subclan boundaries must be consumed rather than invested.[5] For example, an animal given as a gift must be eaten, not bred. However, as in the example of the Trobriand armbands and necklaces, this "perishing" may not consist of consumption as such, but of the gift moving on. In other societies, it is a matter of giving some other gift, either directly in return or to another party. To keep the gift and not give another in exchange is reprehensible. "In folk tales," Hyde remarks, "the person who tries to hold onto a gift usually dies."[6]
Carol Stack's All Our Kin describes both the positive and negative sides of a network of obligation and gratitude effectively constituting a gift economy. Her narrative of The Flats, a poor Chicago neighborhood, tells in passing the story of two sisters who each came into a small inheritance. One sister hoarded the inheritance and prospered materially for some time, but was alienated from the community. Her marriage ultimately broke up, and she integrated herself back into the community largely by giving gifts. The other sister fulfilled the community's expectations, but within six weeks had nothing material to show for the inheritance but a coat and a pair of shoes.[7]
Additionally, in some kinds of gift economies, gift recipients are expected to give something in return, such as political support, military services and general loyalty, or even return gifts and favors. This was common in warrior societies where kings and chieftains gave freely to their followers and could expect their loyal service in return. Such systems have social sanctions built in to punish freeloaders or miserly chiefs. A default punishment would be to halt gifts or services from one party to the alleged party in wrong. Typical sanctions might also include a bad reputation, formal eviction from the lord's hall, a challenge to a duel, or public ridicule.
History
The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins writes that Stone Age gift economies were, as evidenced by their nature as gift economies, economies of abundance, not scarcity, despite modern readers' typical assumption of objective poverty.[8]
Lewis Hyde locates the origin of gift economies in the sharing of food, citing as an example the Trobriand Islander protocol of referring to a gift in the Kula exchange ring as "some food we could not eat," even though the gift is not food, but an ornament purposely made for passing as a gift.[9] The potlatch also originated as a 'big feed'.[10] Hyde argues that this led to a notion in many societies of the gift as something that must "perish"
Examples
[edit] Social structures
There are many examples of how a gift economy works in modern culture within a mixed economy, such as marriage, family, friendship, kinship, and social network structures.
[edit] Societies
[edit] Pacific islanders
Pacific Island societies prior to the nineteenth century were essentially gift economies.[citation needed] This practice still endures in parts of the Pacific today - for example in some outer islands of the Cook Islands.[11] In Tokelau, despite the gradual appearance of a market economy, a form of gift economy remains through the practice of inati, the strictly egalitarian sharing of all food resources in each atoll.[12] On Anuta as well, a gift economy called "Aropa" still exists.[13]
There are also a significant number of diasporic Pacific Islander communities in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States that still practice a form of gift economy. Although they have become participants in those countries' market economies, some seek to retain practices linked to an adapted form of gift economy, such as reciprocal gifts of money, or remittances back to their home community. The notion of reciprocal gifts is seen as essential to the fa'aSamoa ("Samoan way of life"), the anga fakatonga ("Tongan way of life"), and the culture of other diasporic Pacific communities.[14]
[edit] Papua New Guinea
The Kula ring still exists to this day, as do other exchange systems in the region, such as Moka exchange in the Mt. Hagen area, on Papua New Guinea.
Native Americans
Native Americans who lived in the Pacific Northwest (primarily the Kwakiutl), practiced the potlatch ritual, where leaders give away large amounts of goods to their followers, strengthening group relations. By sacrificing accumulated wealth, a leader gained a position of honor.
[edit] Mexico
In the Sierra Tarahumara of North Western Mexico, a custom exists called kórima. This custom says that it is one's duty to share his wealth with anyone.[15]
[edit] Spain
In place of a market, anarcho-communists, such as those who inhabited some Spanish villages in the 1930s, support a currency-less gift economy where goods and services are produced by workers and distributed in community stores where everyone (including the workers who produced them) is essentially entitled to consume whatever they want or need as "payment" for their production of goods and services.
[edit] Religious gift giving
Main articles: Sacrifice and Ritual
[edit] Buddhism
Main article: Alms
In Southeast Asia, Theravada Buddhists continue to sponsor "Feasts of Merit" that are very similar to potlatch. Such feasts usually involve many sponsors and occur mainly before and after the rainy season.[17]
Hinduism
Main articles: bhiksha and karmkand
Bhiksha is a devotional offering, usually food, presented at a temple or to a swami or a religious Brahmin who in turn provides a religious service (karmkand) or instruction.
Islam
Main article: Zakat
In Islam, the free gift of alms is a religious requirement, which has made social foundations an important part of Muslim communities.[18]
[edit] Judaism
Main article: Tzedakah
According to the Hebrew Bible, tzedakah is a religious obligation that must be performed regardless of financial standing. It is considered as one of the three main acts that can annul a less than favorable heavenly decree.
[edit] Information gift economies
Information is particularly suited to gift economies, as information is a nonrival good and can be gifted at practically no cost.[19][20]
[edit] Science
Traditional scientific research can be thought of as an information gift economy. Scientists produce research papers and give them away through journals and conferences. Other scientists freely refer to such papers. All scientists can therefore benefit from the increased pool of knowledge. The original scientists receive no direct benefit from others building on their work, except an increase in their reputation. Failure to cite and give credit to original authors (thus depriving them of reputational effects) is considered improper behavior.[21]
[edit] Filesharing
Markus Giesler, in his ethnography "Consumer Gift Systems" has developed music downloading as a system of social solidarity based on gift transactions.[22]
[edit] Open-source software
In his essay "Homesteading the Noosphere", noted computer programmer Eric S. Raymond opined that open-source software developers have created "a 'gift culture' in which participants compete for prestige by giving time, energy, and creativity away".[23] Members of the Linux community often speak of their community as a gift economy.[24]
[edit] Wikipedia
Millions of articles are available on Wikipedia, a free on-line encyclopedia, and almost none of its innumerable authors and editors receive any direct material reward.[25]
[edit] Social theories
Various social theories concerning gift economies exist. Some consider the gifts to be a form of reciprocal altruism. Another interpretation is that social status is awarded in return for the gifts.[3] Consider for example, the sharing of food in some hunter-gatherer societies, where food-sharing is a safeguard against the failure of any individual's daily foraging. This custom may reflect concern for the well-being of others, it may be a form of informal insurance, or may bring with it social status or other benefits.
Hyde
According to Lewis Hyde, a traditional gift economy is based on "the obligation to give, the obligation to accept, and the obligation to reciprocate," and that it is "at once economic, juridical, moral, aesthetic, religious, and mythological."[26] He describes the spirit of a gift economy (and its contrast to a market economy) as:[27]
The opposite of "Indian giver" would be something like "white man keeper"... [W]hatever we have been given is supposed to be given away not kept. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move in its stead... [T]he gift may be given back to its original donor, but this is not essential... The only essential is this: the gift must always move.
Hyde also argues that there is a difference between a "true" gift given out of gratitude and a "false" gift given only out of obligation. In Hyde's view, the "true" gift binds us in a way beyond any commodity transaction, but "we cannot really become bound to those who give us false gifts."[28]
Hyde argues that when a primarily gift-based economy is turned into a commodity-based economy, "the social fabric of the group is invariably destroyed."[29] Much as there are prohibitions against turning gifts into capital, there are prohibitions against treating gift exchange as barter. Among the Trobrianders, for example, treating Kula as barter is considered a disgrace.[30] Hyde writes that commercial goods can generally become gifts, but when gifts become commodities, the gift "...either stops being a gift or else abolishes the boundary... Contracts of the heart lie outside the law and the circle of gifts is narrowed, therefore, whenever such contracts are narrowed to legal relationships."[31]
[edit] Mauss
Sociologist Marcel Mauss argues a different position, that gifts entail obligation and are never 'free'. According to Mauss, while it is easy to romanticize a gift economy, humans do not always wish to be enmeshed in a web of obligation. Mauss wrote, "The gift not yet repaid debases the man who accepts it,"[32] a lesson certainly not lost on the young person seeking independence who decides not to accept more money or gifts from his or her parents.[33] And as Hyde writes, "There are times when we want to be aliens and strangers."[34] We like to be able to go to the corner store, buy a can of soup, and not have to let the store clerk into our affairs or vice versa. We like to travel on an airplane without worrying about whether we would personally get along with the pilot. A gift creates a "feeling bond." Commodity exchange does not.
Kropotkin
Anarchists, particularly anarcho-primitivists and anarcho-communists, believe that variations on a gift economy may be the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. Therefore they often desire to refashion all of society into a gift economy. Anarcho-communists advocate a gift economy as an ideal, with neither money, nor markets, nor central planning. This view traces back at least to Peter Kropotkin, who saw in the hunter-gatherer tribes he had visited the paradigm of "mutual aid".
Peter Kropotkin argues that mutual benefit is a stronger incentive than mutual strife and is eventually more effective collectively in the long run to drive individuals to produce. The reason given is that a gift economy stresses the concept of increasing the other's abilities and means of production, which would then (theoretically) increase the ability of the community to reciprocate to the giving individual. Other solutions to prevent inefficiency in a pure gift economy due to wastage of resources that were not allocated to the most pressing need or want stresses the use of several methods involving collective shunning where collective groups keep track of other individuals' productivity, rather than leaving each individual having to keep track of the rest of society by him or herself.
A review of Lewis Hdye on "the gift" My book should be in the post. If this is my belief I will never have much much money.. ah well.
Book Review
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property - by Lewis Hyde
(Vintage Books, 1983)
Reviewed by JoAnn Schwartz
In The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde uses anthropology, economics, psychology, art and fairy tales to examine the role gifts have played and continue to play in our emotional and spiritual life. By gifts, Hyde means both material objects and immaterial talents and inspirations, such as 'a gift for music' or 'a gift for mathematics.' Or, as Hyde himself so lyrically observes, "I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us."
Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the 'gift economy' is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. "It is this element of relationship which leads [Hyde] to speak of gift exchange as 'erotic' commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos."
In a market economy, one can hoard one's goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding--- although we generally call it 'saving'. In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase--- increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.
In the first half of the book, Hyde examines the structure of traditional gift economies. For non-Western cultures he relies on anthropological studies; for Western culture he looks at our fairy tales and myths. In the second half of the book, Hyde looks at the lives and art of Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound, two American poets whose reaction to their gifts and the effects of the market economy on those gifts were very different. Whitman focused his poetic gift on giving expression to the inarticulate, the erotic, the fecundity of nature. Whitman did not hold to material ambitions; he easily distinguished between earning a living and the labor of art --- "The work of my life is making poems," he declared when Leaves of Grass first appeared. Whitman's riches were founded in this refusal to take seriously things outside his art.
In contrast, Pound focused his poetic gift on bringing order to the forces of fertility and the erotic through sheer strength of will. He was incensed by the barrenness of his age, by its lack of generosity towards art and artists. (Pound himself was well known for his sponsorship of other artists, most notably T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.) Pound came to obsess on economics and the unjust distribution of wealth. His obsession was the death of his art.
Hyde is deeply interested in the transformative gift: the gift that changes us profoundly, often received in the form of psychological healing or spiritual teachings. An important aspect of a transformative gift is that the transformation is not instantaneous; it requires the recipient to undertake some extensive and often difficult inner work in order to effect the transformation completely. What motivates us to undertake this labor? In general, it is a feeling of love and gratitude toward our teacher or therapist.
This can lead to problems in today's market economy, where healing and teaching are frequently sold rather than freely given. After all, even a gifted teacher, therapist, or spiritual guide must eat! It is nonetheless possible for an element of the gift economy to circulate above the cash. I recall some young parents at our Waldorf school who, although barely scraping by themselves, managed to come up each year with the full tuition for their child. When asked why they did not apply for financial aid, for which they certainly qualified, they looked surprised and said, "The tuition is our gift to the teachers for what they are giving our child. If we could afford more, we would certainly give it."
As an extreme example of the opposite approach, the author mentions the Church of Scientology, which in 1979 (when Hyde's book was published) had a minimum initial 'donation' of $2,700 for a twelve-and-a-half intensive course. This kind of exaggerated cost tends to cut off the forces of love and gratitude necessary for true transformation.
The point is that a conversion, in the general sense, cannot be settled on ahead of time. We can't predict the fruits of our labor; we can't even know if we'll really go through with it. Gratitude requires an unpaid debt, and we will be motivated to proceed only so long as the debt is felt. If we stop feeling indebted, we quit, and rightly so. To sell a transformative gift therefore falsifies the relationship; it implies that the return gift has been made when in fact it can't be made until the transformation is finished. A prepaid fee suspends the weight of the gift and de-potentiates it as an agent of change. Therapies and spiritual systems delivered through the market will therefore tend to draw the energy required for conversion from an aversion to pain rather than from an attraction to a higher state.
There is another area of Western culture where a remnant of the old gift economy is still active: the scientific community. In examining the community of science, Hyde begins by noting that within this community it is the scientist who shares ideas with others--- who gives away rather than acquires--- who receives the most recognition and status. What, then, is the effect on science of treating ideas as gifts, as contributions to the community? Hyde presents an interesting case:
The task of science is to describe and explain the physical world, or more generally, to develop an integrated body of theory that can account for the facts, and predict them. Even such a brief prospectus points toward several reasons why ideas might be treated as gifts, the first being that the task of assembling a mass of disparate facts into a coherent whole clearly lies beyond the powers of a single mind or even a single generation. All such broad intellectual undertakings call for a community of scholars, one in which each individual thinker can be awash in the ideas of his comrades so that a sort of 'group mind' develops, one that is capable of cognitive tasks beyond the powers of any single person. The commerce of ideas--- donated, accepted (or rejected), integrated---constitutes the thinking of such a mind. . . .. '[I]deas in physics are discussed, presented at meetings, tried out and known to the inner circle of physicists working in the great centers long before they are published in papers and books. . . .' A scientist may conduct his research in solitude, but he cannot do it in isolation. The ends of science require coordination. Each individual's work must 'fit,' and the synthetic nature of gift exchange makes it an appropriate medium for this integration; it is not just people that must be brought together but the ideas themselves.
In science, as elsewhere, the circulation of gifts produces and maintains community, whilst the conversion of gifts to commodities fragments or destroys that same community. However, we are now witnessing the commodification of ideas within the scientific community. Universities and industrial laboratories, which used to produce basic research that was released into 'the public domain' now patent and otherwise protect their research. Discoveries emerge not as contributions but as proprietary ideas for which users must pay a fee, a usury.
This trend began in the late 1970's and early 1980's with biotechnology, but here and now, at the end of the millennium, it seems to have spread to most fields of scientific inquiry. How does the "group mind" necessary to produce theoretical physics/chemistry/biology survive the free-market? Traditionally, academic freedom refers to the freedom of ideas; it is the perception that individuals in the research community must be allowed 'fair use' of other researcher's ideas, must be allowed to explore these ideas without the payment of a usury. But in a free-market economy the concepts of academic freedom and fair use are indentured to the notion of intellectual property. People may be free, but ideas are most definitely not.
Lewis Hyde does not prescribe answers to the many questions his book brings up. Instead, he encourages us to challenge our current assumptions about the proper role of the market place in our relationships with each other and our institutions.
The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property - by Lewis Hyde
(Vintage Books, 1983)
Reviewed by JoAnn Schwartz
In The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, Lewis Hyde uses anthropology, economics, psychology, art and fairy tales to examine the role gifts have played and continue to play in our emotional and spiritual life. By gifts, Hyde means both material objects and immaterial talents and inspirations, such as 'a gift for music' or 'a gift for mathematics.' Or, as Hyde himself so lyrically observes, "I have hoped . . . to speak of the inner gift that we accept as the object of our labor, and the outer gift that has become a vehicle of culture. I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us."
Above all, Hyde is interested in examining the effect our current immersion in the market economy and the myth of the free market has both on our view of gifts and on our ability to give and receive them. The market economy is deliberately impersonal, but the whole purpose of the 'gift economy' is to establish and strengthen the relationships between us, to connect us one to the other. "It is this element of relationship which leads [Hyde] to speak of gift exchange as 'erotic' commerce, opposing eros (the principle of attraction, union, involvement which binds together) to logos (reason and logic in general, the principle of differentiation in particular). A market economy is an emanation of logos."
In a market economy, one can hoard one's goods without losing wealth. Indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding--- although we generally call it 'saving'. In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gift(s) within the community that leads to increase--- increase in connections, increase in relationship strength. Through this book, Hyde helps us focus on the importance of gifts, their flow and movement and the impact that the modern market place has had on the circulation of gifts.
In the first half of the book, Hyde examines the structure of traditional gift economies. For non-Western cultures he relies on anthropological studies; for Western culture he looks at our fairy tales and myths. In the second half of the book, Hyde looks at the lives and art of Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound, two American poets whose reaction to their gifts and the effects of the market economy on those gifts were very different. Whitman focused his poetic gift on giving expression to the inarticulate, the erotic, the fecundity of nature. Whitman did not hold to material ambitions; he easily distinguished between earning a living and the labor of art --- "The work of my life is making poems," he declared when Leaves of Grass first appeared. Whitman's riches were founded in this refusal to take seriously things outside his art.
In contrast, Pound focused his poetic gift on bringing order to the forces of fertility and the erotic through sheer strength of will. He was incensed by the barrenness of his age, by its lack of generosity towards art and artists. (Pound himself was well known for his sponsorship of other artists, most notably T.S. Eliot and James Joyce.) Pound came to obsess on economics and the unjust distribution of wealth. His obsession was the death of his art.
Hyde is deeply interested in the transformative gift: the gift that changes us profoundly, often received in the form of psychological healing or spiritual teachings. An important aspect of a transformative gift is that the transformation is not instantaneous; it requires the recipient to undertake some extensive and often difficult inner work in order to effect the transformation completely. What motivates us to undertake this labor? In general, it is a feeling of love and gratitude toward our teacher or therapist.
This can lead to problems in today's market economy, where healing and teaching are frequently sold rather than freely given. After all, even a gifted teacher, therapist, or spiritual guide must eat! It is nonetheless possible for an element of the gift economy to circulate above the cash. I recall some young parents at our Waldorf school who, although barely scraping by themselves, managed to come up each year with the full tuition for their child. When asked why they did not apply for financial aid, for which they certainly qualified, they looked surprised and said, "The tuition is our gift to the teachers for what they are giving our child. If we could afford more, we would certainly give it."
As an extreme example of the opposite approach, the author mentions the Church of Scientology, which in 1979 (when Hyde's book was published) had a minimum initial 'donation' of $2,700 for a twelve-and-a-half intensive course. This kind of exaggerated cost tends to cut off the forces of love and gratitude necessary for true transformation.
The point is that a conversion, in the general sense, cannot be settled on ahead of time. We can't predict the fruits of our labor; we can't even know if we'll really go through with it. Gratitude requires an unpaid debt, and we will be motivated to proceed only so long as the debt is felt. If we stop feeling indebted, we quit, and rightly so. To sell a transformative gift therefore falsifies the relationship; it implies that the return gift has been made when in fact it can't be made until the transformation is finished. A prepaid fee suspends the weight of the gift and de-potentiates it as an agent of change. Therapies and spiritual systems delivered through the market will therefore tend to draw the energy required for conversion from an aversion to pain rather than from an attraction to a higher state.
There is another area of Western culture where a remnant of the old gift economy is still active: the scientific community. In examining the community of science, Hyde begins by noting that within this community it is the scientist who shares ideas with others--- who gives away rather than acquires--- who receives the most recognition and status. What, then, is the effect on science of treating ideas as gifts, as contributions to the community? Hyde presents an interesting case:
The task of science is to describe and explain the physical world, or more generally, to develop an integrated body of theory that can account for the facts, and predict them. Even such a brief prospectus points toward several reasons why ideas might be treated as gifts, the first being that the task of assembling a mass of disparate facts into a coherent whole clearly lies beyond the powers of a single mind or even a single generation. All such broad intellectual undertakings call for a community of scholars, one in which each individual thinker can be awash in the ideas of his comrades so that a sort of 'group mind' develops, one that is capable of cognitive tasks beyond the powers of any single person. The commerce of ideas--- donated, accepted (or rejected), integrated---constitutes the thinking of such a mind. . . .. '[I]deas in physics are discussed, presented at meetings, tried out and known to the inner circle of physicists working in the great centers long before they are published in papers and books. . . .' A scientist may conduct his research in solitude, but he cannot do it in isolation. The ends of science require coordination. Each individual's work must 'fit,' and the synthetic nature of gift exchange makes it an appropriate medium for this integration; it is not just people that must be brought together but the ideas themselves.
In science, as elsewhere, the circulation of gifts produces and maintains community, whilst the conversion of gifts to commodities fragments or destroys that same community. However, we are now witnessing the commodification of ideas within the scientific community. Universities and industrial laboratories, which used to produce basic research that was released into 'the public domain' now patent and otherwise protect their research. Discoveries emerge not as contributions but as proprietary ideas for which users must pay a fee, a usury.
This trend began in the late 1970's and early 1980's with biotechnology, but here and now, at the end of the millennium, it seems to have spread to most fields of scientific inquiry. How does the "group mind" necessary to produce theoretical physics/chemistry/biology survive the free-market? Traditionally, academic freedom refers to the freedom of ideas; it is the perception that individuals in the research community must be allowed 'fair use' of other researcher's ideas, must be allowed to explore these ideas without the payment of a usury. But in a free-market economy the concepts of academic freedom and fair use are indentured to the notion of intellectual property. People may be free, but ideas are most definitely not.
Lewis Hyde does not prescribe answers to the many questions his book brings up. Instead, he encourages us to challenge our current assumptions about the proper role of the market place in our relationships with each other and our institutions.
Hello, you.: The battle for equal opportunities still needs fi...
Hello, you.:
The battle for equal opportunities still needs fi...: "The battle for equal opportunities still needs fightingInequality between the sexes is not a big deal any more, a new study tells us. That ..."
The battle for equal opportunities still needs fi...: "The battle for equal opportunities still needs fightingInequality between the sexes is not a big deal any more, a new study tells us. That ..."
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Royal Park School.
So some people involved in the bid to save The Royal Park School are organizing the first of many celebratory events in order to raise funds, awareness and get folk involved in the building they have saved from developers for the community. The council has made a great decision. It is such a positive thing.
I have offered to help with childrens craft activities for the daytime family events. The folk from The Ladybird Project are going to be doing workshops so that will be fun. I am going to take my children too. Have now offered to film too.. eek.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
This is amazing news!!!!! So pleased!!!!!
*
Royal Park school building: Campaigners celebrate council decision
* Council agrees to let residents' group take control of abandoned Leeds school - but tells them they must secure funding within nine months
* Local organisation to take control of Woodhouse Community Centre
royal park primary Community campaigners today moved a step closer to taking control of the Royal Park Primary School building in Hyde Park. Photograph: John Baron/guardian.co.uk
Community campaigners who aim to transform an abandoned Leeds school into a community hub are celebrating after senior councillors agreed they could take control of the building.
Members of the Royal Park Community Consortium (RPCC) have fought for six years to take control of the former Royal Park Primary School in Hyde Park - and senior councillors this afternoon agreed to support the bid to place the semi-derelict building into community ownership.
However, they placed a condition that RPCC must raise the £750,000 capital funding needed to take control the building before the keys to the former school are handed over.
Executive board members considered three bids from potential developers to take over the building - one developer wanted to turn it into student flats and another proposed a variety of community and leisure uses - before deciding on the RPCC bid wghich would see the building
Keith Wakefield Leeds council leader Keith Wakefield
To cheers from a number of Hyde Park residents at the executive board meeting in Leeds Civic Hall, council leader Keith Wakefield said:
"Members are unanimous in their decision - they want to see the RPCC bid succeed and the building to be run and owned by the community. RPCC still faces a number of hurdles to secure funding, but they have our support.
"I cannot congratulate the people involved in this campaign enough - there is a lot of enthusiasm and ability behind this venture and we wish you well. We have given you time now to try and get the funding in place."
Executive board member Richard Lewis added:
"We are well aware that the potential big funders for this scheme will make their decisions by July, so this decision hopefully gives enough time for RPCC members to get the funding in place."
Conservative leader councillor Andrew Carter said the campaigners had come 'light years' since first submitting their bid last year and praised the progress RPCC had made.
Liberal Democrat leader Stewart Golton said Hyde Park was a 'community under pressure' and said that there was a 'wonderful opportunity to create community capacity' in the area.
Campaigners 'delighted'
After the meeting, RPCC member Jake England-Johns said he was delighted at the decision and was optimistic that the consortium would be able to secure money from funders to finally take control of the building. He said it moved RPCC a step closer to securing control of the building and added:
"It is great that we have got this result. It's a testament to the determination of the people of Hyde Park. Time is tight for us to get the funding in place, but we are delighted by the decision today."
RPCC recently submitted a Communitybuilders application and will know by early February if it will receive a first large-scale stage of funding from them.
Hyde Park and Woodhouse councillor Gerry Harper, who had supported RPCC's bid, added:
"This is fantastic news for the community and I'd like to congratulate the people involved. I'm looking forward to moving ahead with them on this project and help them to secure the funding for the building. That building's got a great future ahead of it."
Executive board refuses to waive eviction costs
In November 2009 community activists illegally occupied the building for three weeks, clearing debris and repairing parts of the deteriorating building.
royal park leeds
Leeds council took court action to have the occupiers evicted and costs of £2,948 were awarded against some of the squatters.
The council's Inner North West Area Committee had asked that the costs be waived but executive board members today refused.
Council leader Keith Wakefield said that waiving the costs would set a precedent. He added that paying the money in installments was the right way forward for the activists.
He added that it was appropriate for the area committee councillors to pay the costs from their budget if they felt it necessary.
Woodhouse Community Centre takeover
Executive board members also agreed to a request by local organisation Oblong to take over the council-run Woodhouse Community Centre in Woodhouse Street on a 50-year lease.
The community hub proposal, which is also dependent on Communitybuilders funding for refurbishment, would include adding a mezzanine floor above the main hall to increase floor space, interior improvements to link different areas together, access improvements and a reception.
A post on Oblong's website this afternon welcomed the council's decision and said:
"Our next step is to get funding for refurbishment from the Community Builders fund. We should hear about this early February and we expect to have the contract for the building shortly afterward. If everything goes according to plan, building work will begin in March."
Monday, 10 January 2011
Sunday, 9 January 2011
Honesty?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.[1]
Contents
Discourse
In discourse a statement can be strictly true and still be dishonest if the intention of the statement is to deceive its audience. Similarly, a falsehood can be spoken honestly if the speaker actually believes it to be true, assuming the speaker doesn't unfairly reject or suppress evidence. Conversely, dishonesty can be defined simply as behavior that is performed with intent to deceive or to manipulate the truth.
Brutal honesty should also be considered. The speaker can be honest but if they are to say exactly what is on their mind, it might be taken as brutally honest, depending on how harsh the words are.
Morality
While there are a great many moral systems, generally speaking, honesty is considered moral and dishonesty is considered immoral. There are several exceptions, such as egoistic hedonism, which values honesty only insofar as it improves ones own sense of pleasure, and moral nihilism, which denies the existence of objective morality outright. Honesty may also be challenged in various social systems with ideological stakes in self-preservation (many religious and national formations might be so characterized, but so too might be many family structures, and other small social collectives). In these cases honesty is frequently encouraged publicly, but may be retroactively forbidden and punished in an ex post facto manner if those invested in preserving the system perceive it as a threat. Depending on the social system, these breaches might be characterized as heresy, treason, or impoliteness. So ultimately, there are a great number of opinions about honesty. Even in moral systems which approve in general of honesty over dishonesty, some people think there are situations in which dishonesty may be preferable. Others would not define preferable behaviors as dishonest by reasoning that they are not intended to deceive others for personal gain, but the intent is more noble in character, for example sparing people of opinions that will upset them. Rather than dishonesty, that behavior is often viewed as self sacrifice - giving up one's voice for the happiness of others. But it can hardly be a universal approach to either determining honesty or morality. In many circumstances, withholding one's opinions can legitimately be viewed as cowardice, and a betrayal of those who will be hurt, discriminated against, or unfairly judged due to false beliefs left unchallenged. For this reason, many people insist that an objective approach to the truth, rather than an ideological or idealistic approach, is a necessary component of honesty.
Psychology
Two theories of honesty exist.[2] First, the ‘‘Will’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the active resistance of temptation and links to the controlled cognitive processes that enable delay in regard to reward. Second, the ‘‘Grace’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the absence of temptation and links to research upon the presence or absence of automatic processes in determining behavior. Most people tend to favor the Will hypothesis.[2] However, functional imaging and reaction time research supports the latter hypothesis since individuals who are honest in a situation in which they can lie showed no sign of engaging additional controlled cognitive processes.[2]
Levels of Honesty
Confucius defined several levels of Honesty. Starting from shallow and ending with deep, the levels are as follows:
Li, wanting to appear truthful for your own personal gain.
Yi, doing what is right on the basis of how you would like to be treated in return.
Ren, based on the most sincere form of empathy toward others that are different from you in age, gender, culture, experience, family, etc.
Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and denotes positive, virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating, or theft.[1]
Contents
Discourse
In discourse a statement can be strictly true and still be dishonest if the intention of the statement is to deceive its audience. Similarly, a falsehood can be spoken honestly if the speaker actually believes it to be true, assuming the speaker doesn't unfairly reject or suppress evidence. Conversely, dishonesty can be defined simply as behavior that is performed with intent to deceive or to manipulate the truth.
Brutal honesty should also be considered. The speaker can be honest but if they are to say exactly what is on their mind, it might be taken as brutally honest, depending on how harsh the words are.
Morality
While there are a great many moral systems, generally speaking, honesty is considered moral and dishonesty is considered immoral. There are several exceptions, such as egoistic hedonism, which values honesty only insofar as it improves ones own sense of pleasure, and moral nihilism, which denies the existence of objective morality outright. Honesty may also be challenged in various social systems with ideological stakes in self-preservation (many religious and national formations might be so characterized, but so too might be many family structures, and other small social collectives). In these cases honesty is frequently encouraged publicly, but may be retroactively forbidden and punished in an ex post facto manner if those invested in preserving the system perceive it as a threat. Depending on the social system, these breaches might be characterized as heresy, treason, or impoliteness. So ultimately, there are a great number of opinions about honesty. Even in moral systems which approve in general of honesty over dishonesty, some people think there are situations in which dishonesty may be preferable. Others would not define preferable behaviors as dishonest by reasoning that they are not intended to deceive others for personal gain, but the intent is more noble in character, for example sparing people of opinions that will upset them. Rather than dishonesty, that behavior is often viewed as self sacrifice - giving up one's voice for the happiness of others. But it can hardly be a universal approach to either determining honesty or morality. In many circumstances, withholding one's opinions can legitimately be viewed as cowardice, and a betrayal of those who will be hurt, discriminated against, or unfairly judged due to false beliefs left unchallenged. For this reason, many people insist that an objective approach to the truth, rather than an ideological or idealistic approach, is a necessary component of honesty.
Psychology
Two theories of honesty exist.[2] First, the ‘‘Will’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the active resistance of temptation and links to the controlled cognitive processes that enable delay in regard to reward. Second, the ‘‘Grace’’ hypothesis in which honesty comes from the absence of temptation and links to research upon the presence or absence of automatic processes in determining behavior. Most people tend to favor the Will hypothesis.[2] However, functional imaging and reaction time research supports the latter hypothesis since individuals who are honest in a situation in which they can lie showed no sign of engaging additional controlled cognitive processes.[2]
Levels of Honesty
Confucius defined several levels of Honesty. Starting from shallow and ending with deep, the levels are as follows:
Li, wanting to appear truthful for your own personal gain.
Yi, doing what is right on the basis of how you would like to be treated in return.
Ren, based on the most sincere form of empathy toward others that are different from you in age, gender, culture, experience, family, etc.
Diary.
# a daily written record of (usually personal) experiences and observations
# a personal journal (as a physical object)
A physical collection of personal thoughts observations and experiences...
How honest would you be in a diary? This is interesting because I have found myself sticking my head in the ground again recently on lots of things which is particularly disturbing because I felt I was getting somewhere.
Max Romeo
I want to be honest about everything, that should be my aim no matter how uncomfortable it may get.
(Although there will always be stuff left out...hmmm..)
Other worlds.
I want to make these and leave them in the woods and in parks in streets and alley ways :) Other worlds project.
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