Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Fear of a free lunch
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Author | Giles, David Boarder |
| Copyright Year | 2020 |
| Description | It's October as I ponder where to enter the fray of this essay. Hallowe'en has begun to intrude upon my thoughts and, across the United States where I spent a great deal of my childhood, pumpkins populate shop windows. Cheap nylon costumes crowd drugstore shelves. They'll likely be worn for one night, from doorstep to doorstep, yielding a ransom of empty calories and tummy aches, and soon abandoned. This parade of canned horror and pantomimed extortion was one of my favourite American rituals growing up. As I look back now, however, the practice also suggests a few themes that set the tone of this essay. To paraphrase Levi-Strauss' question about Christmas presents (1969), what is Trick-or-Treating except a kind of “grand potlatch”? Disguised wandering mendicants toddle about the neighbourhood demanding gifts of sugar and chocolate. And we might say that the obligatory generosity of the put-upon adults partakes of a certain “generalised reciprocity”, as Marshall Sahlins put it (1972), describing non-capitalist systems of exchange. On some scale, such gifts coexist with our market economies. Book Name: Shifting States |
| Related Links | https://content.taylorfrancis.com/books/download?dac=C2020-0-15688-9&isbn=9781003086673&format=googlePreviewPdf |
| Ending Page | 146 |
| Page Count | 21 |
| Starting Page | 126 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003086673-10 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2020-12-29 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Shifting States Cultural Studies Market Economies Levi Strauss |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
