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Economy as Ritual - Gudeman

IV Economy as Ritual

One of anthropologys great discoveries is the existence of ritual economies. They are very different from high market ones and hardly correspond to our finely honed rational models. I have spent time exploring them in the field and learning about them by way of reports. But why should we investigate these economies that do not measure up to our standards of reasoned and directed action, except to recount their errors? Economy is presumed to be the site of instrumental practices, sensible connections, and rational choice. One Nobel Prize laureate in economics has even rejected the idea that ritual actions can be lasting solutions to the economic problem of provisioning in an uncertain world (North 2005:15-16). For him, economies filled with ritual must disappear in the face of more rational ways of securing a livelihood, because economies filled with ritual have high transaction costs. My interest in these economies is more than antiquarian. They offer a different vision of material life and a different perspective on our economic ways. They raise the question: do we live in a ritualized economy as exemplified by our practices and as set forth by the high priests of economics? Most theories today suggest that we have shed our economic rituals of the past due to the rise of modernity and the spread of rational thought. No one was more influential in developing this view of our secularity than Max Weber. In one of his finest essays Weber addressed the relation of science and values to suggest that science contributes to refined methods of thinking and greater clarity about the external world and ourselves (1946 [1919].1 But it cannot tell us what values to hold and serve, although integrity in the social scientist must lead him to explore the meanings and understandings that others hold, and to inquire into their explanations for those values. Writing in the early 20th century, Weber was addressing the place of the scientist in the context of the rise of rationalization and of intellectualization. Weber explored the sinews and meanings of rationality; displaying its ambiguity of meaning and multiplicity in practice, he brought our attention to the way rational order is given life through bureaucracies, and how rational thinking or calculative reason increasingly informs our

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman lives through capitalism. As analyst and interpreter of this Western process, Weber foresaw what this change meant for the place of values and commitment in modern life. As he remarked, The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.2 For Weber disenchantment was closely linked to the spread of scientific thought seen as the belief that humans can achieve mastery of the world through rational control and calculation. He primarily explored the consequences of this disenchantment in relation to religion, and used it to talk about the replacement of gods by impersonal, scientifically understood forces: bureaucracies replace mystical capacities; rational calculation replaces a belief in luck. But Webers words often are redolent, sometimes of their opposite meaning. Science brings clarity but requires commitment to its values. Weber explored the values in many of the worlds great religions, and in his finest essay, he sought to uncover the links between the rise of Protestantism (in the form of Lutheranism and Calvinism) and the explosive shift to saving, investing and the rise of Western capitalism, which was the exemplar of disenchantment. But Weber did not explore what he might have called, enchanted or ritual economies. Thus, my question: what is a ritual economy? Could market life be a ritual as much as a rational economy?

Ritual What is ritual? In the social sciences and humanities, rituals have been variously defined, extensively analyzed, and differently considered in relation to economy. Before turning to my use of the word in relation to sociality and economy, let us consider some of its meanings. 1. By ritual we can mean a personal, repeated action or habit as in a ritual performed on arising or going to be; some people may have compulsive habits, which they perform without fail, such as opening a door in a certain way. Some of us, however, consider habits to be economical ways of acting, such as eating the same food at breakfast or lunch: we do not spend time calculating what to eat: the line between compulsive repetition as ritual and rational repetition as economy can be thin. Which is which?

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman 2. Ritual can refer to a sequence of actions that we share with others as in a marriage or death ceremony, or a greeting, such as shaking hands or kissing on both cheeks. 3. By ritual we may refer to an expressive or symbolic aspect of life, such as praying to a divinity, pledging allegiance to a nation as in songs or swearing fealty to an organization. Such rituals are complete acts themselves; they are not causal or mechanistic practices. A ritual, for example, may have reflexive effects as in a personal, consoling prayer or consoling or joyous ceremonies with others. 4. In relation to economy, rituals may assist practices through prayers for help with a harvest, pleas to cure an illness or animal, or appeals that working with machines leads to no harm. 5. In relation to economy, a ritual may cost time and riches. For example, as wealth increases, so may the size of a ritual as a form of display or thanks, as in weddings and birthdays. As wealth falls, ceremonies may decline. 6. In relation to economy, ritual may be an expression of something else. In Webers account of the Protestant Ethic the believer seeks signs of salvation through successful economic practices. Economic success is an expression of salvation, and material practices are an enactment of religious commitment, goodness and potential selection in the afterlife. Ritual also can be an expressive domain in which economic struggles and explanations are played out. The soul can be sold to the devil for riches; spirits may possess humans who transgress standard practices or are forced into unaccustomed behaviors. 7. Some might see markets as a ritual because participants must go through a rite of passage:there are rules of entry and rules of participation. The New York Stock Exchange is opened each day by the pounding of a gavel, and it is closed by ringing a bell. Traders take place only during this sacred time, except for after hours trading. In markets everything is brought to the measuring rod or money, and those who partake must practice calculative reason. This change of mentality on entering a market is no less momentous than that required when entering a religious sanctuary. The suggestion that entering and leaving a market is a rite of passage may be seen as

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman blasphemous, but if so, is it sacrilegious of religions or of market economy? 8. Could the process of linking means to ends, and of ends to means, be the central ritual of market economies! It is not an enchantment in the Weberian sense of a world made by non rational processes but the opposite. The linking of means to ends, is the enchantment, the pleasure, and the compulsion in commerce and finance. There is no reason for it in economy except to accumulate.

I use the word ritual for its social and symbolic meanings. A ritual is a presentation that refers to something else. It points to an idea or thing other than itself, as in the Eucharist or the Eight Nights of Hanukah; or it may suggest how life might be, as in the recitation of the Boy Scout Code of Honor or the Boy Scout uniform that mimics the clothing of the military. Rituals have to do with social relationships. They can make and recognize commitments to others, and sever them, as in rites of passage. Rituals can extend sociability, as in gestures of friendliness and words of kindness; and they can revivify or recuperate connections as in annual gatherings or corroborees. Prosaically, rituals express, reiterate, and sustain social ties. They can do what sociality does not or cannot achieve, which is to fill gaps in connections and present an ideal for them. Rituals can hide social ties and personal interests by veiling them, and sometimes rituals mystify wants and desires by presenting them as what they are not. These ritual processes frequently are found in relation to economy, especially in the way social relationships are projected into the market and contractual spaces of commerce and finance. Ritual, often connected to life in the house and community, may spread into the anonymous market where it has material effects. Let us now turn to Hypothesis 4, which has two parts. Only the first part will be considered in this chapter. Hypothesis 4: In high relationship, low market economies, rituals create, extend and/or resolve contradictions in social life. By representing sociality as it should be, rituals can do what relationships may fail to achieve Lemma 4a. In high relationship, low market economies, economy may 28 January 2010

4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman become a ritual In low relationship, high market economies, rituals can be a creation or resurgence of mutuality. They may complement or contradict the individualistic and rational premises of market economy yet sustain markets through the florescence of ceremonial life that boosts flows of currency and commodities. These rituals present sociality as an anchor of market life. Lemma 4b. In low relationship, high market economies, economy may become a ritual. Cree Spirits The Cree (as they have been named in English and French) consist of a number of related language groups in Canada (plus a few in the United States). Many aspects of their way of life have changed over the years beginning with the impact of explorers, continuing with the arrival of European settlers and fur traders, succeeded by growing state control, and followed most recently by the building of a hydro-electric project in their hunting areas of Quebec. The Cree have been resilient in adapting to change while continuing a vigor of their own. Many have left their original forest locations, but others have sustained their forest way of life in the northern areas. The James Bay and the Mistassini Cree, who have been studied by a number of ethnographers, present one example of a ritual economy, for their practices point to their connections with spirits in the animal world. Successful economy represent the connection between people and the material world. Economy is a ritual about sociability that brings wellbeing. Traditionally, the Cree alternated their material life by the season. In the summer they resided in communities near markets developed by Europeans and their descendants; in these months they could earn wages. In the winter they left to trap and hunt in the northern forest. This winter economy, which was organized through families living in houses, provided the Cree with both a livelihood and identity, and it took them into a different world. The winter way of life was not completely separate from the market, because many

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman Cree trapped animals partly for sale. ut this material economy

offered a sense of wellbeing, and it provided the basis for Cree resistance to intrusions, such as the hydro!electric pro"ect in #uebec. $mong the Cree, land and forest were never permanently owned; rather, the steward or %tallyman& of a Cree community managed and allocated use rights to households within the group so they could lay traplines and hunt animals in a community's area. (ther hunters retained the right to pass through an allocated territory and to use its resources to maintain themselves when in transit but not to hunt. The tallymen also ensured that proper hunting practices were maintained. In the Cree world most things including humans, the humanly made, and animals have a spirit. )uccessful hunting reflects the relation between hunter and an animal's spirit; hunting becomes a ritual, and a sign of a relation.Cree hunters do not try to control animals but to establish a relationship with their spirits. $ccording to the Cree, hunters do not capture an animal; the animals either offer themselves to hunters or remain hidden.*ood hunting techni+ues are necessary, but success depends on the relation between animal spirit and hunter. ,uring the hunt, a hunter performs rituals to persuade the animals into a relationship. -hen an animal is taken, the hunter owes respect and gratitude to its spirit, and at that moment rituals are also performed.These e.pressions of respect vary. In most all cases a hunter does not boast about his success, and he has to use the catch in a thrifty manner in order not to waste any of the animal's remains, which would affront its spirit. ones and parts of animals are displayed on platforms, while animal fat may be smeared on the walls of the winter house. $nimal skulls are hung in trees; and hunters sit around the carcass of a black bear and smoke a pipe in respect.

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman The material practice of hunting is not viewed as a causal or instrumental act nor a taking from nature but a give!and!take between animal spirits and humans. Captured animals are gifts from spirits that are shared with humans who offer their respect as part of the ongoing relationship. This spiritual connection between hunter and animals constitutes the vitality and the energy, or the current, of the economy. This perspective and practice makes the forest a place of repose for Cree. /eople reside there to regain balance in their spiritual and physical health. y returning to the forest, Cree find a sense of calmness and e+uilibrium in their social ties. 0isbehaving youth are sometimes sent to live alone in the forest in order to recover and mend their ways The spiritual connection to the forest and animals that lies at the base of Cree economy and identity has much to do with the vigor with which they resisted the market and political influences that threatened their way of life over the years. Their economy is practiced for its own sake as to secure material wealth. Iban Rice The Cree economy ritual sustains their connection to their natural world. But sometimes economy reproduces or expresses social tensions in an attempt to overcome them. Each house of the Iban strives to be autarkic but cannot be so: for the Iban selfsufficience is represented by a distinct strain of rice that serves as the economic basis of each house. This ritual economy does what sociality cannot achieve, but the economic solution is never a finality, for the problem of keeping house independence and continuity is continually reproduced by the social order of the house itself. The economic ritual of continuity is a mystification of the social problem. In the late 1940s the Iban of Borneo, which is now known as Sarawak, were studied by the New Zealand born anthropologist, Derek Freeman.3 Freeman later became well known for his controversy with Margaret Mead, in which he sought to refute her

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman findings from Samoa about the sexual experiences of young women. I never met Freeman, but clearly he was feisty, dogged, and clever; many in the profession did not appreciate his posthumous attack on a public idol, who had brought positive attention to anthropology, but he made a case that her information was faulty, even if he overstated his position. Far less known in anthropology, not to mention a wider audience, is his earlier, sober and superb study of the Iban. In writing at once perceptive, contextual and lucid he told about their agricultural practices and social order. The conditions of his fieldwork were not easy and the report was not a study of economy, but Freeman provided sufficient detail to allow a rethinking of his account. The Iban present a model of a ritual economy in which plants are treated as human, and humans do with them what they would like to do but cannot in their lives! For the Iban the ritual of economy makes sociality. The Iban raise rice for their daily sustenance. Through their ritual handling of the crop they construct an economy in which self! sufficiency, independence, and autarky are enacted, even while they engage in commercial e.changes outside their independent units. Iban self!sufficiency is e.pressed through a single strain of rice that must be raised and reproduced each year to provide vitality for all other material activities. In representing self!sufficiency as the core of their economy, the Iban are responding to a social organization that says otherwise, which is the key to grasping their practices, for what the Iban %say& through their economic practices is not what they do with their house life. Iban agricultural economy, carried out in meticulous detail, contradicts what happens in everyday e.istence. In this respect, Iban economy is a ritual about something else and a mystification of what they actually do. 1et, even if Iban do not model their economy as an input!output matri., designed to ma.imize output or to lower risk, it has been effective over long periods of time. The necessity to which it answers is not that of enacting and displaying rational man and his choices but of continuing a current of

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman human sociality that keeps them together. The Iban live in household groups that are formed around nuclear families consisting of parents, children and a few married offspring. Each house is termed a bilek. The word refers to both the physical house and the people in it. These family units are situated in larger community units or longhouses, which are structures raised on stilts and arranged in a series of ad"acent houses or bileks. ,espite abutting one another, each bilek is economically independent and strives to last in perpetuity. $ bilek, say the Iban, should never end; its worst fate would be if all its members died. Thus, one child, male or female, must remain in the bilek, and he or she should marry and have children to keep it going in perpetuity. -hen a young member of a bilek marries, the couple initially "oins the husband's or the wife's group. -hen a second member marries and brings a spouse to the bilek, the combination of two married siblings living in one house with a parental couple proves to be unstable, and one pair 2 usually the "unior one 2 leaves and establishes a new house. The remaining sibling or a later one stays to ensure the bilek's continuity. 3eaving a bilek, either to marry into another bilek or to form a new one is stressful. Tensions between two married pairs in a house lead to secession, but leaving means severing ties to a natal home and its ritual food. $t that moment of separation, bilek identity and bilek connections are broken. Iban economy re!presents these stressful social acts of formation and division as unity and continuity. The material economy of the Iban provides them with sustenance and a presentation of the house as autarkic, as well as an unbroken endeavor from the past to the future. The Iban do with their economy what they cannot do socially; it is a ritual model of what cannot be attained in social life. yet Iban live both as reality. Everything circles about rice as if it were a continuing human

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman group. Iban consider rice to be human and scarcely eat the strain on which they most depend4 This uneaten strain is known as the %foundation& rice. ,espite its material and social importance, the Iban do not produce it in ever!greater +uantities. *iven that they do not eat or produce much of it, why do they grow it5 $ccording to the Iban, rice has human features. 3ike humans, rice has illnesses, which resemble human ones and have human names6 rice may have a headache, warts or a cold. 7ice that is growing and spreading is also compared to families that grow; rice even has the power to increase after being harvested and while stored in bins underneath a bilek. oth rice and humans have a soul, which is known as semengat. 8This word might even be translated as %vital principle,& a general idea about the current of life.9 $t death, the human soul becomes dew, which rises in the fields and soaks into the rice that a house has planted and eats. The soul of rice also may roam like young men who may spend a year or more wandering elsewhere. :ourneys by the young are e.pected and represent a threat to the continuity of a bilek. If the soul of rice roams, however, it ruins the crop, which is a disaster for bilek continuity. Thus, rice is specially treated and precautions are taken so that the soul of rice does not leave the field. -hen Iban are harvesting they take care not to upset the soul of the rice, which might take offense and flee; and market crops are never planted near household rice, as they might give affront to the growing crop. 1oung men can do what rice cannot; rice is ritually made to do, what cannot be done with young men. ;ot all rice is the same. Every bilek raises several strains, but one strain is the %root& or foundation rice. This head strain is termed the padi pun "ust as each bilek has a %root& leader or pun bilek. The foundation rice is the current of the bilek; like the bilek, it must never end. Each foundation rice has a special name, distinctive visual

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman features, an origin story, and prohibitions that surround it. The Iban do not subsist on this rice, however; it is planted and harvested but only cautiously eaten. $round the foundation strain are planted a number of subsidiary, sacred strains; and around these rice strains are sown ordinary strains, which are consumed and sometimes sold. The fertility of all the rice depends on the health of the foundation rice or padi pun, "ust as the bilek house depends on its leader or pun bilek for direction. Through the head rice the Iban communicate with the rice spirits, and it is considered to be %the lords of all& 8<reeman =>?@6=AB9. The root rice is planted in the center of the field, and is planted first and harvested last. The subsidiary sacred strains are then planted, and subse+uently the ordinary, fast growing seeds are sown outside them. If any of the rice in the field becomes diseased, it is treated through rituals performed at the center on the foundation rice. The layout of the rice field reflects the Iban house that is centered on a leader who continues even while the house divides. -hen a married pair leave the group 8after residing in either his or her family's bilek9, they take with them one of the au.iliary sacred strains that surrounds and has absorbed powers of the foundation strain. It becomes the root strain for the new bilek "ust as the offspring who leaves the bilek and takes the strain becomes the new head. The layout of a field, with the head rice at the center, surrounded by subsidiary sacred strains, and then by ordinary rice, pro"ects how the group will divide, while each root strain embodies the ritual strength, solidarity, and current of successful bileks from the past. Through the foundation strain, this ritual economy represents the autarky or self!sufficiency that the human group can never attain. ileks grow, bring in new members, divide, and lose most of their members. In contrast, the foundation rice is never traded for other

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman rice or anything else; it is not lent or fed to people from outside the bilek; and it is never mi.ed with the other rice strains in the bilek, all of which are consumed in the house. Each year, part of the foundation rice is carefully preserved for seeding in the following cycle, but only a small amount of this seed is planted, the rest is hoarded, and the bilek group eats its reserve parsimoniously. Iban say that if the foundation strain left the bilek in e.change or consumption, its vitality or life principle that was accumulated over the years through rituals would be dissipated. ;ot being able to reproduce the base rice would be even worse, for this rice is the bilek whose continuity it must assure. In contrast to the foundation rice, the other strains are eaten and may be traded; e.cess supplies are e.changed for Chinese "ars and brass gongs, which are displayed at the house. They represent the power of the root rice that has brought fertility to the strains that surround it. $n accumulation and display of these market items shows the continuity and success of the house and of the one item that is never traded or let loose 2 its foundation crop. Iban have a ritual economy. They depend on rice, and the root rice is the source of food for the house but is hardly consumed. 0uch thought and energy is e.pended on this item that is scarcely used, because it is the source of vitality in material and social life. Iban economy is a ritual that keeps social life going and whose feature of self!sufficiency represents what the house group cannot achieve. Iban economy transforms house dependence on others through marriage into the image of autarky. Iban economy turns house sociality into what it cannot achieve6 self!sufficiency. Iban ritual economy contradicts the social life on which it is based.

Dobuan Autarky

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman During the 1920s, which were the early days of anthropology, Reo Fortune, traveled to the island of Dobu, which is located off the coast of New Guinea, where he carried out an extensive field study. Fortune also made a significant contribution to mathematics (known as The Fortunate Number), and when I knew him much later he would tell me again and again that I should take up physics. After his Dobu research Fortune worked in New Guinea with Margaret Mead, who was his wife. But he is best known for his Dobu study, because on this small, relatively isolated island, the young anthropologist encountered a society in which lines of yams were treated as human, and humans were dependent on the keeping the yam lines self-sufficient or autarkic. Was everything back to front? (n ,obu, yams are the staple, but they provide more than sustenance. In the ,obuan world, yams are beings, like humans, and they give birth to children, like mothers. -ithout a garden of yams one is nothing, even despised6 with yams to raise and to eat, a ,obuan has a social place, even if it is always in "eopardy because anyone's yams can be lost or stolen by others. Connecting people over time and in space, yams are the current of ,obuan sociality. ut this society is built on an unresolved dialectic. Couseholds raise yams, and yams make up the material economy of ,obu, but yam lines do not hold this group together. (n ,obu, the house economy and the larger community by which the yams are transmitted do not fit together. ;ot only do the two parts of economy diverge, they are at odds. efore going further, I admit to simplification. The ,obuans participate in the famed kula e.change that takes place between islands in the )outhern /acific. ronislaw 0alinowski, who carried out his research in the Trobriand Islands,had studied and described it.B $s 0alinowski presented the kula, it was all absorbing for the Trobrianders, but <ortune, whose work was published in =>DE, some years after 0alinowski's, offered a different picture of ,obuan life.

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman <or these people gardening is more important than participation in the kula. $s <ortune saw it, kula e.change meant the e.change of ornamental wear 2 armbands and necklaces; the kula was a noneconomic institution, impelled by the love of e.ternal e.change. Even so, during the kula e.changes of high valuables, ,obuans bartered some of their useful items such as sago, face paint, and teeth paint for pottery and adze blades. ,obu was not isolated, and the ,obuans did more than raise and eat yams, but yams were the center of their economy. $s <ortune e.pressed it, %gardening is the supreme occupation.& ,obuans reckon their important relationships through matrilines, which are termed, &mother's milk.& These groups trace their connections through lines of females but they include both the women and the men who are direct descendants of lineage females. -omen pass on the affiliation, men do not. $t each generation, however, men are part of a matrilineage and have considerable power within it. Through the matrilines house and garden land, name, status, trees, canoes, fishing nets, adzes, valuables, personal property and above all yams are inherited, although men sometimes pass some of this material goods, e.cept for yams, to their offspring outside their matriline. The social order also depends on establishing a house within a matrilineal community. $ house consists of husband, wife and their children. In effect, the house group is a short matriline 8consisting of mother and children9 plus an in!marrying spouse. )o far, so good, but this arrangement sets up an irresolvable problem. The basic social unit is the short matriline consisting of a sister, her children, and her brother who has a degree of authority over them within the matrilineage.This is the property owning group. The group that works the holding, however, is the house consisting of a mother, father and children.

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman $ tension is established between the matrilineal family of brother, sister and her children, and the nuclear family of husband, wife, and children. oth are important, but in different ways. Through the matrilineage material wealth is inherited; through the house material activities are carried out. To provide descendants for the matriline, males from outside the lineage are needed, "ust as a lineage brother will father children through a mother outside his matriline. *enders are pulled in two directions. 0ales are pulled toward their sisters and their offspring who are their closest relatives,inheritors, and successors; and they are pulled toward their spouses and their own children who are in a different lineage. <emales are pulled toward their brothers from whom their children inherit and who have authority over them, and they are pulled toward their spouses with whom they make a house with her children. Cere lies the dilemma6 how can each set of ties be maintained in light of the other5 The inner social cell is the short matrilineal group consisting of mother, brother and her children, but it cannot reproduce without a male from outside; in reverse, the inner economic cell of the house must provide a male to another group "ust as it receives. The dilemma of establishing a house while maintaining lineage ties cannot be fully resolved, for where should the house be located 2 near the mother's matrilineal community or near the father's lineage5 If a matrilineage keeps to itself, it cannot reproduce, and if it allows its members to live elsewhere, it does not persist. ,obuans have devised a part solution6 each family maintains two houses and alternates between them. (ne year a family of mother, father and children lives in the community of the mother and her matrilineal brothers, while the husband is separated from his matrilineal community; the ne.t year the family lives in the community of the male and his matrilineal sisters, while the wife is

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman separated from hers. The solution is not perfect, because it means that a matrilineal community always contains outsider husbands who are not members of the community lineage. 0ore important, the basic social unit of ,obu, consisting of a mother, her offspring and her brother, is never fully kept together; either the uncle is nearby when the family resides in his community and the father is absent from his matrilineage, or the uncle is absent when the father resides 2 as an uncle ! in his matrilineal village. Throughout these momentous transitions the house economy stays together at the e.pense of one or the other matrilines that are the communal units of society. This solution of alternating residence offers an uneasy compromise, and the underlying tension reverberates through ,obuan society and everyday life. <or e.ample, there is tension, competition, and sorcery between people who are living in the same village but who are not members of its lineage. 0ales residing in their wife's village are termed %boundary men& and are viewed with suspicion. )uspected of being sorcerers, they feel at risk as well. If the ,obuan dilemma remains unresolved in social life, it is ritually resolved in material life. <rom a market or standard economy perspective, everything is topsy!turvy on ,obu. The material economy of yams is a re!presentation and a mystification of social relationships instead of being the foundation on which social life is built. Economy becomes a social statement. Each matrilineage has a line of yam seed, and seed yams are secured and inherited only within the matrilineage, from brother and sister to her offspring. $ccording to ,obuans, only this yam seed will produce for the members of the matrilineage who possess it, because the yams need the associated lineage incantations in order to grow, and these spells are held secretly and passed within the matrilineage. <or the same reason, members of a matrilineage are

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman not able to grow yams that are not of their matrilineal seed. In fact, say the ,obuans, wild yams, over which spells are not performed, cannot reproduce. 7eo <ortune, the intrepid ethnographer, even offered free yam seed 8and money9 to ,obuans for planting in their gardens, but his offer was refused. $ccording to ,obuans, yams have ears, by which they respond to incantations of growth; but yam lines do not increase in number. $ large garden appears for a different reason6 yams walk about at night, and through spells men may steal them as they stroll. :ust as men try to steal wives through spells, so they try to steal yams by verbal persuasion. )educing women and seducing yams bring prestige, bearing witness to control of magical powers. etween men of different matrilines there is intense competition to woo yams in this perceived no growth situation. Cusband and wife raise yams together in a garden but keep their seed apart. 8;o one else should enter their garden or their house9 for fear of their spells.9 Cusband and wife each help provide for their house family and their harvests are deposited in the house yam bin, but they are stored separately. The two yam lines are earmarked in cooking as well, and a partner does not eat the yams of a spouse, although both strains are fed to their children. Every year a part of the harvest must be saved as seed for the ne.t year, and if a seed strain is depleted the owner is at grave risk. Ce or she may be able to obtain the appropriate seed from matrilineal kin but usually not. If a yam line is lost, so is the matriline, because it cannot feed its chldren and its members will not be able to marry as no one will pair with them for fear of losig their own lines by having to feed too many others. The destitute person becomes a beggar or fisherman, which are despised occupations. Thus, ,obuan yam lines are like human matrilineages, with the e.ception that they do not need to mi. with other lines to

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman reproduce. 1ams are complete lineages without need of outsiders. They are seeded, cultivated, harvested, eaten and preserved, as if they were autarkic lines. (n ,obu, economy is not abstracted or separated from social life6 it is not an impersonal machine nor a strictly material act, because yams need incantations from humans to grow. The yam garden is a ritual site as if it were the solution to a social problem the ,obuans created but cannot accept. In ,obuan economy everything is in reverse6 If in high market economies we sometimes mystify economic relationships as if they were friendly and mutual, ,obuans mystify their deepest social tension as if it could be resolved through their economy and an autarkic current of yams. I am not suggesting that ,obuans eat only yams or that gardening, while deemed by them to be the most important work, is the whole of their material life. ,obuans e.change valuables in kula transactions with neighboring islands, and they barter for specific ob"ects. ut the focus is inward on the independent matrilineage, which is impossible to sustain, e.cept in the imagination modeled as an autarkic yam economy. 1ams are the vital current for ,obuans, and ,obuan economy is a ritual that says something about their most profound social problem but never resolves it.

Economy Talks These ritual economies are focused on the house and community spaces of material, and they are connected to trade and commerce. In contemporary discussions, the idea of markets is linked to the notion of freedom. According to this view, with increased exchange and specialization, choice broadens, and people have a better opportunity to optimize their preferences. But is this vision of freedom all that we mean by the term and is market choice its only measure? Ritual economies also exhibit freedom by displaying that economies are fashioned in many ways and serve many purposes: each could have been different.

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman With them economy begins with sociality. It does and says something about the connections of people to the past, future, environment, divinity or spirits, and others. The bottom line is not profit but social issues, such as continuity, identity, relationships, well-being, and contradictions. The examples can be multiplied, for narratives explaining connections, establishing identity, and assuring continuity are widely found. A productive resource may be seen as a gift from God or from the devil that is shared. It can be viewed as a gift of nature taken on the basis of first come, first serve or secured by the labor used to improve it. A current of vitality can be viewed as a gift from ancestors or from parents.5 Economists sometimes tax me to produce a theory that can be verified or falsified, or to produce a deductive argument. Instead, I observe that ritual economies are widely found and that the geographic and cultural diversity of these examples constitutes a form of persuasion, as are deductive and mathematical models in the world of high markets. Ritual economies are built in many ways, which present a contrast to our idea of inert things and ideas. In high market economies, we control lifeless ores, air, earth, machines, and other substances used in production and distribution. In ritual economies, people seem to be controlled by forces from which the modern mentality has liberated us. But does this liberation come at a cost? Have high market severed the currents that place them in a heritage, the material world, and sociality? Others understand that ancestors or spirits were or were not favorable, or that luck and fortune did or did not bring a good result. From as high market perspective, these are rationalizations or stories about human failings that people tell themselves. But consider how our view about their stories appears to them: is our understanding of ritual economies a rationalization for our economy in which connections to others and the environment are not recognized? One implication of an economy that does not connect itself to animate gods and spirits, or to a human spirit, is a loss of humility, and of a sense and acceptance of uncertainty. When we claim that information reduces risk, we place ourselves in an objective position that recognizes few bounds to human reason. Was Weber too pessimistic in pointing to a loss of ritual or disenchantment as characteristic of our age? Could it be that high market economies are rituals rather than luminous expressions of self-interested, calculated choice? Even if they do not have

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4/23/14 4. Economy as Ritual - Gudeman currents that unite them, they are buffeted by currents of sociality in various forms, from the affection for goods and their exchange, to mimicry of others in consumption and investing, to cycles of do-it-yourself in cooking and home improvements, to alternative experiments in material life, to national and international laws that place boundaries on markets. We do not know how far these currents will proceed, but they are part of economys perpetual dialectic of mutuality and market.

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The English translation comes from H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (1946); the essay was originally given as a speech at Munich University in 1918 and published in 1919 by Duncker and Humboldt. 2 Weber 1946: 155. 3 See Freeman 1958, 1970[1955]. I discussed this material in Gudeman 2001, 2008. 4 Malinowski 192 5 See Gudeman (2001, 2008). For southern Belize, see (Wilk 1991); for Borneo, see Helliwell 1995; Janowski (1995); for a Greek mountain community, see Du Boulay (1974); for Serbia, see Filifer 1995. For a survey of the spiritual commons, see (McWilliam 2009:167).