Reciprocity on Demand
Sharing and Exchanging Food in Northwestern Namibia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5293302 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Schnegg (0000-0002-7009-5389) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 313-330 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Nature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1045-6767 • E-ISSN: 1936-4776 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s12110-015-9236-5 |
| PMID | 26228247 |
| OpenAlex | W1923054812 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 26 |
| References cited | 51 |
Two competing models concerning food transfers prominent in the anthropological literature conceptualize such transfers either as sharing or as exchange. Sharing is understood as situational transactions formed through demands and unconditional giving, whereas reciprocal exchange is understood in terms of networking and keeping score. I propose that the picture is more complicated than these classifications suggests. Drawing on data collected in Northwestern Namibia, I show that sharing and reciprocal exchange are dynamically interrelated in actual food transfers. As a local norm, people can demand food from anyone, and they are typically given food in response to a demand. However, in practice, food transfer networks emerge (N = 62) that are highly reciprocal and fit the exchange model much better. Although the sharing norm makes no restrictions on whom to ask, in practice people often turn to their neighbors. Interpersonal dynamics account for why some of those ties become strongly reciprocal and others do not. Under these circumstances, unconditional sharing, a norm that has been viewed as an alternative to exchange, can lead to reciprocity via reciprocity on demand
Economics · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · Microeconomics · Norm (philosophy · Norm of reciprocity · Political science · Positive economics · Reciprocal · Reciprocity · Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Situational ethics · Social exchange theory · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Psychology · Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology · Social Psychology
When sharing becomes shameful
Transition of social organisations driven by gift relationships
Sending the elevator back down
Reziprozität. Annäherungen an eine Grundlegung der Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften
‘Em i Stap Bilong En Yet’
Culture as response
Autonomy, cognitive development, and the socialisation of cooperation in foragers
Lost in Translation
Can household water sharing advance water security? An integrative review of water entitlements and entitlement failures
Patterns and lived realities
Risky Business? Rural Entrepreneurship in Subsistence Markets
Normalizing necessity? Support networks and racial inequality in Namibia
Moral Economy Meets Social Enterprise Community-Based Green Energy Project in Rural Burundi
Subsidized elephants
Sharing and neoliberal discourse
Religiosity and gender bias structure social networks
Hunters and gatherers past and present
Capital and Inequality in Rural Papua New Guinea
Institutional multiplexity
Moral equality and success of common-pool water governance in Namibia
The Relative Importance of "Cooperative Context" and Kinship in Structuring Cooperative Behavior
Water sharing is a distressing form of reciprocity
The Life of Winds
Collective Foods
The struggle for marriage
Becoming a Debtor to Eat
Politics and history in band societies
Reciprocal altruism, rather than kin selection, maintains nepotistic food transfers on an Ache reservation
Social Network Analysis
Death Without Weeping
The logic of asymmetric contests
To give and to give not
Hadza meat sharing
Quadratic Assignment as a General Data Analysis Strategy
A selfish origin for human food sharing
The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism
Sweetness and power
The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology
On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange
Kinship, Networks, and Exchange
The !Kung of Nyae Nyae
Social Exchange
Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa
Enumeration and Simulation Methods for 0–1 Matrices with Given Marginals
Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification
Diet choice, risk, and food sharing in a stochastic environment
Subsistence and Food Sharing in Northern Siberia
Why Hunter-Gatherers Work
Food Sharing Among Ache Foragers
Living Institutions
Interhousehold Meat Sharing among Mayangna and Miskito Horticulturalists in Nicaragua
Food sharing at meals
Norm enforcement among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen
Food-Sharing Networks in Lamalera, Indonesia
A proximate perspective on reciprocal altruism
Household and Kin Provisioning by Hadza Men
Short Take 13
Tolerated theft, suggestions about the ecology and evolution of sharing, hoarding and scrounging
Soliciting Gifts and Negotiating Agency
Beyond 'The Hunting and Gathering Mode of Subsistence
Coping with Risk
Places, practices, and things
Hidden Transcripts among the Rarámuri
Demand Sharing
Sharing
Sharing by Default
Deeper into a Hole
Embeddedness of Ethnographic Cases
Delayed Reciprocity and Tolerated Theft
The Giving Environment
Food Transfers Among Hiwi Foragers of Venezuela
Migration, Translocal Networks and Socio-Economic Stratification in Namibia
| Unique citing works | 26 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,6 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 25 |