Reciprocity

I'm betting most people won't have heard about the Trobrianders. There's no particular reason you would have, unless you're an anthropology geek like SaladPot and I, but today I found myself randomly thinking about their culture of gift exchange.

The Trobrianders were a tribe native to Papua New Guinea; Malinowski's seminal ethnographic work in the early 1900s shaped anthropological study. In their culture, there was no sense of money, they relied on gift exchange as a principle way of living. One of these forms of gift exchange is where you exchange goods or services for others.

Tonight after work, I went round to my friend, Susan's house. She works in the same building as I do and we spend many a lunchtime together chatting. She needed help with figuring out some particularly pesky flat pack furniture and she had a steamer I could borrow to work on that wall. Gift exchange. A perfect way to get things done!

The flat pack furniture was interesting, but we got there in the end, then I headed home to steam that wall. I am now ridiculously pleased to say that after two hours with a steamer and a scraper, there is no wallpaper left on the wall! Woohoo! (Ok so there's still part of another wall to go, but it's really quite small).

I'm now very tired, but end the day with a sense of achievement and having quite unexpectedly relived some of my undergraduate musings!