Week 13

Context
This plan was submitted in the thirteenth week of class for Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams, by David Graeber.The theme for this week was value.

Plan
1. Regarding the "first great effort to come up with an anthropological theory of values," or Chuck Kluckhohn's value project, I would love to read the book that resulted from this research. Given the times (1950s-60s) I wonder if there were any issues that researchers ran into while working with the minority groups, as this seemed (purposefully) to lie somewhere inbetween a psychology experiment and ethnographic fieldwork. Does talking about the methods change the results in any way?

2. In Chris Gregory's (1982) analysis of the potlatch system, what does it mean for reciprocity to be "slightly pathological" (160)? How do people feel about the idea of identities/personalities being caught up in gifts, both in our worlds today in the U.S. and in Annette Weiner's example of the Maori, for instance? (183)

3. On p. 100 a man exchanges twenty yards of linen for a coat. As the two men exchange, "they are agreeing that the value of the two objects is equivalent" (100). Can we analyze more specifically what "equivalence" means?