Let us now illustrate Mauss’ theory in a concrete context: It is early morning, a time of late dry season on the edge of Ethiopia. The Nuer people are beginning their day by rubbing their face, mouth and entire body with ash. There are cows everywhere, living side by side with the people. A Nuer man is singing about the past struggles, and about the beauty of the cattle (A film by: Harris, Briedenbach, Gardner, 1968: The Nuer). Just in a similar way as pigs are highly valuable for the Kawelka , the importance of cattle for Nuer is striking. Cattle is the main source of food, it has a prestige value, and religious significance. But above all, the bridewealth usage of cattle gives the cattle its most supreme value, as wife is the most important thing in Nuer man’s life, ensuring him his own home and fatherhood. The payment of bridewealth used to be 40 cows, but through diminishing cattle levels it is now approximately 25 cows, as there is no absolutely fixed payment. The bridewealth is divided among both paternal and maternal relatives of the bride. Not simply the payment of bridewealth settles the union of marriage. But alternately with the payments, certain ceremonial rites take place as well, each one of these making the transference into a legal contract of marriage union more stable. However, only a birth of a child completes the marriage (Evans-Pritchard, 1951). An old man is claiming his cows back, because his wife does not get pregnant. The bride’s family’s response to the divorce debate is that it is too early to claim infertility (Breidenbach, Gardner, Harris, 1968). Because of the risk for these kinds of claims, the bride’s family cannot safely dispose the cattle before the first-born secures the marriage. The obligation to distribute cattle among bride’s kin emerges from the fact that all brothers have equal rights to their cattle. When a man marries a woman with the family herd, his brothers will call her ‘our wife’, because she was married with their cattle, and the married couple’s children become ‘our children’, because they are ‘children of our cattle’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1951: p .78). The idea is that the bride’s parents (and relatives) receive only a part of the cattle on their daughter’s marriage, and the rest of the cattle will be paid when their granddaughters are married. Bridewealth is a legal contract, implying juridical rights and rules, which maintain order in the society. For instance the payment of bridewealth attaches children legally to their father’s lineage, and if the wife, for some reason, or a widow, would have children with another man, who is unrelated to her husband, her husband would still be the child’s legal or lineage father, and therefore entitled to a share in the child’s bridewealth. All brothers will marry, in order of seniority, from the family herd brought about by their sisters’ bridewealths. Any disapproval about this matter between the brothers is unacceptable, and would be seen as a serious assault towards the custom, which would destroy family and kinship ties.
Incest is a great taboo amongst the Nuer leading into strict rules of marriage prohibitions. A man cannot marry into a family or lineage with which he has close kinship ties. Therefore bridewealth connects people, between whom there was no obligations or behaviour patterns before. This, indeed, is the most significant character of the bridewealth, as it creates new social relationships. Affinal ties are transformed into kinship ties very slowly, and there are strict rules of appropriate behaviour, for example between the husband and his parents-in-law (Evans-Pritchard, 1951). This can be seen as a long period of what Van Gennep called the ‘liminal rites’; an unsettled period of transformation between past and future; a no man’s land. During this stage of the marriage, bridewealth plays a very important role by helping to regulate and gradually develop these new social relations closer. Generally the birth of a child finally creates a kinship tie between the families.
Unlike the bridewealth, in which the price of the gift is mainly decided on what the bridegroom and his people possess (through endless debates), the moka is characterised by rivalry, in which the members of the contract aim to out do one another in generosity. Moka is the extra, the interest (Charsley, lecture, 5.2.2003). Therefore moka appears to go beyond total services, and can be seen as an intermediate form of an exchange, which Mauss called the potlatch (of North West American Indians). Mauss defined potlatch as a ‘total services of an agonistic type’, because potlatch is characterised by rivalry, destruction of wealth, combat, as well as an exchange of war, and it unites ambivalent opposing forces of solidarity and violence (Mauss, 1990: p. 7; Godelier, 1999). The characteristic elements involved in the obligation to reciprocate are honour, status and prestige, or more precisely a fear of losing them through a failure to reciprocate. That is indeed the major concern in Ongka’s mind as well, as seen in the film by Charlie Nairn and the anthropologist Anthony Strathern: The Kawelka: Ongka’s big moka. Ongka is the big man of the Kawelka tribe. Big man can be seen as an organiser of big events, such as exchange, rituals and battles, but he does not have any authority. Big man can only try to persuade people and conveniently speech-giving is one of Ongka’s strongest talents (Charsley, lecture, 5.2.2003). The most important thing in Ongka’s life is to finish the biggest moka ever, consisting of 500-600 pigs, rare birds, money, a truck and perhaps a motorbike, as well as cows. Ongka is worried and stressed that he will fail to give the moka. He is afraid of losing his face publicly. It has taken five years for the Kawelka tribe to try to prepare this gift, and only by reciprocating Ongka can gain status for himself and for his tribe (Strathern & Nairn, 1974). The big moka is brought about through ‘investments’ (- an expression used in the film), in which initiatory gifts of pigs are given and later returned with interest. The flow of pigs spreads widely as gifts are passed on to third parties and eventually returned back through the same routes with interest. The one who is initiating the gift is the one who succeeds. Ongka talks endlessly about pigs: ‘you need pigs for everything: to pay for troubles, to get wives. If you do not have pigs you are nobody, you are rubbish.’ Ongka pays visits to people telling them: ‘stop fiddling about in the gardens, stop drinking beer and wasting time with women. What you are supposed to be doing is getting pigs ready for moka, not sitting around eating them.’ (Strathern & Nairn, 1974). In this way Ongka is trying to shame people in order to get pigs back, but nobody has to get organised in any particular date if they do not want to. Moka needs a lot of arrangements. It is a collective thing, which does not go smoothly. Moka is an important stimulus to make people work, in order to avoid the highly unpleasant status of ‘rubbish man’. Pigs are taken care of by women labour. One of Ongka’s wives is seen in the film, complaining how tired she is of the extremely hard work, but she has to keep on working, or people would say that she is ‘rubbish’.
Moka maintains peace between different tribes and people. Ongka explains how they used to (before the arrival of Christianity) carelessly kill people with spears and axes, and then were obliged to pay pigs for a compensation price to the relatives of the deceased, in order to make them feel better. The same phenomenon exists amonst the Nuer, known as bloodwealth, containing the same amount of cows as in the bridewealth. Bloodwealth is sometimes used to get a wife for the killed man. This kind of marriage is called a ghost marriage. Unfortunately, tribal warfare between the tribes of Mt. Hagen, in the Papua New Guinea, has increased on a large scale, which plays greater demands on producing, as more wealth is needed for the compensation prices (Godelier, 1999).
One of Ongka’s concerns is that not everybody cares about the moka. Ongka threatened, that he would slit the man’s throat, who did not return the moka, but even if Ongka would lose the profit of his gift, he would never lose his superiority of giving the gift (Strathern & Nairn, 1974).
Finally, after hard struggles, the moka is successfully reciprocated, and Ongka finishes his moka speech by saying: ‘I have won. I have knocked you down by giving so much’ (Strathern & Nairn, 1974).
Mauss also introduces a forth obligation, which is the obligation to give gifts to the gods, spirits and to the men who represent them. Mauss mentions Van Ossenbruggen’s approach, which emphasizes that just as gifts to humans maintain peace between people, the gifts to gods are a way of buying peace and to avoid misfortune (Mauss, 1990). The nature of these gifts is also to ask favours and show gratitude (Godelier, 1999). Mauss writes that the most important partners in contracts are spirits and gods, because ‘ it is they who are the true owners of the things and possessions of this world. With them it was most necessary to exchange, and with them it was most dangerous not to exchange’ (Mauss, 1990: p. 16). During wedding ceremonies, amongst the Nuer, ancestral spirits and ghosts are invoked to witness the union. They also hold a privileged partnership within the bridewealth, as ‘first the claims of the ghosts must be settled, then we can settle the claims of the remain alive’. If ghosts and spirits were denied their entitlement to the bridewealth the marriage would have misfortune (Evans-Pritchard, 1951: p. 81). According to Mauss gifts to gods are an exchange between people and gods, or more precisely a form of potlatch, as it includes the element of destruction and obligation to return more than was given: ‘The purpose of destruction by sacrifice is precisely that it is an act of giving that is necessarily reciprocated’ ( Mauss, 1990: p. 16). By giving something small to spirits and gods, they would give something much greater and valuable in return (Godelier, 1999). Godelier suggests, that when observed in this light, one can truly see the reasons why men who can reciprocate so much extra that other people are unable to provide repayment, are seen as superior to other men, even as gods (Godelier, 1999). Godelier also points out a fundamental inconsistency within Mauss’ arguments, as Mauss emphasizes the gods’ true ownership over everything, yet, at the same time, he suggests that humans can claim gifts from gods, without taking into consideration that gods are superior to humans to start with, and that they are not obliged to reciprocate in return (Godelier, 1999).
Mauss’ work has been highly influential, and many theories have followed his footsteps, although Mauss has not been left untouched by criticism either. A considerable amount of criticism emerged from his account of the spiritual aspect within the gift, which causes the obligation to reciprocate the gift. It seems that Mauss was unsatisfied with the explanation for reciprocation provided by the psychological pressure within the society to follow the rules of law, and the self-interest to give gifts in order to gain respect and gratitude, as well as to receive another gift in return. Since these were unable to fully explain the underlying reasons in gift exchange, Mauss felt the need to give religious meaning for the process (Godelier, 1999). Levi-Strauss ‘accused’ Mauss from committing a methodological error by neglecting the obligations to give and to accept a gift, and said that ‘Mauss left himself be ‘mystified’ by an ‘indigenous’ theory’ (Levi-Strauss, 1950:p. 47; Godelier, 1999:p. 7). Mauss’ insight seems to be in the category of beliefs without any scientific foundation, and his theory of the soul of the gift would be almost impossible to be observed within the bridewealth, moka, or in other ethnographic examples in a concrete form. It can be argued though, that Mauss had succeeded to illustrate that people make often decisions, which are emotional and personal, without being based on logical reasoning (Brier, 2002).
We have now identified Mauss’ system of total services, as we have seen that pigs for the Kawelka, and cows for the Nuer are not just for utilitarian or economic purpose, but a way to be able to take part into a meaningful part of society, and to define and secure bonds between peoples. If exchange fails through excessive rivalry, aggression and wars erupt (Brier, 2002). We have attempted to describe the workings of complete social systems. Moka and bridewealth are frameworks in which the people operate. Exchange is not a custom, but a complex enterprise and an achievement (Charsley, lecture, 5.2.2003). Levi-Strauss agreed with Mauss about the system of total services, but criticised Mauss from having disregarded that ‘the primary fundamental phenomenon of social life is exchange itself,’ and that society is founded on exchange and exists only through the combination of all sorts of exchange’ (Levi-Strauss, 1949:p. 47; Godelier, 1999:p. 19). However, Mauss can be credited to be the first to acknowledge that economics is integral to the culture of a society (Brier, 2002). We have also identified the three obligations within gift giving through recognising the rules of legality and the nature of self-interest involved in exchange, implying a social pressure, a need for public approval, and a desire to gain status and profit from counter gifts to mention but a few. But when it comes to the power in the object, or the spirit of the gift, which enforces repayment, we are left without a real prove of its existence. We shall leave this matter open for personal decision whether to believe in the spiritual aspect of the gift or not.
