Boris the spider (creepy, crawly)

From: Paul H.Dillon (illonph@pacbell.net)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2001 - 22:43:37 PST


Bill,

If you want to see a truly fascinating example of "activity systems"
linking at that level (what Marx talked about as linkages of modes of
production), the transformations of the potlatch among the Northwest Coast
Indians (Kwakiutl up through the Tlingit but also Salish, etc.) is really
great. Hudson Bay Trading Co. did great business providing the Kwakiutl
with blankets for distribution in exchange for stuff that previously
couldn't be transformed into the kind of thing that could be distributed at
a potlatch to begin with. Something about the non-existence of the value
relation, etc. in Kwakiutl culture (damn! I used that word). The whole
process ended up blowing away what had been a somewhat "balanced" process of
exchange of prestige goods related to the maintenance of matrimonial
alliances between lineages. This, among other things, had pretty
disastrous consequences for Kwakiutl society and ended up undermining the
potlatch, which could pretty easily be analyzed as an activity system, I'd
say. Sort of the opposite of your Viking example but more typical when
we're dealing with the effects of capitalism on non-capitalist systems.

Paul H. Dillon

----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Barowy <wbarowy@lesley.edu>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 8:56 PM
Subject: Re: spiders

> Hi Paul,
>
> Yeah, I think that this direction can be informed quite a bit by
anthropology -- some work has recently caught my attention -- the study of
the greenland vikings, whom some think their disappearance is related to
their failure in taking up native hunting strategies. Apparently there were
no spiders/bridges/brokers there -- the church would not allow them.
>
> bb
>



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