Articles and Essays
by Genevieve Vaughan
Introduction to the Gift Economy
This web site is offered to you in an attempt to give a new perspective, to shift the paradigm according to which we now interpret the world towards a paradigm which will make social change easier. If you are willing to shift your perspective, read on!
Many people especially in the so-called ‘First World’ live in denial or ignorance of the devastating effects our countries’ and corporations’ policies have on the so-called ‘Third World’. Even when we are conscious of these effects we feel we have no power to change them or to change similar situations within our own countries. We usually feel we do not know why these things are happening, or we attribute them to ‘human nature’, greed, and ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. There is a way to understand what is happening which allows us to address it both on the individual and group level and on the level of national and corporate policy.
Magazine Articles
- The Gift Economy
- COMMUNITY VOICE: The Maternal Gift Economy
- Gift Giving and the Goddess: A Philosophy for Social Change
- Jacob Wrestles with the Angel
- My Journey with Sekhmet, Goddess of Power and Change
- Alma de Mujer, the Gift: Restoring Land to Indigenous People
- U.S. Feminist's Response to September 11: Calling for a Gift-Economy
The Maternal Gender
by Genevieve Vaughan (2017)
Hypotheses for a system-changing view
One hypothesis I explore in this paper is that both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, although there have always been at least two sexes, there was/is first one gender that then divides into two (or more). The first is the gender identity of the mother. Then in heterosexual patriarchy when the child is old enough to understand binary categorization, this common identity divides into females (who can potentially become biological mothers) and males (who cannot). In fact, the first identity of all children is formed in nurturing interaction with their motherers but that identity is usually heteronormatively denied for boys by about age three. Then, like their mothers before them, girls are often encouraged to adapt by over valuing and over nurturing those of the ‘non maternal’ gender.
The second hypothesis is that the so called ‘domestic sphere’ is actually based on an alternative economic mode, a gift economy, which provides the free satisfaction of needs, comparable to indigenous gift economies. The domestic gift economy presently co exists with the market economy based on quid pro quo exchange, which plunders gifts.
Academic Articles
- The Gift, Nurturance, and Human Emancipation (Jan. 2018)
- Reclaiming our Maternal Heritage
- A Gift Economy Based on Mothering
- Homo Donans Materno
- The Gift in Economic and Linguistic Communication
- The Exemplar and the Gift
- Feminist Semiotics for Social Change: the Mother or the Market
- Gift Giving as the Female Principle vs Patriarchal Capitalism
- Language as Gift and Community
- Mothering, Co-muni-cation and the Gifts of Language
- The Gift Economy (for Women's Worlds 2002, Uganda)
- The Disease of Patriarchal Capitalism
- Read: The Gift Economy, Theory and Practice & Listen:Download mp3
- The Gift in Economic and Linguistic Communication
- Shifting the Paradigm to a Maternal Gift Economy
- The Maternal Economy
- The Gift Alternative
- Recognizing giving and receiving as the maternal basis of language
Invitada: GENEVIEVE VAUGHAN
Escrotora del libro – PARA DONAR – ECONOMÍA DEL REGALO
Translated Articles / Videos
Español
- Angela Miles - Filosofa del Feminismo
- 36 Pasos hacia la Economía del Don
- El Ejemplar y el Don
- El Lenguaje como Don y Comunidad
- Das Schenken und die Gûttin, Eine Philosophie des sozialen Wandels
- Geschenkewirtschaft oder Tauschwirtschaft (eine Diskussion für Frieden anstatt Krieg)
- El regalar y la diosa, Una filosofía para el cambio social
- La Enfermedad del Capitalismo Patriarcal
Deutsch
- Der Prototyp und das Geschenk - Genevieve Vaughan
- Kommunikation und Tausch - Genevieve Vaughan
- Saussure und Vygotski via Marx - Genevieve Vaughan
- Das Schenken und die Göttin, Eine Philosophie des sozialen Wandels - Genevieve Vaughan
- Geschenkewirtschaft oder Tauschwirtschaft - Genevieve Vaughan
Italiano
- www.Economiadeldono.org
- Introduzione a Le Donne e l’Economia del Dono Una visione radicalmente diversa del mondo è possibile - di Genevieve Vaughan
- 36 passi verso l'economia del dono - di Genevieve Vaughan
- Relazione Per Porto Alegre Gruppo Femminista Per L’alternativa Economica
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Il Paradigma e l'Economia del Dono La legittimità dell'assistenza e delle cure in Max Weber - di Mari Lahtinen - Presentazione a Pescara, recorded and edited by Anonima Network
Listen to part 1 Part 1
Listen to part 2 Part 2- L'economia del dono nel Canada atlantico: riflessioni soggettive di una sociologa femminista - di Linda Christiansen-Ruffman, Saint Mary's University
- Il Dono Come Concezione del Mondo nel Pensiero Indigeno - di Rauna Kuokkanen
La Fattoria di Stonehaven: Centro congressi e ritrovo - di Lee Ann LaBar La società matriarcale: definizione e teoria - di Heide Goettner-Abendroth - L’espropriazione dei beni comuni locali tramite il credito: La lotta di riappropriazione - di Ana Isla
- Economia del Dono
Meaning is a Feminist Issue
by Erella Shadmi
Throughout years of activism and scholarship feminism has criticized and deconstructed almost every institution, concept, theory, politics, identity one can think of.
A student of mine asked me the other day: “Feminist theory deconstructs my identity and dismantles my world. What alternative does it offer me?” “Liberation and autonomy,” I replied. “And then what?” she questioned. And she was right: on the whole, feminism has left women with no spiritual attachment, with no alternative, with no meaning.
No wonder that so many women, facing the growing hardships of modern life, turn to religion which offers them community, respect and self-esteem. Others adopt New Age beliefs and rituals. Many make mothering constructed by patriarchal capitalism the center of their lives. Still others view career or shopping as sources of pleasure and sense of worth. These structures and constructs are oppressive and deceiving; yet, women have been tempted to believe in them and they give women hope and some comfort. Women, already informed by feminism, search for new meaning to inspire their lot and guide them towards a different reality, yet are unable to find it within today’s feminism.
Many Voices discuss the Gift Economy
- Let Us Begin With Courage by Jeanette Armstrong
- Nashira by Angela Dolmetsch
- ecommony by Friederike Habermann
- Sámi Women, Autonomy, and Decolonization in the Age of Globalization by Rauna Kuokkanen
- Towards an "Indigenous Paradigm" from a Sámi Perspective by Rauna Kuokkanen
- Be like a cracked pot by Judith Liberman
- The Fractal Binaries of the Gift & Powerpoint Presentation by Barbara Alice Mann
- Rematriation of the Truth by Barbara Alice Mann
- The Gift Paradigm in Africa by Bernedette Muthien
- Rematriation of Women-Centered (Feminist) Indigenous Knowledge by Bernedette Muthien
- In Life and Death: Reciprocity and Solidarity in Khasi-Pnar Society by Valentina Pakyentine
- Meaning is a Feminist Issue by Erella Shadmi
- Cultural Motherhood: Nurturing Human Maturation as a Way of Life by Frieda Werden
1. Explain what you mean by the ‘Gift Economy’.
A Gift Economy is the material interaction of a community based on the direct provisioning of needs without the mediation of exchange.
I believe that in every life there is an original economic mode that is based on unilateral giving and receiving and that is prior to the interaction of exchange, which is giving in order to receive an equivalent return.
Interview with Genevieve Vaughan
(2018)
Ideas for our Times - Interview with Genevieve Vaughan, Queried by Professor Rajani Kanth