Books


The Gift in the Heart of Language: The Maternal Source of Meaning


by Genevieve Vaughan

The author offers a paradigm-shifting view of the structure of material and verbal communication, based on the mother-child experience and confirmed by recent research in infant psychology. This view justifies a relational epistemology that informs the material gift economy, as well as the structure of language itself. Provisioning economies give value to the receivers, and the circulation of gifts consolidates community. Understanding language as verbal gifting unites other orientations with reason, to liberate us from biopathic, patriarchal conceptions of humanity. Sketched against this background, Vaughan introduces a conception of monetized exchange as a gift-denying and expropriating psychological mechanism, which is an unintended collective by product of verbal communication.


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ForGiving: A Feminist Criticism of Exchange


by Genevieve Vaughan

Capitalism and communism are both patriarchal. The philosophy of social change which is wider and deeper than either of them is feminism. I believe that feminism is a collective philosophy, a body of thought and action based on the values of women worldwide, which is presently revealing itself to the consciousness of all. Patriarchy has infected women and men for centuries, distorting our view of the world and warping our socio-economic practices. The agenda of feminism is to liberate everyone–women, children and men–from patriarchy without destroying the human beings who are its carriers and the planet where they live.


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Homo Donans


by Genevieve Vaughan

In this book Genevieve weaves together some of her newest articles exploring the possibility that gift giving is a fundamental interpretative key for the understanding of language and life, a key which has been cancelled by the ideology and practise of patriarchal capitalism. The restoration of gift giving to a central place in our attention, gives us a way to reconceptualize human beings as Homo Donans, not just Homo Sapiens, or worse, Homo Economicus.


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Athanor – Il Dono, the Gift, a Feminist Analysis


Edited by Genevieve Vaughan

A collection of essays about the gift economy by feminist scholars and activists. Published in Italy by Athanor.


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Women and the Gift Economy


Edited by Genevieve Vaughan

The conference, “A Radically Different Worldview is Possible: The Gift Economy Inside and Outside Patriarchal Capitalism,” was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in November 2004. The conference took place just after the U.S. presidential elections had left people of good will reeling from the re-election of George W. Bush, an event, which some believe was his second theft of the presidency. Even if Bush II had not won however, Patriarchal Capitalism1 would have continued in its life- threatening course. The conference and now this book are attempts to respond to the need for deep and lasting social change in an epoch of dangerous crisis for all humans, cultures, and the planet. This goal cannot be achieved without a new perspective, a change in paradigm, which brings with it a radically different vision of the nature of the problems, and of the alternatives.


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Children’s Books

Mother Nature’s Children

By Genevieve Vaughan
Illustrations by Liliana Wilson


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Ours Together Land

By Genevieve Vaughan
Illustrations by Liliana Wilson

A children’s book about the Gift Economy.


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Free

By Genevieve Vaughan
Illustrations by Liliana Wilson

The adventures of Trilly the Canary teach the gift economy to children. Illustrations by Liliana Wilson.


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