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Changing the paradigm: International Feminists for a Gift Economy will soon be published in the Association for Research on Mothering book on Motherhood Movements with Demeter Press in Toronto.

Changing the paradigm: International Feminists for a Gift Economy
By Genevieve Vaughan

International Feminists for a Gift Economy is a loose-knit network of activist and academic women, based on an alternative paradigm at the heart of which is the idea of a maternal economy, which already exists before, beyond and within the economy of Patriarchal Capitalism. This idea requires some explanation, which I will attempt to give before describing the network in more detail. Not everyone in the network would agree on everything I say here, but most of them agree with much of it.

Let me begin by saying that  our idea of mothering is not based in sentimentality or essentialism. Instead it takes the point of view that mothering is economic. Mothering is a mode of distribution of goods and services to needs.  It is free  - and it has to be free because young children cannot give back an equivalent in exchange for what they receive. This view requires a change in the concept  of ‘economy’ to cover not only  market exchange but free provisioning. Broadening the category ‘economic’ in this way allows us to see mothering as the basis of an alternative economy,  one which is unfortunately not  valued in Western society. Many of the conflicts between the genders take place because one gender is identified with and is expected to practice one kind of economy while the other gender is expected to practice the other economy (which appears not to have a gendered identity).  In fact the market economy takes from the free provisioning gift economy. Profit itself is made of an extra margin of free gifts over and above expenses. This means that many free gifts are flowing to the market from women, men and nature, from the poor to the rich and  and from the Global South to the Global North. Profit is made of free gifts taken by the few from the many and accumulates at the top, thus creating a generalized situation of scarcity ‘below’  which allows those at the top to maintain control.  If too much abundance accumulates it does not ‘trickle down’ but is wasted on wars and armaments, reinforcing the control of the many by the few. Scarcity created in this way makes provisioning-gift-giving difficult and thus at an individual level also gives the gender that is not identified with the provisioning gift economy, control over the gender that is.

Mothering small children is thus the practice of an economy which is in opposition to the market economy. Small children require adults to give to them freely without expecting them to give back something in exchange. In fact though children do turntaking with their mothers and respond to them, they do not understand economic exchange until they are 4 or 5 years old.The logic and the psychology of the economy, of giving directly to satisfy needs are different and in opposition to the logic and psychology of the market economy.
The logic of exchange upon which the market is based, requires the return of goods or services of an equivalent value, and is therefore reflexive and ego oriented. It concentrates on satisfying the needs of the’ giver’. The logic of gift giving is transitive and other oriented. It concentrates on satisfying the needs of  the receiver. It gives value to the receiver by implication while exchange gives value to the ego by implication.
So-called ‘pre’ capitalist indigenous economies, many of which still exist, did not and do not have markets as such. Their gift economies are elaborations of the maternal provisioning gift economy, not of the market. It is therefore possible to avoid the detour of the market and base an economy on the principles of the maternal economy. We believe that this is the direction in which our society should move to solve the terrible problems that have been created by Patriarchy and Capitalism. In fact Patriarchy and Capitalism have merged because they share the values of competition and power-over, accumulation, individualism, exclusiveness and lack of concern for others. This has created a destructive system at the micro and at the macro level. While mothers can and do succeed in this system in spite of many challenges, the system itself is the problem and needs to be radically changed.

There is also a syllogism of gift giving “If A gives to B and B gives to C then A gives to C.” This syllogism underlies the circulation of gifts, which are passed unilaterally from one person to another. The value of the receiver is implied here also, and a giver, who was previously a receiver, does not have to lose the value s/he has been given, even when she gives the gift to someone else.

Unilateral giving and receiving create bonds while market exchange cancels and breaks them, and indifference is created between the participants (Godbout 1992). In fact exchange is adversarial in that each person is trying to get more than the other out of the supposedly equal exchange (Hyde 1979). Exchange is self-reflecting, self-asserting and so foregrounds itself while unilateral gift giving concentrates on the other and therefore the giver may remain unnoticed. This invisibility of gift giving unfortunately confirms and contributes to the over- visibility of  ego-oriented exchange.(This is one of the reasons why motherhood movements are so important).
In the early processes of unilateral giving and receiving the bodies of the members of the community are made, and their minds as well, in that their experiences are formed by these interactions. I think this transitive gift giving economy, the free transfer of need-satisfying goods and services, can also be seen as communication, a material communication, which creates bodies as well as human relations and minds and gives value as well as material goods. This communication forms the co-‘muni’ –ty from the Latin word meaning ‘gifts’ i.e.  ‘giving gifts together’.
Market exchange instead is a kind of aberrant material communication, a non- communication, which is intransitive and stops the gift.  The identity logic of the market economy influences us very strongly to validate only the kind of relations that occur in giving to receive an equivalent or to make a profit. Moreover market exchange emphasizes the ego orientation of homo economicus and considers other- orientation as an unrealistic moral penchant.

The division between the domestic sphere  and the economic and political spheres can be cancelled or bridged  by recognizing the maternal gift economy as an alternative economy, which already exists and which actually gives to or subsidizes the economy based on exchange. What is necessary is the liberation of the maternal economy from the economy based on exchange, and the gradual elimination and discrediting of the market rather than the assimilation of gift givers into the market.  That is why many of us in the network  do not believe in wages for housework as a long term solution. We need to eliminate the market altogether and put in its place a generalized maternal gift economy. Even thinking about this possibility and working towards it begins to make cracks in the monolith and validate the values of gift giving over the values of exchange.

The idea of the gift economy has been discussed in academia for many years: from Marcel Mauss in the 1920s to Lewis Hyde, Jacques Godbout,  Hélène Cixous,  Alain Caillé, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Anne Primavesi and many others in the last decades. It  has inspired a number of the movements that want to create an alternative to Capitalism. However these movements, even if they are feminist and egalitarian, do not usually recognize the basis of gift giving in mothering. And they do not recognize Patriarchal Capitalism as a parasitic system which functions by capturing and controlling the gift economy.

Examples of attempts to practice gift economy more or less consciously can be found in

Income-sharing intentional communities

Community gardens

Wikipedia

Free Software

General Public License (Copyleft)

Creative Commons license

Blood banks and organ donation

Hitchhiking

Ride sharing

Yellow Bikes

Couch surfing

AA

Burning Man

Rainbow Gatherings

Remittances of immigrants to their home countries

Some alternative currencies - time banks

Some volunteerism and much non profit work

Community solidarity work as seen in fire fighters after the twin towers and citizens trying to help in New Orleans.

Many indigenous societies have maintained gift economy practices, and gift-based cultures in spite of the encroachment and persecution of Patriarchal Capitalsm.

Recently I met some women in Mali who were still practicing the Dama. It is a traditional mother-based gift economy but they had not used those words for it.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned, most of the present gift economy initiatives do not recognize any connection with mothering, even though many have important leadership of women. International Feminists for a Gift Economy is trying to validate the logic of unilateral maternal gift giving as the  logic of this alternative economy and put it in the forefront while pointing the way towards non-violently dismantling the Patriarchal economy of death.
We work closely with Akademie Hagia’s Matriarchal Studies network, and many of our members participate in both. The gift economy, like matriarchy, applies maternal values in the organization of the lives of both women and men.  It is the generalization of the logic of mothering to the wider social sphere that permits gifts to circulate within a community without an immediate return, satisfying needs and creating and maintaining the bonds that form the community itself. If the society does not honor women and motherhood, the gift economy becomes difficult to practice, perhaps a sort of unrealistic add-on to a supposedly more basic priniciple of exchange. Recent gift economy projects seem to be free floating, without the roots which are in the maternal practice. This lets Patriarchal society claim the gift economy as men’s invention, erasing its connection to mothering and denying the generalization of mothering logic and the validation of the mothering practice.
There are some somewhat denatured gift practices which have been integrated into the mainstream, for example in Japan where corporation managers and workers maintain good relations through gift giving. Christmas and birthday gifts  in the West can also be located somewhere between gift and exchange and have a  relation-making capacity. In many countries there are traditional gift giving hierarchies, which maintain the social structure. Patriarchal religious institutions have often  claimed gift giving as their special territory, making misogynist rules and extolling sacrifice as good for the soul. Patriarchal governments give aid with strings attached to  countries in difficulty, creating economic servitude and placing the countries in a “femized” position.

In  Western society, mothering is discredited and often essentialistically identified with women-only while instances of the wider gift economy seem to have nothing to do with mothering or even with women. Fathering is distinguished from mothering and said to be its complement. In fact the idea of complementary male and female ‘energies’ is often embraced, without recognizing the continuity of what we call ‘male energy’ with the social construct of institutional patriarchy. I believe humanity is maternal – we are all mothered children – Patriarchal dominant ‘male energy’ is a social construct that should be eliminated. ‘Female energy’ should not try to complement or be in equilibrium with it. Being in equilibrium with the values of domination  only enables them and distorts the integrity of the enabler.

The gift economy works best in a situation of abundance. Scarcity makes gift giving impractical and self sacrificial. So the gigantic social mechanism of the Patriarchal Capitalistic system itself creates the scarcity that is necessary to keep the gift economy in a situation of difficulty. Thus it is not the maternal values  we must criticize for  making us self-sacrifice but the artificially created  context of scarcity  in which gift giving is forced to exist. Mothers do not choose the role of victim. It is forced on us by the context, which does not provide the means of giving and which in many cases seems to be inalterable. Thus it is only by changing the system that mothers can find the abundance necessary to do their jobs and ensure this abundance to future mothers and others as well.

Extending mothering to the wider picture and seeing the problem as a clash between two economic logics, two modes of distribution, allows us to depersonalize the problem. It also helps gift-giving women (those who actually give birth and those who do not) and men recognize the parasitism of a Patriarchal system of which they are unknowingly the hosts. Shifting the paradigm towards the gift economy can provide the understanding and the change of consciousness  we need to dismantle this pernicious system.

In 1988 I  started the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, an international  all-women activist foundation doing projects for social change according to ‘women’s values’. Through this foundation my co workers and I tried to practice the maternal gift economy, long before anyone else was talking about it in the US. It is exciting to me to see how much the zeitgeist has changed over the years, and how many even mainstream  people are now talking about and trying to practice the gift economy (even if  they still do not acknowledge mothering).

In 2001 I went to a meeting in Norway of women from many countries, who were starting the International Feminist University Network. Many of them became enthusiastic about the idea of the gift economy and we decided to have a meeting in Texas together with women from the Foundation for a Compassionate Society, and other women they and I knew from our work elsewhere. At this meeting in May 2002 we formed the network, International Feminists for a Gift Economy. Indigenous and non indigenous women from countries of the global South and North, activists and academics, came to Texas and after deep discussions, formed the core of the network which continues today.  We connect with each other on an e list, speak together on panels at conferences, collaborate on projects to try to shift the paradigm away from the market and towards a maternal gift economy and its values. The Foundation put on a conference in 2004, where many of the network members spoke, called A Radically Different World View is Possible: the Gift Economy Inside and Outside Patriarchal Capitalism. In 2005, the last year of the operation of the Foundation, we put on a conference on Matriarchal Studies together with Heide Goettner-Abendroth from Germany, who started the movement of matriarchal studies there some 20 years ago, and had recently held the first Congress of Matriarchal Studies in Luxembourg in 2003. These two conferences and the books, which came out of them, are reference points for our networks.
International Feminists for a Gift Economy is unusual perhaps in that from the beginning it has been a coalition of women from different countries. We embrace a common paradigm based on the values of an economy of mothering, which can transform Capitalism and Patriarchy. We are unbureaucratic  and undogmatic and are happy for others to join us in trying to move towards the maternal gift paradigm.
Find out more at www.gift-economy.com

References
Hyde, Lewis. 1979. The Gift, Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. New York: Random House.

Godbout, Jacques T. and Alain Caillé, 1998. Engl. trans. Donald Winkler, The World of the Gift. Montreal: Mc Gill-Queen’s University Press.

Vaughan, Genevieve, 1997. For Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Austin:PlainView/ Anomaly Press.

Vaughan, Genevieve ed., 2008.  Women and the Gift Economy: A Radically Different Worldview is Possible, Toronto:Inanna Press.