ANTH 3220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Atlantic Slave Trade, Raffia Palm, Baphia Nitida
30 May 2015
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Document Summary
Involve full range of moral relations including baseline communism, exchange, and hierarchy. Concerned not with the accumulation of wealth, but with the creation, destruction, and rearranging of human beings. Establish peace and friendly relations between islands (elite) gifting relationships. Sometimes called primitive money" but this is problematic for us (evolutionary) Social money usually useful for adornment of person. A way of recognizing the existence of debts that cannot possibly be paid. Avoid feuds (more killing) social money is a way of recognizing the existence of debts that cannot possibly be paid. Token" exchanges in human economies nevertheless help establish equivalences. Violence + known exchange value (could equal)= commercial exchange in humans. Marriage negotiation involves giving bars of camwood and raffia-palm cloth. If one incurs blood debt must replace human with human (almost always women) Could trade right to pawn to village when unable to obtain (100 raffia cloths or 5 bars of camwood)
