Komter A.E. - Social Solidarity and the Gift (2004)(en)

The Gift: Meanings and Motives

painful, hurting, or offending gifts are given and, after all, are not the most notorious poisoners in history of the female sex?

Another explanation draws upon structural power asymmetries between women and men and upon the difference in resources from which power may be derived. It is not clear which gender benefits most from women’s liberality. On the one hand, women’s gift giving may be considered as a manifestation of gendered power inequality, because this is what they are expected to do as housewives. Their liberality may turn against them, for example, when they sacrifice their own autonomy for the sake of others. On the other hand, giving by women entails many attractive benefits to themselves as well: closer relationships and more extended social networks, and, therefore, a greater chance to receive attention, care, or help from others when necessary. Moreover, women receive relatively many material gifts themselves, which is also a pleasant aspect. How the balance of benefits or disadvantages for women as greatest givers will exactly weigh out depends on their personal power resources and social circumstances.

Women’s gift giving is caught in a fundamental paradox. On the one hand, their gift exchange may be considered a powerful means of affirming social identities and of creating and maintaining social relationships. Women’s activity in this domain might be interpreted as an effort “to secure permanence in a serial world that is always subject to loss and decay” (Weiner 1992: 7). On the other hand, given their unequal societal and economic power compared with that of men, women incur the risk of losing their own identity by giving much to others. In the act of giving, women are simultaneously creating the opportunity to keep or gain power, and making themselves vulnerable to the loss of power and autonomy. Weiner’s idea about “keeping-while-giving” – exchanging things in order to keep them – is a perfect illustration of this paradoxical tension in women’s gift giving: to overcome the threats of loss – of their own selves, of their power vis-a`-vis men, and of important social bonds – they give away abundantly. And, as a consequence of giving abundantly,

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Women, Gifts, and Power

they are facing the threat of losing their autonomy. It is as though men’s greater societal and economic power not only renders it less urgent for them to engage in substantial gift giving but also protects them from loss of autonomy through giving to other people.

The gender difference in gift giving illustrates the substantial role of women in creating the social cement of society. Although many forms of solidarity are not gendered at all, this applies neither to gift giving nor to informal care, a type of solidarity that is discussed in Chapters 6 and 7. Despite their increased emancipation, women still have the largest share in informal care. In these cases solidarity is clearly related to gender.

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PART II

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Solidarity and Selectivity

FIVE

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Social Theory and Social Ties

As to the question which gave rise to this work, it is that of the relations between the individual personality and social solidarity. What explains the fact that, while becoming more autonomous, the individual becomes more closely dependent on society? How can he simultaneously be more personally developed and more socially dependent? For it is undeniable that these two developments, however contradictory they may seem, are equally in evidence. That is the problem which we have set ourselves. What has seemed to us to resolve this apparent antinomy is a transformation of social solidarity due to the steadily growing development of the division of labour.

(Emile Durkheim 1964a [1893]: 37–38)

How is social order created? How is social order maintained? What makes people live together in peace and initiate mutual ties? What are the origins of the trust that is needed to be able to exchange goods and services? What are the psychological, social, and cultural conditions for the development of social ties? Those are the old questions to which social science – as advanced by its classical as well as its more modern authors – has attempted to find answers. The theme of social order has not exclusively been a central focus in the sociological

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discipline, but also in anthropology. In addition to Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons, who took primarily (but not exclusively) Western society as point of departure for their analyses, ethnologists and anthropologists such as Malinowski and Levi´-Strauss have studied the conditions for the genesis of a common culture. Processes of reciprocal exchange – of gifts, goods, and services – and the sense of moral obligation originating in these processes proved to be the basis of many non-Western societies.

In speaking of social order as a “problem,” Talcott Parsons identifies two conditions at its root. First, people have limited capacities to sympathize with their fellow human beings: there is a constant tension between the moral obligations they feel toward other people and the impulse to promote their own interests. What is desirable from a normative perspective does not necessarily correspond to our actual needs, wishes, and desires; this may be called a moral shortage. Second, people inhabit an environment that provides insufficient resources to fulfill the needs of all members of society; here, a material shortage, a problem of scarcity, is involved. “The problem of order is . . . rooted in inescapable conflict between the interests and desires of individuals and the requirements of society: to wit, the pacification of violent strife among men and the secure establishment of co-operative social relations making possible the pursuit of collective goals” (Wrong

1994: 36).

The more society is in a process of change, the more social science is concerned with the concepts of cohesion and solidarity. Therefore, it is not surprising that at the end of the nineteenth century sociologists were analyzing the consequences of the transition from traditional to modern society for social cohesion and solidarity and anthropologists were wondering on which principles culture and order in non-Western societies were based. Which were their main ideas, and what can we still learn from them? Why is the theory of the gift a theory of human solidarity?

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Social Theory and Social Ties

Classical Theory: Unity of Generosity and Self-Interest

Affective and Instrumental Bases of Solidarity

According to Durkheim the nature of solidarity is the central problem of sociology. This is the thread that runs through his whole work: what are the ties uniting people to each other, he wondered in 1888, five years before he wrote De la division du travail social, where he elaborates his theory of solidarity (Lukes 1973).

Durkheim’s predecessors had already developed some ideas about the social texture of society. In a work that predates Durkheim by a few decades, Auguste Comte, for instance, describes the social equilibrium in modern society as the result of the division of labor and occupational specialization. But to Comte the principle of differentiation and specialization also is a threat to feelings of community and togetherness. In contrast to Comte, Herbert Spencer emphasizes the element of self-interest involved in solidarity. In accordance with the tradition of British utilitarianism and the thinking of Adam Smith, he regards social cohesion as the result of the undisturbed interplay of individual interests; no shared beliefs, norms, or state regulations are needed to realize cohesion and solidarity. Tonnies,¨ the first to analyze the transformation of solidarity in the nineteenth century, describes how in the transition from Gemeinschaft to

Gesellschaft the traditional community values as they were embodied in the small-scale social unities of family, neighborhood, and village were substituted by individualized feelings and needs. In the large-scale centralized nation-state, social relationships had become dominated by economic rationality and free competition between individual interests. In contrast to Spencer, Tonnies¨ presents a gloomy picture of the rising capitalist society, which could only be kept under control by a strong state.

Durkheim agrees with Tonnies’s¨ division into two types of society, and also with his global characterization of Gemeinschaft. But while Tonnies¨ describes Gesellschaft as a mechanical aggregate, Durkheim does

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not conceive of premodern societies as more “organic” than contemporary ones. According to him collective activity in more modern societies is as spontaneous and natural as in more small-scale communities. In the end Durkheim reverses Tonnies’s¨ terminology: he reserves the term “mechanical solidarity” for the human ties that characterize traditional societies, while using “organic solidarity” to describe modern forms of community. He explains his choice for these terms as follows: mechanical solidarity “does not signify that it is produced by mechanical and artificial means. We call it that only by analogy to the cohesion which unites the elements of an inanimate body, as opposed to that which makes a unity out of the elements of a living body.” In the case of mechanical solidarity “the social molecules . . . can act together only in the measure that they have no actions of their own, as the molecules of inorganic bodies” (1964a [1893]: 130).

Mechanical solidarity corresponds to a “system of homogeneous segments that are similar to one another” (1964a [1893]: 181). Society comprises such segments (families, clans, and territorial districts), which are characterized by a very low degree of interdependence. There is no fundamental distinction between individuals. Individual conscience is dependent on the collective conscience, and individual identity is a part of group identity. In mechanical solidarity human behavior is regulated by the shared norms, sentiments, and values that form together the conscience collective. This type of solidarity is reflected in the application of severe penal sanctions – “repressive law” – to deviant behavior or the violation of norms. Religion is a dominant factor in social life, and the codes of morality are concrete and specific.

In more modern societies organic solidarity is gradually replacing mechanical solidarity. Organic solidarity is based on individual difference. The increased division of labor and occupational specialization at the end of the nineteenth century brought about a differentiation in societal tasks and functions comparable to the different functions of the bodily organs, which analogy explains Durkheim’s “organic solidarity.” Durkheim

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assumes a direct relationship between the degree of specialization of societal functions and the extent of social cohesion: the more labor is divided and the activity of each is specialized, “the stronger is the cohesion which results from this solidarity” (1964a [1893]: 131). Or, in his organ terminology, “the unity of the organism is as great as the individuation of the parts is more marked” (131). There is a high level of mutual dependency. Legal regulations determine the nature of and relationships between the different societal tasks and functions. As the division of labor extends, the conscience collective weakens: its content becomes increasingly secular and human-oriented, and morality is becoming more abstract and universal. It is important to bear in mind that Durkheim regards the distinction between the solidarity types as an analytical one and, in fact, as two aspects of the same reality that are rarely entirely separate.

In line with Tonnies’s¨ distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft Max Weber distinguishes between communal and associative social relationships. When people’s action – either individual or collective – is based on the subjective feeling of togetherness, Weber speaks of communal relationships. This feeling may stem from affection or from tradition, but it is essential that more than the mere feeling of togetherness is involved. “It is only when this feeling leads to a mutual orientation of their behaviour to each other that a social relationship arises between them” (1947 [1922]: 138). Associative relationships are at issue when the orientation of action springs from a rationally motivated correspondence between interests. This rationality may be inspired either by certain absolute values or by instrumental and utilitarian considerations. An example is market exchange, consisting of a compromise between opposed but complementary interests. Another example is the purely voluntary association between individuals on the basis of their self-interest; or the voluntary association of individuals sharing certain values.

Different from associative relationships, communal relationships have an affective, emotional, or traditional basis – for example, religious fraternities, erotic relationships, personal loyalty, or the esprit de corps

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