ABSTRACT
The labor of anthropology has become progressively more subdivided into smaller and smaller tasks whose accomplishment has become the responsibility of increasingly more specialized researchers. Meaning-oriented anthropologists inspired by Marx have made frequent use of his concept of “commodity fetishism.”Gift logic incorporates notions of reciprocity and redistribution. Gift and commodity logic also differ with regard to social and biological reproduction. Reproducing the social relations of a commodity economy is contingent upon control over the means of production. Reproducing social relations in a gift economy, on the other hand, is contingent upon control over the means of consumption, for people produce each other through the gift of things which they consume. Gregory refers to this process as “consumptive production”. The therapeutic strategies of the Butaro healers and Nanga are virtually antithetical: where the Butaro healers seek out the “witch” in one’s social nexus, Nanga healers seek out and purge the “witch” in one’s self, i.e., sin and guilt.
