ABSTRACT
It is important to maintain and manage relationships, and in every culture, people have found ways to do this as well as they can. In order to know about relationships this chapter describes two stories—one about relationships in which joking is prevalent, the other about the cultural significance of Christmas gifts and office parties. Joking relationships occur in communities with strong, unbreakable bonds between people, in situations where the intensity of those bonds leads to tensions. Joking relationships, for example, are frequently signs that something—conflict, sexual attraction, the truth—is being avoided. Well, both joking relationships and avoidance relationships occur extensively in organizations. If there is one thing about which anthropologists are in complete agreement it is that people use celebrations and presents to maintain and manage communities, relationships and economies. The relationship between the tribes can be characterized as a kind of toleration.
