ABSTRACT
The previous chapter has looked at sharing in terms of the constituent practices that enable sharing across settings. We have seen how “details” matter, in terms of how co-presence is achieved and how responses tie in with demands, whether they are implicit or explicit. Against this background we can also expect that the “objects” of sharing also have an impact, an issue to which we turn in this chapter. The first point to note in this context is that sharing “objects” need not be objects in the narrow sense of things at all. As the Inuit example (see Box 2 in Chapter 1) already indicated, paying a visit may also be considered sharing. Damas’ study showed similarities in both cases, with only some slight differences. Similarly, sharing in many contexts around the world not only applies to granting others access to material objects such as food, clothes and tools but also to services, in particular labour and knowledge. It is noteworthy, though, that many of the community services work on a reciprocal basis that is more akin to a gift economy than to sharing in that they create specific personal obligations. Favours need to be returned and can be called upon from specific partners. Typical examples are work parties in South East Asia (see Figure 4.1), African “beer parties” (Figure 4.2) but also the so-called “blat” system of favours in Russia (Ledenena 1998) and the notion of zhanguang reciprocal gifts in China (Yan 1996). In many societies individuals draw on the work support of others, especially when facing larger tasks such as building a hut, house or tomb, and when preparing fields or when conducting a ritual. Correspondingly, these collective enterprises have been discussed extensively in anthropological literature, sometimes misleadingly as sharing or more appropriately in terms of exchange labour. What may look initially like the sharing of food (e.g. in a beer party) is a long-term exchange of services, work for work, or under more hierarchical conditions “food for work”.
