ABSTRACT
The cultural conventions of exchange involve both the actual practices of exchange and the discursive practices that surround exchange within a specific cultural environment. The practices of exchange, including the occasions, gifts and networks of exchange, are ruled by convention, which is to say that even though people might experience their gift exchange as free, they are in fact socially obliged to participate in certain gift-exchange rituals. These have thus far been analysed based on the descriptions people in the seventeenth century and twentieth century have left behind of their daily practices. The discursive practices are slightly more difficult to analyse on the basis of these daily descriptions. Though people may comment on their exchange and verbally pass judgement on it in either positive or negative terms in their daily descriptions, these do not leave much room to determine how people are supposed to deal with their gift exchanges by cultural convention.
