Category Archives: Gift economy

From Philanthropy to De-Accumulation

From Philanthropy to De-Accumulation The path towards flow is simple and immensely difficult: shedding what we have accumulated and restoring trust in natural abundance after having broken it to create artificial surplus and manufactured scarcity; uncoupling giving from receiving and restoring trust in each other’s capacity for gifting after millennia of exchange; and releasing control and restoring trust in ourselves and our capacity to face hardship after being habituated to fixing every little discomfort with money and technology.

From Exchange to Gifting Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary

From Exchange to Gifting Part Two: Beyond the Exchange/Gift Binary Many people, even those who live fully within the exchange paradigm and don’t ever think about maternal gifting, prefer going to a farmers’ market, if one exists where they live, or to a local store, rather than to a supermarket. Sometimes they prefer it enough that they are even willing to pay more money. There is a reason for it.

As Things Get Worse

As Things Get Worse

For the last hundred years or so, significant portions of the population within so-called liberal democracies in the global north have known comfort, ease, and personal liberties that have been unprecedented since at least the patriarchal turn. It’s not a new phenomenon for some people within a stratified society to …

How Children Learn About Others’ Needs

How Children Learn About Others’ Needs

In contemporary, patriarchal societies, mothering often leads to mothers giving up on their own needs, because of the lack of a communal context of togetherness and support. One of the results of this is that, as children, we don’t learn about the needs of others as an organic limit we …

Apart and Together: Addressing Needs beyond Market Economies

Apart and Together: Addressing Needs beyond Market Economies

“Each of us lives in and through an immense movement of the hands of other people. The hands of other people lift us from the womb. The hands of other people grow the food we eat, weave the clothes we wear, and build the shelters we inhabit. The hands of …