Considered to be a universal characteristic of all foraging societies, sharing is the way in which hunter-gatherers regulate the access of food, material goods, land, and other resources. And while this idea has been coined “reciprocity” or “exchange” in the past, it is important to know that “hunter-gatherers vary along a continuum” and that “the ways of [exchange] are various and intricate” (Kelly 1995:162-164). Also, the act of sharing is not natural and must be reinforced among hunter-gatherers. The enculturation of sharing is instilled into individuals at a very early age and "the importance of giving gifts and sharing is reinforced throughout life until it becomes deeply embedded within a person's personality. Because the failure to share among many hunter-gatherers results in ill feeling because one party fails to obtain food or gifts, but also because the failure to share sends a strong symbolic message to those left out of the division" (Kelly 1995:164-165). It is due to this variation that several categories of sharing have been created in order to encompass the diverse range of hunter-gatherer behaviors. These categories include reciprocity, demand sharing, social storage, and tolerated theft.
Picture of Agta foragers is courtesy of Pictures of Record, Inc.
Reciprocity
The most noted behaviors of reciprocity witnessed among hunter-gatherer groups tends to center around meat sharing, which in the interest of both the individual and the group allows people to act in a generous way, maintaining order and peace. Now according to Marshal Sahlins there are three modes of reciprocity which tend to be practiced among hunter-gatherers. Each one of these strategies produces both a positive and negative effect for the individuals involved and the group as a whole.
Generalized reciprocity
This is described as exchanging goods or services without any apparent expectation for something in return. It was once considered to be the primary method of exchange among hunter-gatherers, but recent evidence has shown that most generalized reciprocity occurs within immediate families rather than between individuals or groups.
Balanced reciprocity
Also known as "tit-for-tat" reciprocity, this strategy implies that goods and services are exchanged with the knowledge that an equal return is expected in time. But in "order for this form of reciprocity to be favored two conditions must be met: (1) for each individual, the value of the unit received is greater than the value of the unit given; (2) individuals who do not reciprocate achieve a lower net fitness than those who do" (Hill and Kaplan 1985:226).
Negative reciprocity
A form of reciprocity where goods and services are to be exchanged between individuals, but with concern for only their own best interests no return is given and only one side stands to benefit. By practicing this form of reciprocity many individuals become isolated from the group and begin to be in danger of losing out on the benefits of exchanged goods and services all together. Generally this type of behavior leads to hording or storage, which tends to hurt the group as a whole rather than help individuals profit. One attempt to curve this negative behavior is that of cooperative acquisition, where exchanges centered around "food are meant to secure future cooperation in the hunt" (Hill and Kaplan 1985:227).
Demand Sharing
Among some hunter-gatherer groups “much giving and sharing is in response to direct verbal and/or nonverbal demands” (Peterson 1993:860) and while this may seem unusual to Western cultures, demand sharing is in fact a means of social control. For children are taught at an early age that by receiving what is demanded, that they in turn must give what is demanded, a cycle which allows hunter-gatherers to regulate resources and curve unwanted social behaviors. This is in part due to the fact that most hunter-gatherers place a “positive moral imperative on the ethic of generosity” (Peterson 1993:860) and view stinginess, hoarding, or greed as unattractive qualities which must not be condoned. Which is one reason why hunter-gatherers are known to have an "accounting mentality" that allows them to keep track of those among the group who have not been sharing, because "the failure to share in fact, results in ill feeling partly because one party fails to obtain food or gifts, but also because the failure to share sends a strong symbolic message to those left out of the division" (Kelly 1995:164-165). Unfortunately such negative behaviors have been recorded, which has lead many hunter-gatherers to create formal constructs that can be applied to stop those individuals who excessively demand or do not reciprocate. In one case the Yolngu men of Australia began “carving sacred designs on their pipes and then covering them with strips of cloth or paperback, rendering them taboo to all women and any men who had not had the design revealed to them in a religious context” (Peterson 1993:862), therefore allowing these men to refuse any request made to them for tobacco, a demand that was made rather often among the Yolngu.
Social Storage
One sharing strategy discussed at the "Man the Hunter" conference was that of 'social storage,' it is considered one of the most efficient ways to created social currency. That by sharing you "reduce the risk involved in foraging by building up social bonds of reciprocal obligation and by defining some resources as public goods, so that sharing is seen as a way to pay back past acts of generosity and also a way to create indebtedness" (Kelly 1995:167). This is key to any hunter-gatherer that lives within a system where generosity is seen as a positive personal trait and the need to share is great. One anthropologist described "gifts as containing power that compelled the receiver to return a comparable gift in the future," (Mauss 1924) which lends to the giver a type of 'social storage' that could later pay off.
Tolerated Theft
According to Nicholas Blurton Jones 'tolerated theft will occur through food sharing when the cost of defending a resource exceeds the benefit of keeping it. This means that this is most like to be found when "food resources occur in large packages such that a forager acquires them in an amount larger than immediately needed" (Kelly 1995:174). With so much extra that can be shared many times foragers will find themselves under demand and as Jones explained, if it is not benefitial to the individual to try an protect those resources than they are forced to share them will other members of the group.
Contingencies
Like in many anthropological approaches to understanding practices and model creation, conclusions are often misleading or even wrong. The practice of sharing is no different in that many have criticized the labeling, research, and even modern views on sharing as being incorrect. One trend has been to establish the study group in terms of applying a primitive notion to the practice of sharing. Often researchers will devalue the notion of sharing by including it into an overall idea of reciprocity. “Conceiving sharing as a special type of reciprocity and many researchers since have done, corrupts the notion and robs it of all critical potential” (Widlok 2004). In other fashions the mere term itself is often criticized for not fully explaining the complexity of the practice. For example sharing is often described as either a one-way or two-way exchange, when sometimes when operating on a long enough time line the one-way would become a two-way exchange. Finally the perception of sharing itself can be misunderstood and thus mislabeled based on bias opinions of those conducting the research as pointed out by David Nurit (1990) on the current understanding of reciprocity. “Gatherer-hunters are distinguished from other peoples by their particular views of the environment and of themselves and, in relation to this, by a particular type of economy that has not previously been recognized. They view their environment as giving, and their economic system is characterized by modes of distribution and property relations that are constructed in terms of giving, as within a family, rather than in terms of reciprocity, as between kin.”
Resources Cited
Hill, Kim and Kaplan, Hillard
1985 Food Sharing Among Ache Foragers: Tests of Explanatory Hypotheses. Current Anthropology. 26(2):223-246. Link to Article (Restricted Access Source)
Kelly, Robert L.
1995 The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways. Percheron Press: New York.
Peterson, Nicolas
1993 Demand Sharing: Reciprocity and the Pressure for Generosity among Foragers. American Anthroplogist. 95(4):860-874. Link to Article (Restricted Access Source)
Nurit, Bird-David
1990 Current Anthropology. The Giving Environment: Another Perspective on the Economic System of Gatherer-Hunters. 31 (2) 189-196.
Widlok, Thomas
2004 Anthropological Theory. Sharing by default? 4 (1) 53-70.