A 44-y perspective on the influence of cash on Ju/'hoansi Bushman networks of sharing and gifting.

ABSTRACT: Money has been portrayed by major theorists as an agent of individualism, an instrument of freedom, a currency that removes personal values attached to things, and a generator of avarice. Regardless, the impact of money varies greatly with the cultural turf of the recipient societies. For traditional subsistence economies based on gifting and sharing, surplus perishable resources foraged from the environment carry low costs to the giver compared with the benefits to the receiver. With cash, costs to the giver are usually the same as benefits to the receiver, making sharing expensive and introducing new choices. Using quantitative data on possessions and expenditures collected over a 44-y period from 1974 to 2018 among the Ju/'hoansi (!Kung) in southern Africa, former hunter-gatherers, we l

SUBMITTER: Wiessner P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9564820 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature