Gracias a la Vida
On the paradigm of a gift economy
By Hildur Ve, Department of Sociology, University of Bergen
(Published in Il Dono/The Gift: A Feminist Analysis, a special
edition in English of the Athanor Journal, published by Meltemi
Press in Italy.)
Introduction
When, at a seminar at the Women's University in Loten, Norway, in the
summer of 2001, I was introduced to the idea of a gift economy, I found
it both interesting and and challenging, but also unsettling. I thoroughly
agreed with Genevieve Vaughan's critique of exchange economy (Vaughan
1997) and it's devastating effect on the world economy, but I found it
difficult to imagine how a complex, modern society might organise itself
according to the idea of the gift. Then gradually, while learning about
the many examples of various untraditional solutions to economic problems
of communities, i.e. on how, on Barbados, as co participant Peggy Antrobus
said, the economy of the society, for a great part depends on gifts from
immigrant workers in the USA, my understanding of economy widened. Also,
becoming more closely acquainted with some of Genevieve Vaughan's thoughts
about what women as mothers contribute to the economy by their free giving
of services to their families (ibidem), I was reminded of the Norwegian
feminist discussions in the 70ties about the number of hours pr week women
spent on unpaid production, i.e. homework, and how, if paid according
to an average industrial worker's wage, their income would amount to an
important part of the gross national product (Waerness 1980).
I was also reminded of how, in the late 70ties and early 80ties in Norway,
one of our leading feminists, Bjorg Ase Sorensen, introduced a paradigm
shift within women's research. She proposed that instead of discussing
and doing research on women's difficult and oppressed position, we should
go in for presenting positive data on women and develop theories of women's
importance for society Sorensen. (1982) created a kind of revolution by
claiming that instead of stressing the adverse situation of women, we
should rather emphasise the dignity of women's lives. She herself had
done very interesting research on how female industrial workers empathised
with their fellow workers in difficult situations. She developed the two
concepts of responsible and technically limited rationality respectively,
in order to analyse differences in men and women's reactions in the workplace.
For me this approach meant a new, and some times totally different interpretation
of male and female teachers' situations and action patterns in schools,
and for some of my colleagues, it meant new inspiration in their research
on the situation of health-personnel.
Initially, in our various theorising on women's responsible rationality,
we equated this with their ability to care for others and show empathy,
and we took as our point of departure women's experience as mothers. For
a while, within the Nordic countries, Norwegian women's research enjoyed
certain recognition and had a fairly productive period. All this changed
however, when, in the beginning of the 90's, postmodernism entered the
scene, and we were accused by other feminists of working from an illusion
of a women's essence.
Farewell to postmodernism
In revisiting the various research reports from the epoch mentioned above
I was reminded of the old saying that "development moves in waves." Learning
more and more about the ideas of a gift economy, I began to experience
a new sense of freedom similar to the one Bjorg Aase Sorensen had initiated
20 years earlier. (Sorensen 1982) Already, due to the post-structuralist
discourse, the respect in relation to many of our Western civilisation's
theories and concepts within sociology, psychology, pedagogy and other
social sciences, and even within the natural sciences, had somehow begun
to wither away. In relation to the theme in this article, however, it
is interesting to find that ideas basic to market economy, i.e. the necessity
of competition and the freedom of the market, to my knowledge, for some
reason have not been deconstructed, but are constantly gaining new ground---.
Neither has the utilitarian conception of the human actor, as someone
who constantly seeks to increase his own winnings been contested by postmodernists.
In discussing my experiencing of a widening of insight and new ways of
understanding world problems, I find it necessary to emphasise that it
is NOT related to the extreme relativism advocated by many poststructuralist
feminists, which has resulted in the eroding of the platforms on which
criticism of exploitation and oppression, regarding gender, class and
race has been founded. Quite to the contrary, the new sense of freedom
is related to Vaughan's approach to knowledge based on women's work as
mothers in combination with her Marxist based criticism of exchange economy
(Vaughan 1997). It was especially stimulating to read her arguments after
having been exposed to the above mentioned poststructuralist discourse
which has effectively silenced debates on the possibility of a special
women's epistemology. The catchword, which has had this devastating effect,
has been "difference," meaning that differences within groups of women
and men respectively are as important as those between the two groups.
The idea of women as a special category, and of a special women's essence
has for a time been anathema.
A new theory of knowledge
However, at the beginning of our new century, this poststructuralist position
has been effectively challenged, and in many milieus it is again becoming
legitimate to debate phenomena from a women's standpoint. In an instructive
article, Norwegian postdoctoral candidate, Cathrine Egeland, discusses,
among others, Gayatri Spivac's analysis of strategic essentialism (Egeland
2003). Especially, Egeland refers to Spivac's approach to Marxism and
her analysis of how Marx de-essentialised the concept of class.
Without arguing for a special women's essence, I find it important to
take as a point of departure the experience and learning that result from
the bearing of, giving birth to and nurturing of children. It has been
both disappointing and alarming that in all the different sciences referred
to above very few theories or concepts have been developed that may throw
light upon, or fathom this experience and learning so close to life itself.
From the perspectives of medicine and psychology we have learned about
various types of risks, and about how to take care of pregnant women,
women giving birth, how to care for the health of babies etc. Of course,
this has been of very great importance but within these disciplines, the
focus is often on how to prevent or eliminate danger. The sheer joy and
wonder of conceiving, carrying, giving birth to and nurturing a living
human being, is seldom made a point of. Within family sociology, the literature
on women's roles has been of great importance regarding how society shapes
both our acting patterns and our ideas about ourselves. But the theoretical
approach is to a great degree created by men, first and foremost Talcott
Parsons (1951). Reading Dorothy Smith (1987)(see below) makes it clear
that we have not written very much about the everyday world of women from
women's point of view. In an article on "Sociology and the conceptualisation
of Women" (Ve 1992), in order to challenge the remote or depersonalised
way in which the phenomenon of motherhood was generally treated within
the discipline, i.e. by mostly discussing the norms constituting the mother
role, I once introduced a calculation of how many litres of milk I might
have "produced " for my three babies, and found that it must at least
amount to 500 litres. While this fact, at the time of publishing, which
coincided with the onslaught of postmodernism, got very few comments,
- may be now, within a perspective of gift-giving, it may become relevant,
again?
I have been especially inspired to think along these lines by reading
chapter 10 in Genevieve Vaughan's book For-Giving (1997), with the sub-title
"Gracias a la Vida." Here she writes: "A theory of knowledge could be
developed which identifies knowledge with the gratitude experienced by
the individual as the recipient of the gifts given by life, nature, culture
and other individuals." In order to develop such a theory of knowledge,
in my mind one would have to basically challenge traditional approaches
within the various disciplines.
Below, after presenting the central themes of my article, I shall introduce
two women scientists who, in my mind, have made some steps in the direction
of a new theory of knowledge: Geneticist Barbara McKlintock and sociologist
Dorothy Smith.
I shall then present some new knowledge about matriarchal societies, presented
in African journals, which has some relevance to the question of a gift
economy.
A paradigm of life
In a Swedish television program, in which some of the winners of the year
2002 Nobel Prices within the natural sciences took part, as a final question
the participants were asked to state what were their wishes within their
respective fields for future scientific development. The participants
pointed to various fascinating intra-disciplinary challenges within medicine,
chemistry, physics and economy respectively. The biologist, however, said
that his most ardent wish was that they should all join in an interdisciplinary
effort to try to solve the secret of the phenomenon of life. What his
comment discloses is the really astounding fact that with all the progress
within the natural sciences about important questions regarding the world
around us, life as a phenomenon in itself is still a challenging puzzle.
For me, this served as a kind of revelation which awakened some dormant
but very crucial memories: I relived - with extraordinary clarity -- the
totally unnerving and at the same time totally joyful experience of feeling
my first baby stirring inside me. Suddenly I realized that I had never
been able to talk about this enormously important moment when I felt that
I was carrying a new life, because I had lacked the right words. In those
days, back in the fifties, at least in Norwegian culture, to have a baby
was a "natural" thing. One was not supposed to get excited about this
first sign of the new being, and much less describe it as what it is:
a wonder.
A very challenging thought presented by Vaughan is to equate knowledge
and gratitude.(1997:155). Such insight may be exactly what women need
in order to be able to put words to our strongest experiences.
I have started to question whether the natural scientists, while looking
for the beginning of life, all the time have been going further and further
in dividing matter into ever smaller particles, maybe have started from
the wrong end. We have learned from physics that a scientist must dig
ever deeper in order to get closer to this "beginning," from molecules
to atoms to quarks etc., etc. But given a new approach to knowledge, what
about studying the first stirring of life in a foetus?
Somehow, I think that this way of reasoning corresponds to other themes
in Genevieve Vaughan's book referred to above (ibid.). Among other themes,
she writes about how, if we take gift giving seriously, we can perceive
apples as round, red apples, which we can eat, not as a collection of
atoms. The idea intimated in these remarks may be thought to be related
to a discussion in a book about " The Ethic and the Universe"(1997) by
the Danish dr.theol. Jakob Wolf. Here the author explains how the natural
sciences in the last decades have taught us that when we look around us
and see colours, for example, the beautiful, blue summer sky, what "really"
happens is that certain light waves hit our retina. Likewise, when we
experience a wonderful concert by Beethoven, what "really" happens is
that certain sound waves hit our hearing organs. The author's point is
that by making us deny that the messages of our senses are having anything
to do with "reality" , and overtake this objectified understanding of
the world, (what the Germans call Weltanschauung), we at the same time
come to believe that the world is a neutral place, where all ethical questions
are superfluous and irrelevant.
In my view, a new theory of knowledge shall have to challenge some of
the crucial ideas of the natural scientists. One of their aims has been
to control the forces of nature. We have to accept that by doing this,
even if they have had some devastating effects on nature, they have made
life on earth infinitely easier for many of us. Most importantly, science
has made it possible to eliminate hunger and poverty. At the same time
however, scientists have developed ever more dangerous weapons, which
today make it possible to end all life on earth.
A new theory of knowledge might have as its aim both to transform and
transcend the products of the natural sciences in order to make them into
better tools in shaping a world, which may be a good place to live in
for all mankind.
Women and a new theory of knowledge
Happily, among important natural scientists and philosophers there are
some women who question many of the ideas imbedded in the assumptions
about the world that have developed within the natural sciences during
the last decades. Evelyn Fox Keller, in "Reflections on Gender and Science"
(Keller 1985) points to the history of science, and criticizes any claims
to universal truth that the various scientists may have, while she argues
for a gender-free science. More concretely, she is preoccupied with transcending
the androcentric bias in science. In connection with the theme of this
article, of special interest is her discussion of the Nobel Price winner,
geneticist Barbara McClintock's research. In relation to the phenomenon
of life, McClintock argues (in an interview with Fox Keller) that "ÉNature
is characterized by an a priory complexity that vastly exceeds the capacities
of the human imagination." Her major criticism of contemporary genetic
research is based on what she sees as inadequate humility. ."..They have
the answer ready and they know what they want the material to tell them,
so anything it doesn't tell them they ... throw out." Fox Keller gives
a gripping description of how McClintock went about her research. In the
biography : "A Feeling for the Organism" (Fox Keller1936), Fox Keller
quotes some of McKlintock's sayings:
No two plants are exactly alike -- I start with the seedling, and I don't
want to leave it. I don't feel I really know the story if I don't watch
the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know
them intimately, and I feel a great pleasure in knowing them.
Her approach is very different from that of male natural scientists, many
of whom considered her eccentric and with ideas that made very little
sense. However, after 40 years of very important scientific work, she
finally became recognized as one of the most significant figures in twentieth
century science.
I find two aspects of McKlintock's work especially fascinating. Firstly,
she seems to look upon the plants she is investigating in an unusually
personal way -- as if she cares for them and identifies with them. She
doesn't relate to them in the traditionally detached way of male scientists.
This approach seems to be an important reason why many or her male colleagues
found her strange. Fox Keller on the other hand, thinks that it is exactly
this strong identification with her plants, which made it possible for
McKlintock to grasp some of the vast complexity of nature that she writes
about. To me, it seems that she is grappling with problems that have to
do with the question the above mentioned Nobel Price winner in biology
is proposing, i.e. : "What is life?."
Secondly, and just as crucial: It seems that some of McKlintock's discoveries
have to do with Darwin's ideas about random selection. Not being a biologist
or geneticist, I may only hint at the possibility that emerges from McKlintock's
work: The theory of the survival of the fittest, is challenged by McKlintock
for being too simplistic.
There are, in my mind, two reasons why this is of importance to our discussion
on the Gift Economy. A: In the last decade, within biology, scientists
are increasingly explaining the behavioural patterns of human beings within
the neo-Darwinist frame of reference, to a degree that for some, the concepts
and theories of the social sciences are appearing irrelevant: Any ideas
about action and choice seem to disappear along with questions about ethics.
"It is all in our genes." According to this view, the idea of the gift
is without meaning. B: There is an important affinity between NeoDarwinism
and NeoLiberalism, which seems to support the various theories of the
latter regarding the "natural " inclination of humans to compete, and
that society's interests are best served by arrangements that let the
"fittest" survive in the market.
Referring to Genevieve Vaughan's remark about the need for a new type
of knowledge, I imagine that Barbara McClintock has made some important
steps in this direction in a field which is of great importance regarding
the situation of women: She has presented a new idea of what a natural
scientist may be like: Firstly: not to have an objective and detached
attitude towards her/his work, but looking upon her data in a caring and
engaged way. And secondly: looking without preconceived ideas about the
world, but with a free and open mind.
The everyday world of women
Within another discipline, sociologist Dorothy Smith writes about a feminist
sociology of knowledge. (Smith 1987, 1990) She wants to investigate a
situation known to many women: "The experience of a split relationship
to language, of the under nurtured woman's voice outside the "man's world."
Especially she examines the properties of patriarchal sociology from the
standpoint of women's experience. She criticises sociology for not being
concerned with "the everyday world," i.e. the world of women in households.
In her various analyses she reveals how sociological concepts and models
are developed in order to make sense of men's experience. In the world
of male sociologists it is assumed that
. . . the power to act and co-ordinate in a planned and rational manner
and to exercise control as an individual over conditions and means is
taken for granted... The rational actor choosing and calculating is the
abstract model of organisational and bureaucratic man, whose motives,
and ego structure are organised by the formal rationality structuring
his work role. At work his feelings have no place. . . . (Smith.1987).
Smith describes how for a long time she struggled within this paradigm
of rational action, until she realised that if she wanted to understand
the life of women, she would have to break out. She decided that she would
try to make use of a Marxist approach, and she started by taking as her
point of departure her own lived experience or praxis.. She found that
characteristically, for women, their daily routines to a great extent
"are determined and ordered by processes external to and beyond our everyday
world." She began to see her past not so much as a career but as a series
of contingencies or accidents, and she realised that this would be a good
description of the lives of most women. Even though she had succeeded
as an academic, she felt that she had become who she was almost by chance.
However, Dorothy Smith has done more than criticise the male approach
to sociology. She describes how together with other women she has worked
to change sociology into a tool that lets women speak about themselves
and their own experience (ibidem). In order to do this, she conducted
a very fascinating study of how mothers organise their daily life together
with their children in a way that has the intellectual growth of the child
as its aim. Smith captures "mothering" in a way that few researchers had
done before her. From her research she is able to show that mothering
is work. Also, she makes explicit the implicit ways in which school influences
the lives of mothers and children, and how in this respect, social class
serves to create different patterns in the interaction of mother and child.
When reading the account of this project, one becomes very indignant,
and angry at the authorities who would not grant her funding for a centre
so that she might continue this very important work.
Smith has wanted to create a discourse that can expand women's grasp of
their experience and increase the power of their speech by disclosing
the relations organising their oppression in their "everyday world." In
her work, like Barbara McClintock, she has created new knowledge by challenging
the work of male members of her discipline, both through developing a
new theoretical approach, and throughher research, which has meant opening
up an entirely new world, i.e. "the everyday world."
Even though none or the two women scientists described above have discussed
economy as such, one might imagine that both of them might have felt related
to many of the reflections in Vaughan's book about gift economy and gift
giving, especially those which deal with mothering (Vaughan 1997).
Until now the discussion in this article has been on various aspects and
dimensions of women's lives in the Western world. Recently, we are beginning
to learn about societies in other parts of the world, and how they are
organising women's lives. From this knowledge a new way of understanding
motherhood is developing a New Paradigm.
A Conference on Matriarchies
In Genevieve Vaughan's very interesting report from a conference in Luxembourg
in the autumn of 2003 she refers to a discussion on various matriarchal
societies, both in pre-history and in the present. She writes:
The reason I want to write you about it is that if this kind of validation
of the existence of matriarchies can be spread, and if the connection
between matriarchies and peaceful, abundant and egalitarian ways of living
can be made, we can have an alternative 'vision' ready for our use, that
will help in diminishing the hegemony of patriarchy. (Vaughan 2003)
She goes on to underline that her impression from the many presentations
is that mothering is the principle of matriarchy, and she lists the values
of mothering as being :food and care for all, respect for the other, collective
decision making and problem solving. Another important point that was
made is that in the history of mankind, patriarchy as a societal system
is a derivative, not an originary system.
Vaughan pays much attention to a discussion on the saying:" making the
weaker the stronger," that originally came from the Minangkabau people
whose society is matriarchal. She wonders about how it might be possible
to make mothering stronger, without turning the motherers into dominators,
and she reasons that theory might be a useful tool.
Finally she refers to an important discussion on the concepts of equality,
reciprocity and exchange. She maintains that among other things the concept
of reciprocity contains a dangerous ambiguity because it may disrupt the
gift logic, making it seem as if it were really "the same thing" as the
exchange logic. This is because giving without getting anything back is
one face of exploitation. However it is also the positive basis of the
gift. Here, in my opinion, Vaughan touches upon a very important problem,
which she has also discussed in her book For-Giving (Vaughan 1997). In
chapter 3, among other things, she poses a challenging question: "Is Reciprocity
Exchange or Turn taking? " In further discussions on the gift giving problematic,
I presume that also Marx' maxim about justice may be relevant, in which
he argues: "From each according to ability, to each according to need."
Interestingly, at the same time as Genevieve Vaughan introduced the concept
of matriarchy into the debate on gift giving, a new journal appeared at
the Centre for Women Studies and Gender Research in Bergen. It was " 'Jenda
', A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies"(2002). From this journal
I shall present and discuss two articles. The first one is written by
Oyeronke Oyewumi, and is called:"Conceptualizing Gender: The Eurocentric
Foundations of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies."
Some African perspectives on motherhood
The article opens with a short presentation of the last 500 years, which
the author mentions, have been described as the age of modernity. Among
a number of historical processes of this age, the author starts by mentioning
the Atlantic Slave Trade, and attendant institutions of slavery, and European
colonisation of Africa, Asia and Latin America. She goes on to present
a number of historical happenings and ends with mentioning that gender
and racial categories emerged during this period as two fundamental axes
along which people were exploited and societies stratified.
In the next paragraph the author describes how in the modern era the hegemony
of Euro/American culture was established throughout the world. Among the
many results of this development, one of the most important was how this
culture came to influence strongly the production of knowledge about human
behaviour, history, societies and cultures One effect of Eurocentrism
is the racialisation of knowledge in that Europe and Europeans become
the centre of knowledge and the knowers respectively. Male gender privileges
are an essential element in modernity. When trying to comprehend African
realities, one must take these facts into account.
The author then goes on to state that her objective is to "Interrogate
gender and allied concepts based on African cultural experiences and epistemologies."(Oyewumi
2002: 1) She wants both to make it possible for African research to build
on local concerns and interpretations, and at the same time -- being well
aware of the global system 's racism, - that African experiences shall
be taken seriously when and where general theory-building occurs.
In my opinion, the knowledge that Oyewumi is presenting is of great interest,
and it would mean a serious loss to general theory building if it is not
brought to the attention of scholars on every continent. For the theme
of this article however, I shall have to concentrate on only a small part
of her information.
One of her main contentions is that Anglophone/American feminists have
used the concepts "woman" and "gender" as universal concepts, overlooking
that they are first and foremost socio-cultural constructs. She especially
underlines the critique put forward by many African American scholars
that in the States there is no way that gender can be considered outside
of race and class.
Furthermore, in a very important paragraph Oyewumi argues that feminist
concepts are rooted in the nuclear family, and that despite many feminists'
maintaining that their goal is to destabilise this institution, it constitutes
the very basis of feminist values. All the three main concepts of feminism,
Woman, Gender and Sisterhood, emerged from the nuclear family. She then
goes on to define the nuclear family, and emphasises that it is gendered,
in that as a single-family household it "is centred on a subordinated
wife, a patriarchal husband and children." Very important for her argumentation
is this sentence: "The structure of the family conceived as having a conjugal
unit at the centre lends itself to the promotion of gender as a natural
and inevitable category because within this family there are no crosscutting
categories devoid of it." (ivi: 2). She then points to patterns within
African families, where the most important category is seniority. Also
she argues that many of the concepts regarding family members which in
Western social science often are gendered, like husband -- wife, sister-brother,
within African discourse is gender neutral, and she points to concepts
like spouses and siblings.
Then Oyewumi presents her central theme: "The nuclear family, however
is a specifically Euro/American form, it is not universal"(ivi: 3). And
in spite of all the various agencies and organisations striving to introduce
and promote it, it remains an alien form in Africa.
It is truly fascinating, but also in a way alarming, to follow her line
of discussion in which she puts forward her analysis of the western conception
of "wife." She argues that when methodologically, the unit of analysis
is the nuclear family household, then theoretically such a practice reduces
woman to wife. "The woman at the heart of feminist theory, the wife, never
gets out of the household. Like a snail she carries the house around with
her"(ivi: 3)
Oyewumi argues that it follows from this that (...)"There seem to be no
understanding of the role of mother independent of her sexual ties to
a father. Mothers are first and foremost wives." (ivi: 3) She contrasts
this reasoning to the African one by introducing the concept "single mother,"
which from an African point of view is an oxymoron. or an impossibility.
Motherhood in African, as in most cultures, is defined as a relationship
between a woman and her child/children. From this contention, Oyewumi
develops a very illuminating discussion on what it means in American/European
culture regarding the understanding of the gendered division of labour,
that woman is to be understood as synonymous with wife. She reasons that
this may explain why procreation and lactation in the gender literature
(both traditional and feminist) are usually presented as part of the sexual
division of labour. "Marital coupling is thus constituted as the base
of societal division of labour." (ivi: 4). In my opinion, Oyewumi to a
certain extent presents an explanation of why these, for women so fundamental
practices, i e . giving birth to and nurturing one's baby, has not from
a feminist standpoint, been considered topics for theoretical analysis.
In the final paragraphs of Oyewumi's article, the author describes various
African family patterns which serve to make us aware of the great possibility
for flexibility concerning family relationship that exists throughout
the world Running through her descriptions from many African cultures
is the importance of the tie between mother and child. One of her conclusions
is that a central challenge to African gender studies is the difficulty
of applying feminist concepts to understand African realities. This is
due to the incommensurability of social categories and institutions. For
the problems raised in this article, it is especially important that Oyewumi
challenges Western feminist concepts about woman and mother. Furthermore,
and even more important is that as a consequence of her knowledge of African
family patterns, she challenges Western feminist thinking regarding the
universality of women's oppression.
The second article is written by the Danish sociologist Signe Arnfred,
who has for many years worked in Africa. It is titled:."Simone de Beauvoir
in Africa: "Woman: The Second Sex" Issues of African Feminist Thought."
Arnfred outlines the purpose of her article by stating: "The point is
to open the mind to different ways of thinking about gender.... Freeing
ourselves from old mindsets will allow us to envision new kinds of gender
relations as we look forward to the future both the future of Africa
and the future of ourselves as Western (men) and) women. (Arnfred 2002:
1) The old mindset that she wants to free us from is the idea of "Woman
as the other." And the point of doing this "is to open the imagination
for different and more liveable feminist futures than the ones now on
offer, which are embedded in the notions of modernity and development"
(ivi 1) I shall return to this point in my discussion on how to understand
progress within a women's perspective.
I consider Arnfred's article to be of major importance for feminist discourse.
She is taking it upon herself to deconstruct Simone de Beauvoir 's famous
work on women as the second sex. She argues that she does this because
in the last years this work has again become important in feminist discourse,
and this she finds most undue. Arnfred underlines that Beauvoir's work
in 1949 was both brave and pioneering, but now, fifty years later, it
is time to question from which context and with which concepts she developed
her analysis. Doing this, we must take into account that very much has
happened during these fifty years, both in the world and in feminist thought.
Arnfred especially points to the importance of non-Western thinking becoming
known in various milieus in the West. For my purpose, I shall concentrate
on those parts of the article most relevant to our understanding of motherhood.
For Arnfred, it is an aim to show that Simone de Beauvoir is firmly rooted
in the modern, and that she thinks that women's chance to become emancipated
has mainly to do with getting control over procreation and becoming economically
independent. Moreover, women must strive for transcendence, which according
to de Beauvoir is "all that is fun and worthwhile, creative, productive
and essentially human" and "distinguishes humans from animals as culture
from nature" (ivi: 3). Here she is influenced by Jean- Paul Sartre, and
both of them see transcendence as inherently male. Then, for women, to
become more like men means becoming emancipated.
The opposite of transcendence is immanence, which de Beauvoir describes
as "passivity and repetition, the drudgery of daily housework in which
giving birth, breastfeeding and motherhood are included"(ivi: 3). Important
in this connection is de Beauvoir's view that having, and taking care
of children are not to be considered as activities because no project
is involved. They are to be looked upon as natural functions. A woman
submits passively to these tasks, and in no way may she find in them "(...)
a lofty affirmation of her existence." (Ivi: 4) Regarding the degree to
which de Beauvoir identifies with masculine ideology, and the value hierarchy
of male modernity, one quotation is especially illuminating: "It is not
in giving birth but in risking life that man is raised above the animal;
that is why superiority has been accorded not to the sex that brings forth
but to that which kills."(ivi 4) Within the perspective of this article,
it is difficult to understand how this argument could be accepted, or
at least not severely criticised.
Arnfred also presents other parts of de Beauvoir's work, and discusses
among others the one in which she has presented her famous dictum: "one
is not born but rather becomes a women" (Ivi: 4). To Arnfred it appears
that as to this opinion, her work is in contradiction with itself: de
Beauvoir both believes and demonstrates that the conditions of women are
socially determined. But all through her work it appears that women are
slaves of their bodies, and there is always this conflict between women's
own interests and the reproductive forces.
In the middle of her article, Arnfred sums up three main themes within
mainstream modern thinking on gender: "a, Man is posed as subject and
woman as other. b, Development is conceived as a unilinear move from 'tradition'
towards 'modernity' the measure for achievement being the Western world.
c, Third world women are conceived of as subordinated and oppressed" (Ivi:
7). In order to discuss these theses, Arnfred introduces concepts and
lines of thinking which she considers especially important in African
feminist literature. For her it is crucial that African feminist thinkers
refuse to see woman as "other," and they deny that in their own societies
the patterns of behaviour in any way support such ideas.
In order to make African family life understandable to feminists from
other parts of the world, it is important to get some knowledge about
kinship terminology. Here I shall only mention a few examples: it is possible
to state that often in matrilineal societies there are no fathers and
no mothers I.e. there are no words or concepts comparable to those developed
in our societies in the West, and patterns of parenting are different.
An important fact to bear in mind is that often in these societies seniority
is more important than gender.
Arnfred quotes the author of the article I have referred to above, Oyewumi,
and emphasises the fact that in Africa, the most crucial position of a
woman is that of mother. Arnfred also mentions that in part of her work,
Oyewumi has introduced the concept "the patriarchalising gaze" in order
to warn against influence from Western social science. This gaze invents
-women as other - , and introduces what she calls "body-reasoning" where
"the cultural logic......is based on an ideology of biological determinism.".
She argues that a mind/body hierarchy is deeply embedded in Western thinking.
Here I find it relevant to quote Descartes' maxim "I think, therefore
I am."
Arnfred then goes on to present themes from another African author, Ifi
Amadiume (1987). One key point of this social anthropologist's work is
her analysis of power in African society. She argues that many societal
positions may be taken up by either man or woman, and maintains that there
is:" in African gender systems a flexibility which allows neuter construct
for men and women to share roles and status" (Ivi 10). She strongly underlines
that power is not masculine per se.
Arnfred has a very interesting paragraph on motherhood. Based on Amadiume's
research she argues that the structural status of motherhood in Africa
is very different from that in Europe. She goes on to explain this by
outlining two systems that Amadiume has studied in the Nnoby society,
the female mother focused, matricentric unit, and the male focused, ancestral
house. These systems co-exist, and if one tries to understand the relationship
between them by introducing a patriarchal paradigm, one might loose important
aspects of how this society functions.
Amadiume refers to her study in which she finds that "the traditional
power of African women had an economic and ideological basis, and derived
from the sacred and almost divine importance accorded to motherhood."
(Ivi: 11). This means that motherhood is in itself empowering. Amadiume
realises that "the very thought of women's power being based on the logic
of motherhood has proved offensive to many Western feminists." (Ivi: 11).
She argues that it is easy to see why this is so since in the European
system, wifehood and motherhood represented a means of enslavement for
women.
In her work it is important for Amadiume to raise awareness of the often
implicit patriarchal paradigm in the social sciences. She is deeply engaged
in crafting concepts that are fitted to deal with motherhood not abstract
motherhood but with the concrete sociological phenomenon of "the mother-focused,
matricentric unit." Arnfred explains how Amadiume introduces the term
"matriarchy" in order to strengthen the awareness of the centrality of
motherhood . She wants to make "the matriarchy paradigm" into a useful
concept. In her writing about matriarchy, she refers to the concept's
long and complicated history in European social science. She maintains
that she is not interested in creating "a total rule governing a society,"
but discusses how in her studies of the Nnobi society, as mentioned above,
it appears that the female mother- focused, matricentric unit, and the
male- focused ancestral house coexist. Amadiume argues that the matricentric
unit is a female gendered, paradigmatical cultural construct, which goes
against the generalising theory that man is culture and woman is nature.
In Vaughan's letter from the conference on matriarchy mentioned above
(Vaughan 2003), she refers to an article written by the German social
anthropologist Heide G.Abendroth (now in this volume) "Definition and
Theory of Matriarchal Society." Here Abendroth seems to be interested
in constructing the type of "total rule governing a society," that Amadiume
seeks to avoid, and lists 4 criteria for such a society. In the future
discussion on gift economy, it may be productive to compare these two
somewhat different approaches to matriarchy.
In her concluding remarks, Arnfred comments that she has enjoyed presenting
these two brave feminist scholars "who have the courage to go against
established power structures in feminist thought." But more importantly
she looks at these African contributions as a source of inspiration for
western feminists to think differently about gender. Finally, -- and this
is a crucial point -- , she has learned through the African perspective
that Western patriarchal thought has managed to naturalise and trivialise
motherhood. to an appalling degree, and that very little protest has come
from the feminist camp.
Regarding the discourse on motherhood in what Arnfred defines as the feminist
camp, some interesting contributions have come from France, where especially
Julia Kristeva has worked with the different images of "the mother" and
of "woman" found in Greek and Christian tradition (Kristeva 1989). In
both places the story is deeply ambiguous. In Christianity, on one hand
we have woman as virgin in man's conscious thought, on the other hand
woman as whore in man's unconscious thought. This woman is capable of
feeling "jouissance." Kristeva argues that between these two one finds
the mother, and that this is the virgin-mother. One of Kristeva's main
contentions is that the woman's body, which is capable of feeling "jouissance"
can have nothing to do with the mother.
In the US, two feminist theorists who have had great influence on feminist
thinking in the Nordic countries, Nancy Chodorow and Carol Gilligan, have
contributed to the discourse on motherhood in a somewhat different way.
Chodorow has been especially interested in the mother's influence on the
identity development of her son and daughter respectively (Chodorow 1978),
while Gilligan has studied differences in girls' and boys' approach to
ethical questions, especially regarding relationship to the other (Gilligan
1982). While these various contributions to our understanding of motherhood
in Western feminist thought are important, they are all --though in somewhat
different ways, -- engaged in a patriarchal discourse in that they are
in one way or other involved in a discussion with Freud and his followers,
to a great degree on Freudian premises.
Regarding arguing for the gift paradigm, it shall become necessary to
challenge the fundamental ideas of this discourse if we want to tear away
from the tendency to the trivialization and naturalisation of motherhood.
In doing this, we shall have to question one of the most cherished ideas
of our Western culture, i.e. that modernity means enlightenment and progress.
The gift economy and the idea of modernity
To my mind, one of the most illuminating aspects of Oyeronke Oyewumi'
article ( 2002) is her analysis of the last 500 years, which she defines
as the modern epoch of the Western world. She maintains that from an African
perspective, both gender and racial categories emerged during this epoch
along with exploitation and stratification based on these two fundamental
axes. Arnfred goes further in her deconstruction of one of the crucial
idea of modern social science, i.e. that modernity has offered more liveable
futures for women than have non-Western or pre-modern societies. Drawing
on her experience from working for several years in Mozambique, she emphasises
that modernity has many faces, but lists three of its basic assumptions:
"1, a human being is a man, and the male position is believed to be gender-neutral.
2, In this context development has been a unilinear motion from tradition
to modernity with the Western "developed world " serving as the model
for achievement 3, African and third world women are being particularly
oppressed, and are hopefully and gratefully awaiting the blessings of
modernity.
Before elaborating further on the relationship between modernity and motherhood,
I shall, because I find that there are certain similar traits, comment
shortly on how some important male sociologists have evaluated tendencies
within the epoch we call modernity. Already at the beginning of the 20th
century, Max Weber was warning against certain development trends following
the capitalist bureaucratisation of the world ( Weber 1920). He used very
colourful expressions, writing about demystification(entzauberung) of
the world, and the iron cage of rationality. Nearly a century later the
Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, while analysing the development
in Nazi-Germany in order to try to understand how the phenomenon of Holocaust
could be possible, intimates that typical aspects of late modernity is
lack of social responsibility and empathy (Bauman 1998). Like Weber, he
blames these development trends on tendencies within capitalist bureaucratisation
where the aim of the civilising process is to foster rationality. Bauman
maintains that this modern rationality in a way "set free" people when
it comes to morality For the purpose of this article, of great interest
is his analysis of sociology, and his focusing on the conceptualisation
in this discipline of what it means to be human. Bauman emphasises that
the idea of "the other" is lacking in sociology at the same time as he
argues that "To be with others" and "Responsibility for the other" are
basic traits in human existence and human subjectivity. He qualifies what
he means by referring to Martin Buber's ideas about how we may relate
to other people as either "you" or "it" (Buber 1958).
Arnfred's message to women is that it is imperative to analyse how the
strengthening of male gendered privileges have been the goal of most of
the political endeavours in modernity, and how these goals have been reached
to a great extent at the cost of women. Regarding modernity's idea of
a good life for women, let us take as our point of departure the extracts
of the writings of Simone de Beauvoir quoted above. From them it appears
as obvious that for a woman, the best way to create a good life for herself
is to get control over procreation and becoming economically independent.
To become a mother is to be caught in the drudgery of daily housework,
including various aspects of motherhood. In other words, if women can
model their lives more or less along the same lines as men, they will
be successful.
One may ask by what standards this type of woman is being measured and
found to be successful? The importance of introducing the Gift paradigm
is , among other things, that it renders a new model for interpreting
the way we lead our lives, and what will be the consequences of latter
day development trends within modernity. Looking at Dorothy Smith's description
of "the rational actor" one gets the impression of a person in a strait-jacket.
Recently, when reading or looking at many successful women's descriptions
in newspapers, magazines, TV discussions etc. of "life on the job," the
feeling of stress becomes overwhelming. Lately, one of the strongest arguments
I have ever heard against the way business firms are organising work was
presented in a TV interview by a women leader: "They do not take into
consideration that the workers have children. In our society, there is
little understanding of the necessity of having children at all."
From another angle the situation concerning motherhood is also threatened
by some alarming trends. It seems that the possibility of cloning ones
babies is coming within reach. We have already the technology available
to program our babies, we may rent women who will bear our babies, women
may sell their eggs at a high price in the market, young women are taught
to look like young boys: tall, thin, flat stomach and narrow hips etc
etc.
It seems that Aldous Huxley's famous and coldly frightening future fantasy
epos, "Brave New World," is no longer to be considered a wild nightmare
(Huxley 1932). It is of importance to remember that the ugliest and most
feared word in his Utopia was "mother."
There was absolutely no place for the feelings between mothers and children
in the thoroughly commercialised society Huxley had imagined. The message
is that in this society there is no room for warm feelings since they
cannot be controlled.. The contrast between Huxley's horror picture of
a future society and the image of a matriarchal society described by Genevieve
Vaughan in her article in this book is dramatic indeed.
Society, gift giving and motherhood
Interestingly, in France, a group built around the studies of social anthropologist
Marcel Mauss, works with some of the same ideas of gift giving as Vaughan,
being inspired both by Marxist thought and by research among Kwakiutl
Indians in British Columbia. .A main difference between this group' approach
and that of Vaughan, however, is that the concept of motherhood doesn't
seem to have influenced the thinking of Marcel Mauss or that of his followers.
It may be productive to learn more about their reflections, but it seems
that to concentrate on gift giving from the perspective of motherhood.
is infinitely more promising, but at the same tie also more challenging.
We are socialised within the patriarchal paradigm to a degree that is
difficult to comprehend. In order to break out, we shall need courage
because we shall have to learn to enter theoretically totally new territory,
while at the same time there will be a strong temptation to use the familiar,
old "rational" maps. At the same time, however, to many of us it may become
a great joy to, for the first time, take into consideration what this
new territory has to offer regarding new knowledge. Looking at Genevieve
Vaughan's listing of the values of mothering mentioned above as being:
food and care for all, respect for the other and collective decision making
and problem solving, the fascinating thing is that it sounds at the same
time both new regarding theory making, - and well known regarding experience.
I think we are lucky in that to join these to - theory and experience,
into knew knowledge about gift giving, the job shall be easier with the
help of our African feminist sisters.
References
Abendroth, Heide G. "Definition and Theory in Matriarchal Society" (this
volume)
Amadiume, Ifi (1997). Reinventing Africa. Matriarchy, Religion and Culture.
Zed Books, London.
Arnfred, Signe (2002) "Simone de Beauvoir in Africa: Woma: The Second
Sex? Issues of African feminist thought" in Jenda: A Journal of Culture
and African Women Studies: 2, 1
Bauman, Zygmunt (1999). Modernity and the Holocaust, Polity Press, Cambridge.
de Beauvoir, Simone (1997[1949]). The Second Sex, Vintage Classics, New
York.
Buber, Martin (1958). Ich und Du (I and Thou), Verlag Lambert Schneider,
Heidelberg.
Chodorow, Nancy (1978). The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis
and the Sociology of Gender, University of California Press, Berkeley.
Gilligan, Carol (1982). In a Different Voice, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass.
Huxley, Aldous (1958[1932]). Brave New World, Chatto and Windus, London
Keller, Evelyn Fox (1983). A Feeling for the Organism. The Life and Work
of Barbara McClintock, W.H.Freeman and Company. New York.
________ 1985). Reflections on Gender and Science, Yale University Press,
New Haven and London.
Oyewumi, Oyeronke (2002). "Conceptualising Gender: The Eurocentric Foundation
of Feminist Concepts and the Challenge of African Epistemologies" in :
Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies vol.2, 1.
Parsons, Talcott (1951). The Social System, The Free Press, Glencoe, Illinois
Smith, Dorothy (1987). The Everyday World as Problematic, A Feminist Sociology,
North Eastern University Press, Boston.
________ (!990). The Conceptual Practices of Power A Feminist Sociology
of Knowledge, North Eastern University Press, Boston.
Sorensen, Bjorg Aase (1982). "Ansvarsrasjonalitet" (Responsible Rationality),
in H. Holter (ed): Kvinner i Fellesskap (Women in Collectivities,) Oslo
University Press, Oslo.
Vaughan, Genevieve (1997). For-Giving, A Feminist Criticism of Exchange,
Plain View Press, Austin
Vaughan, Genevieve (2003), "Matriarchy Conference report" (Personal communication).
Ve, Hildur (1992). "Sosiologi og forstoelse av kjonn" (Sociology and Conceptualisations
of Gender), in Taksdal A. and K. Widerberg (eds) Forstoelser av kjonn
i samfunnsvitenskapenes fag og kvinneforskning (Conceptualisations of
gender in the subjects and women's research in the social sciences) ,
ad Notam Gyldendal A/S
Weber, Max (1947 [1920]). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization
(Parts of Wissenschft und Gesellshcaft,), New York.
Wolf, Jakob (1997). Etikken & Universet ( Ethics and the Universe) Forlaget
ANIS, De-1820, Frederiksberg C.
Waerness, Kari (1980): "Kvinners omsorgsarbeid i den ulonnede produksjonen"
(Women's caring work in unpaid prduction) in Halvorsen, K. (ed): Arbeid
og sysselsetting foran 80‘ra (Work and employment before the 80's), Pax,
Oslo.
