Michael Goddard

Of cabbages and kin : The value of an analytic distinction between gifts and commodities

This article argues for the maintenance of the traditional anthropological analytic distinction between gifts and commodities, against a recent trend to refer to all objects as commodities when exchange is their socially relevant feature. It examines Marx’s notions of alienation and commodity fetishism in the context of human praxis and suggests that rigorous, rather than impressionistic, use of these analytic concepts in anthropology can clarify a distinction between gifts and commodities in relation to praxis and intention, rather than exchange.

What makes Hari run: the social construction of madness in a highland Papua New Guinea society

■ The substance of this article is a narrative about a man considered mad in a highland Papua New Guinea society, and about his interaction with his com munity and with an anthropologist who tried unsuccessfully to change the com munitys negative attitude towards him. It is argued that his madness was socially constructed, and cannot be adequately explained using a psychiatric paradigm, even if the psychiatric approach were modified to accommodate cultural differ ence or notions of culture-bound syndromes. It is further argued that the social construction, a dialectic of group and individual praxis, can be analytically con textualized in a moral imperative grounded in the communitys kin-ordered mode of production, and can be interpreted as a communal exercise in moral iconography.