{"id":1393,"date":"2015-12-22T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2016-10-27T14:18:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T13:18:35","slug":"a-gift-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2015\/12\/22\/a-gift-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"A Gift-Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas is a time when we exchange gifts in many countries <strong>\u2013<\/strong> not the most important aspect of Christmas, though related to its <a href=\"http:\/\/www1.cbn.com\/devotions\/real-meaning-christmas\" target=\"_blank\">authentic meaning.<\/a> This reminds me of a story I heard. An American manager participated in a Corporate Social Responsibility program aimed at capacity-building in Africa. On a visit to a small village, and trying to adapt to local customs he brought a kit of company products for the Chief. He then shared pictures of this\u00a0enjoyable time in a Facebook report of the trip. And that\u2019s when trouble began.<\/p>\n<p>The company\u2019s Legal Department saw the pictures: they thought someone could interpret them as an attempt to bribe the Chief. The manager almost got fired. I should say that the company is in the Fast Consumer Goods sector, and the kit was worth quite a bit.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1396\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1396\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/12\/2013-06-28-08.14.551.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1396 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/12\/2013-06-28-08.14.551-300x273.jpg\" alt=\"Indigenous handicrafts are a very nice gift\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/12\/2013-06-28-08.14.551-300x273.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/12\/2013-06-28-08.14.551-1024x932.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/files\/2015\/12\/2013-06-28-08.14.551-500x455.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1396\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Indigenous handicrafts are a very nice gift<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Gifts have different meanings. Institutionalized <strong>gift exchange serves as an alternative to markets and hierarchies<\/strong> in some contexts. A <strong>gift-economy<\/strong> is a collective allocation of goods based on need and abundance. <strong>This traditional exchange mechanism co-exists with the market in some African societies.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I learned about <strong><em>dama<\/em> \u2013 the gift economy system that works in Mali<\/strong> \u2013 in an article by Beverly Bell posted at <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Yes! Magazine<\/a><\/em>. In essence, \u201cthe person who receives a gift will probably pass it on to someone else. Another person altogether, down the line, will give back to the original giver. <em>Dama<\/em>\u00a0involves return, but from within a broadly defined community to which the gift has moved on.\u201d*<\/p>\n<p>According to Bell,<strong> <em>dama<\/em> serves several purposes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>It maintains social connections:<\/strong> \u201cGifting is not an economic activity so much as a spinning of that web, continually reinforcing interconnectedness and the collective.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>It sustains and celebrates the values of sharing and humanity:<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s the link with your neighbors, your parents, your relatives. If you can\u2019t keep that link, you are not a human being.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>It keeps the community well:<\/strong> \u201cA community is only as strong as its parts.Only by all providing for each other will all survive and thrive.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Christmas gift exchange \u2013 both at the personal and corporate level\u00a0\u2013 has become an institutionalized practice. Let\u2019s not forget <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whychristmas.com\/customs\/presents.shtml\" target=\"_blank\">its original\u00a0meaning<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>On a humorous note: do you want to know what\u2019s considered a great Christmas gift in Ghana? <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/2014\/12\/24\/a-great-christmas-gift-in-ghana\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Merry Christmas to all of us who celebrate it!<\/p>\n<p>* Quotes taken from \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/new-economy\/malis-gift-economy\" target=\"_blank\">Mali\u2019s gift economy<\/a>,\u201d by Beverly Bell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christmas is a time when we exchange gifts in many countries \u2013 not the most important aspect of Christmas, though related to its authentic meaning. This reminds me of a story I heard. An American manager participated in a Corporate Social Responsibility program aimed at capacity-building in Africa. On a visit to a small village, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1654,"featured_media":1396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99106],"tags":[64739,79903,455,100332,100329,100333,80748,89741,100331,1450],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-future-and-perspectives-for-africa","tag-christmas","tag-communal-mentality","tag-corporate-social-responsibility","tag-dama","tag-gift","tag-humanity","tag-life-style","tag-mali","tag-traditions","tag-values","megacategoria-mc-africa"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1407,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions\/1407"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.iese.edu\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}