Potlatching

Joel Myhal English 803 Instructor Duffy 8-29-09 Reading Journal 1 “Potlatching” The put up I read was titled “Potlatching” by Conrad Phillip Kottak. In the contain Professor Kottack explains the “Potlatching” culture, which is a festive event within a regional exchange system among tribes of the North Pacific seacoast of North America. Some tribes still participate in the potlatch, whatsoevertimes as a memorial to the deceased. The motivation behind the potlatch was for them to evolve prestige by giving away such items as, food, blankets, pieces of bruiser and other(a) items. The potlatch associated local individuals along the North Pacific soaring into a regional alliance and exchange network. Potlatching and intervillage exchange had adjustive functions, heedless of the motivations of the individual participants. Certain tribes who were enjoying an especially good class had a surplus of subsistence items, which it could trade for more durable wealth items, like blankets, canoes, or pieces of copper. wealthiness, in turn by organism distributed could be converted into prestige. Members of several villages were invited to any potlatch and got to take central confidence the resources that were given away.

Potlatching is a misunderstood practice according to just about anthropologists who studied the tribe’s culture. They saw it not in terms of its apparent wastefulness, but in terms of its semipermanent role as a cultural adaptive mechanism. Potlatching served to sustain the development of socioeconomic strat ification, a system of social classes. weal! thiness relinquished or destroyed was converted into a vain item: prestige. Under capitalism, we reinvest our profits (rather than burning our cash), with the hope of faculty an additional profit. However, the potlatching tribes were content to relinquish their surpluses rather than use them to branch out the social distance between themselves and their fellow tribe members. When I think of another...If you want to get a full essay, put it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

If you want to get a full essay, visit our page: write my paper