Potlatch * What is a potlatch? * A potlatch is an important celebration/ceremony for the First Nations people. A potlatch has many purposes: to reinforce status in a community‚ to mourn the deceased ones‚ to celebrate marriage‚ to raise a totem pole‚ to name chiefs and pass special privileges and responsibilities with them. The main purpose of a potlatch is to share wealth and witness important/significant events. * A potlatch also consists feasting‚ singing‚ dancing‚ and gift giving
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HARRIS WORK ON POTLATCH The Potlatch is basically a gift-giving festival practiced by indigenous people living mainly along the Northwest Pacific Ocean. It was indirectly an economic practice which helped people at that time. At a Potlatch gathering it required a leader to host guests and hold feasts for them and also to share wealth. Here the leader gives most if not all his wealth as gifts to gain or maintain a high social status. 1. Marvin Harris describes the Potlatch as more than just
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Anthrop 525 Term Paper Yi Min Yeng ( Leon ) Katherine Rupp began the study of Japan and Japanese when she was an undergraduate at Princeton University as noted in the Acknowledge portion of the book‚ Gift-Giving in Japan: Cash‚ Connections. Cosmologies. After that she had her graduated training in the University of Chicago funded by the National Science Foundation and the University itself‚ including one year of support from the Committee on Japanese Studies. Before the writing of this book‚ Katherine
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"India’s gift to World" Swami Vivekananda‚ the Hindoo monk‚ delivered a lecture Monday night under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association before a fairly large audience at the hall of the Long Island Historical Society‚ corner Pierrepont and Clinton streets. His subject was "India’s Gift to the World". He spoke of the wondrous beauties of his native land‚ "where stood the earliest cradle of ethics‚ arts‚ sciences‚ and literature‚ and the integrity of whose sons and the virtue
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Potlatch means ‘giving’. The potlatch was an opulent ceremony where possessions are given away or destroyed to display wealth or enhance prestige‚ by potential candidates to political offices and titles. Anthropologists tried to come up with way to understand this seemingly irrational conspicuous consumption. There are three explanations that anthropologists have given in an attempt to explain this behavior however this essay will compare two of the three namely the cultural-ecological and the Marxist
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First Nations’ families were kidnapped and put in residential schools and were forced to learn a new language and to practice a new religion. Later on‚ the Canadian Government changed the Indian Act to ban traditions and celebrations such as the potlatch. It is without a doubt that the Indian Act should be revised‚ because they should’ve treated the First Nations’ with respect‚ they should have kept their promise to the Natives and should’ve also not taken the advantage of the First Nations’ knowledge
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friendships. In addition to its economic redistributive and kinship functions‚ the potlatch maintains community solidarity and hierarchical relations within and between individual bands and nations. In this respect‚ the potlatch does not simply mark or create ethnic boundaries but attempts to subvert them.
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The Northwest Coastal Indians‚ Kwakiutl‚ lived in what is now Alaska along the Pacific Ocean down the coast to Northern California. The environment was very diverse and often extreme which included a rugged strip of land with small islands‚ deep inlets‚ inland rivers and lakes‚ deep fjords‚ and wide and narrow beaches. Mountains rise to the shore in many places. Spruce‚ cedar‚ and fir forests dominated the area supplying endless amounts of wood. All the people lived near the water and relied heavily
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THE GIFT ESSAI SUR LE DON in SOCIOLOGIE ET ANTHROPOLOGIE Published by PRESSES UNIVERSITAIRES DE FRANCE Paris‚ 1950 THE GIFT Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies by MARCEL MAUSS Translated by IAN GUNNISON With an Introduction by . E. EVANS-PRITCHARD Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of All Souls COHEN & College‚ Oxford WEST LTD 68-74 Carter Lane‚ London‚ E.C.4 1966 Copyright PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY LOWE AND BRYDONE (PRINTERS) LTD‚ LONDON
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Mauss saw the overarching connotations behind the Kula and Potlatch but he failed to explain the exchange from the perspective of the natives. Malinowski experienced the Kula first hand and gave detailed descriptions of the trading and yet his work falls short of encompassing multiple facet of the Kula society‚ especially
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