Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Giving A Gift To The Hamlet: Rank, Solidarity, And Productive Exchange In Rural Japan, Robert C. Marshall

Anthropology Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper examines the strategic pursuit of family well-being and village status under conditions of overt co-operation and covert competition at the buraku level of social organization through the analysis of a pattern of customary gift-giving that developed after World War II in several neighboring farm hamlets in Aichi Prefecture.1 The custom described here consists of the regular and systematic giving of gifts directly to the hamlet itself by all member families on a limited number of sharply defined occasions. By means of their gifts, member families overtly demonstrate solidarity with the hamlet as a whole while simultaneously giving covert …