Upstream - Gift Economies with Angel Miles

Episode Date: April 27, 2016

Angela Miles is a professor at the University of Toronto, member of International Feminists for a Gift Economy, and author of the books Integrative Feminism and Women in a Globalizing World: Transforming Equality, Development, Diversity, and Peace. We spoke about gender, the importance of gift economies, the commodification of everything, marx and alienation, integrative feminism, and how the best way to get a high is to help somebody. Intermission music by The Wild Reeds.

Hello and welcome to Upstream, which is part of the Economics for Transition project. Today we're speaking with Angela Miles, a member of the International Feminist Network for the Gift Economy. Welcome, Angela. Thank you. Welcome, Angela. Thank you. Angela, why don't we start with just a little bit about what the International Feminist Network for the Gift Economy is. This network brings together feminists from many, many, many different types of activities and regions of the world who are interested in deeply transformative change. And it includes

goddess-involved feminists, those who are concerned with economic transformation, matriarchal studies, archaeologists, anthropologists, just a whole diverse range of feminists who know that all those things, including the environment, of course, are connected. And we need to change them all together. And we need to understand. So even though we have our different focuses of our activity and our thinking, we find that it's all enriched and deepened. And we all also find that the Genevieve Vaughan's theorizing of the gift economy has been extremely important in the work we're doing. So this is called For the Gift Economy.

And it's really a way of keeping in touch, developing our thinking, keeping informed, and spreading the kinds of understandings that we found so important. So is it a network that meets regularly? Is it an online network? What's the kind of the format of it? Well, we have a listserv and anyone's welcome to join. And we also do, there are periodical gatherings, conferences,

and very often those among us will speak. And what do you mean by feminist? Feminism is a politics affirming everyone's humanity through the affirmation of women and the recognition of women and the shifting of an androcentric view that doesn't value all of the very very central human things that happen around life and around sustaining life and connecting to life so the kind of things that have been in patriarchies shoved to the margins under-resourced disrespected even actually defined as less than human really need to be affirmed so that it's a it's certainly about women being equal and autonomous and uh ending kind of structured oppression and gender as a structure of power

as opposed to simply differences between men and women it isn't it is way more than equality in a world that we know now but it is it is really moving for a world where very different central values that are articulated very specifically in what i call integrative feminisms and that are not surprisingly are because when women do affirm the importance of the work we do and the kinds of characteristics that have been associated with us that is affirming what is human about ourselves and our relationships and our world. So it's kind of, for me, it's affirming women, women's responsibilities, concerns, characteristics, priorities,

as general social priorities and values and ways of being. And so that's in a nutshell. And what do you mean by integrative feminism? Well, I have a book called Integrative Feminisms Building Global Visions. And in that, I distinguished between equality frame feminisms, which are important. And what's an example of an equality frame? Equality frame feminisms want as many women to be doctors as men. Equal pay. Equal pay, very important not to be dismissed. They also want actually equal responsibility for work in the home

and so on and so forth. Integrative feminisms want nursing and preventive care to be equally, if not more valued than medical care. So it's a question of readjusting values and not just resisting inequality, but resisting the basic definitions. For instance, not just saying we're human like men, we're as human as men are. It's like, what do we mean when we talk about human beings? What are the things that we feel are and should be defining of who we are? So it's a much deeper shift, and it does involve affirming what has been female-associated,

not just claiming to be just as good at arithmetic. And they really are integrative on many, many different levels because they take on race, class, and gender, and all kinds of oppressions. And they refuse, they don't say, well, emotion is much better than reason, but they say, you can't separate those things. Do you know where the mental and the manual? It's a holism. So it's a resistance of the kind of binaries and the dichotomies and the dualisms as well as the androcentrisms and the hierarchizing.

So it's deeply egalitarian. And of course, very, very compatible with indigenous worldviews. You know, the relationships, the holism, the balance, the egalitarianism, and that really, really honoring and centering on life, really, all life. So behind what you're saying, are there a series of assumptions around what it means to be feminine or what it means to be a woman? Like you mentioned nursing, so like nurturing I'm hearing. You mentioned manual versus, you know, what are the kind of assumptions there?

Well, there's no assumptions. The assumptions are not about what men and women are. The assumptions are that gender, that is the notion of gender, is not what it is, is not the same as male and female. Gender is a structure of power, just like class. Class, you could have a feudal class system, you can have a socialist, you know, capitalist class system, but there it's it's not the nature of the work or what goes on in those systems but it's the social structure you're talking about the power over so in pre

patriarchal societies meant there often are and usually are sexual divisions of labor there are some structures social structures but they're not structured power. And actually male and female aren't understood as opposites at all. More as compliments? Yeah, there's a balance and there's an equal respect for those things. And in fact, what men and women

do isn't enforced in the sense that if a female wants to ride a horse or a male wants to weave, they have a certain name or a certain status for that. Sometimes it's a very special status and it's just, it tends for some reason, which we don't know at the moment, it tends to fall into structures that are where males and females tend to do different things but it's very different than our current system which i don't want to get into because it's not the topic of the interview but it you know to do with it's to do with matriarchies matriarchal

structures where you've got a birth family that has the mother and the siblings and how different how totally different that is in terms of the way we're raised but i but i don't it is actually quite connected to the gift economy in the sense of exchange and i i probably won't get into it in the interview but exchange emerges out of early egalitarian societies uh where things flow where they're needed, when that goes along with emergence of gender, when you have a definition of what a man is that's separate from mothering or caring, and then you get a female gender described, which is opposite of that. So this whole notion of exchange is really, in a material kind of ways, is really at the heart or the base

of a separation of all our humanities into genders. And it goes way back. And I can talk more about gift and exchange as paradigms but to see those things and understand how important those different kinds of relationships are and that it isn't just a question of oh I think I'll give this away or oh well I'm going to exchange this it's not just a decision about a certain kind of behavior it's we need to see these things as paradigmatic. And when we're moving to transformative economics and we're really changing things, the paradigm has to change away from exchange and not just unequal exchange. we have to recognize that all of nature, all of our survival relationships, our whole, the relationships we're born into, and even though in a much, much, much, much, much restricted way, if a family's functioning, if a patriarchal family's functioning, the aim is to provide the best for everybody.

That is a kind of a basic thing, sort of a good idea. Doesn't it make sense that we would do that as a society? And if we don't bring that, actually, it's a sort of a theoretical sense of that on, then some of the ways we think of changing things, or even the ways we understand the significance of the stuff that we are trying to do, is less developed than it would be. And I think you can see why so many different feminists active in so many different areas are attracted to this, because we've been doing stuff without that theoretical depth of what exactly it is and why it's important. All of a sudden we have reasons for understanding why

when you have a group that's functioning really well and you manage to get some funding and somebody gets paid the relationships change. I mean really against everybody's desire it happens. Because it goes from

gift to exchange. Yeah and even though everyone's still giving, and we all want to be there, this theorizing has helped me say, my gosh, there's a reason for this. But to really try to figure out exactly how that happens. Everybody takes less responsibility. When someone is paid to take the responsibility,

there's a certain... Yeah, I remember talking to a group who were in Bristol and they had a group of volunteers putting together a cafe and a cinema and none of them were paid. And then actually the grants writer said, oh, well, we actually have some opportunity to get some sort of compensation. But when she asked people, would you want compensation for being behind the bar or doing the ticket sales? Suddenly, they said, no way. And suddenly, being behind the bar for minimum wage wasn't something they were interested

in, but they would gladly do it for free. That's very interesting, because so often groups do, even when it's functioning fine, and they say, but we have to become sustainable. We better get some money. And they bring it in, even if they haven't needed it. And there was an interesting example of that in Ontario in Canada, where a community had a volunteer bus service, or they were ferrying people around where they needed to go.

And it was working very well. And they went and got funding and made some paid positions and it wasn't functioning as well. And yet, of course, we do in our society have to have money. But it's interesting that even that the requirement for money is a problem,

not just because we don't have any, but it's a problem when we have it. And that there's some theorizing gift and exchange helps us see just how deep we have to go to change is is it a problem when we have money or is it our relationship to money that is the problem well it really is and this getting back to to sort of the gift economy theory theorizingizing. The really, really, really important understanding is how they differ. And with a gift relationship, things flow, and it's a relationship.

It's direct. When you introduce exchange, even if it's fair exchange, even if you want to be fair, you engage in that activity for what you want to get back. You want to get some oranges and you happen to have some silk or something. So you initiate the thing

in order to get the oranges, not because this person needs some silk. And the huge difference, even when you're in the same community and you're friendly, is that the human relationship is interrupted. And the economics become separate from the relationship. You've got an initial break right there. And of course, there's a lot of what we think is trade and barter in local communities that actually is gift. Do you know what I mean? It actually is a relationship. many how many oranges you give for how many eggs depends actually on need and availability and so on so there's all kind of there's a way in which theorizing the gift also makes it visible you know because um we tend to say you know exchanging ideas which is

which is silly right i mean it's exciting it's exciting, it's giving. And in communities, there's a lot of reciprocal gift. And giving in some senses always is reciprocal, and the receiving is always active. So we need to see the distinction and see how exchange, even when the relationship, how exchange, even when the relationship, it's not like, oh, I want to profit, or I don't want anything to do with that person. I only want to trade with them. It's an interruption, a deep and a serious interruption. The other thing about exchange is, whether you want to exchange equally or you want to make a profit, you do have to be able to measure the value of two very different things and when when you do that you have to create some kind of a superordinate other against which things that are very different can be measured such as money such as money such as shells such as yes once're into, and you do need it for exchange,

when the purpose of the activity is for what you get back, and it's not simply a gift and it's not simply flowing, then, just as I say, to be fair, you have to measure. And once you're measuring things, you are separating from the use. Things become other than what they are. And you have the means to do a very crazy thing, which is not just to compare things and not just to prefer going for a walk to having a shower. We're not talking about valuing everything equally

until you measure it. You may value things differently. But the idea that you actually compare them and put them on a scale, one above each other, that makes it possible. That's, again, the beginnings of being able to say that one race is superior to another. One to make of a gender is superior to each other.

One person. Yeah. You have this superordinate standard, common standard against which you can measure things. Right now, that's all we do. That's how we see the world. Do you know we measure, measure, measure? And that's very basic.

It's quite apart from the fact that the GDP is measured, that we have chosen to measure everything by money. And right now it's getting more and more intense. You know, I mean, 50 years ago or even 30 years ago, the market was one place. And we had family and church and education. We had a lot of things that were outside the market. There's virtually nothing now that isn't commodified monetized and and and it's really

intense this commodification but the gift theorizing is deeper than that it's a kind of a base of separation from our humanity and from each other and from nature so gift is the way that nature works gift is nature all our relations indigenous understandings of our place, that is gift. And there isn't a separate economy, and there isn't a separate school. It is integrated, and it is balanced, and it is relational, and it is holistic. It is deeply, deeply human. And the separation, I think what the gift economy does is it's not just in our head. It's not just that we see the world differently.

It's not just that we've grown to be selfish, whether we think people are born that way or we're made that way by a system. We have this very basic alienation. And it was 6,000 or 7,000 years ago. It wasn't even that long ago. And we need to see it now. It's not like you have a blueprint, a giving blueprint. We're at the point of seeing giving. We're at the point of understanding how different exchanges, even if it's fair. We're at the point of understanding just how much joy we get out of giving. I mean, talking about

how it transforms being behind a coffee bar serving. It's so joyful. Once it's pointed out, into coffee bar serving. It's so joyful. Once it's pointed out, and it's not because I'm a superior person, I'm a giving person, I'm not selfish, it's because I'm human and because this is the best thing you can do in terms of getting a high,

is to really help somebody. And of course to receive it, to receive the help and get that kind of connection is a buzz. It's a buzz. Even when it goes on and it happens, we tend not to see it. Can you talk a little bit more about the alienation? What do you mean by that?

What is the alienation that we feel? In a gift economy and in gift relations, when our human relationships are with each other, unmediated, and things are flowing where they're needed. And the frame is, it's just the way you live, that things go where they're needed, and we're doing the best for everybody. In that kind of a situation,

our economic relationships are our human relationships. There's no separation. There's no separation. It's spiritual. Our spirituality, who we are, is giving. And Genevieve Vaughn says we're homo donans, really. We're giving. That's what the basic core is.

And so that the world as we know it, and those separations aren't there. I mean, it's just, we walk through the world in relation, use values. We know things for what they are, not for what they're worth over here or next to each other. What their price tag is.

What their price tag is or what they are, where they fit on the scale. And things can have a different use depending on the day and the person. Absolutely, yeah. A cup of water can be totally different use value different points yeah yeah absolutely so what about the idea though that gift gifts actually make people indebted to one another that some someone may give a gift but there may be an actual, okay, now you owe me. Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing? Is that always there?

Well, there's David Graeber's book on debt, and he talks, originally, this debt is relationship. relationship. But before that, there's no debt. Relationship is relationship, because you're not measuring things. You don't even think of doing that. So that is a transition. So debt is part of the exchange mentality, the exchange paradigm? Yes, yes. And I think the early forms of debt were transition forms because there was a relationship right at the heart of those things. When you say transition forms, you mean from this gift to... From matriarchy into, well, from matriarchal gift economies

into patriarchal exchange economies, whether it was one form or another, feudal, or they were class societies and gendered class and class and gender and that's what we what we're up against and of course colonial i mean in terms of of that kind of thing but in terms of certainly a lot of the anthropology of gift societies almost all of it has looked at it through exchange. You know, when you have the potlatch. Can you explain the potlatch? In a number of Indigenous communities, one of the ways balance is retained is annually or more frequently big celebrations, which the wealthier clans

redistribute their goods among the community. They all get together, they bring the goods. It may be that they put on massive, massive feasts. It may be that, you know, there's all redistribute their goods among the community. They all get together. They bring the goods. It may be that they put on massive, massive feasts. It may be that, you know, there's all kinds of ways that it's done. But it is. And that's just an integral part of the social life and the culture. And then when anthropologists look at it,

they say, well, of course, that's about feeling good. It's all because you feel good. The idea that it's just what you do, that's how it works. Do you know what I mean? Can it be both? Can it both feel good and it's what people do? Yes, but being feels good.

But the idea that feeling good is about having more. Yes, it's about being human and feeling good. And some of the pleasure is just by being able to give. It's not because it makes you a big man so that most of it discounts from the beginning the possibility of a society and a culture where that was just how people were and that was what was done and yet you can see in a lot of the hunting contexts it's just distributed it's the hunt is distributed and certain parts go to the widows first. And there are there are social mechanisms.

One of the things about you're talking about, well, does it have to be giving or exchanging or is it just feeling good or can you feel good because you're giving? Gift is very distorted in an exchange economy. And many forms of giving are problematic. Most of them are. Charity is really problematic. Why do you see charity as problematic? It's not a flow. It's somebody giving to somebody else because they need it,

but it's an individual act to do good. And it's better than not giving when somebody needs something. But when it becomes institutionalized and then you get brownie points in heaven, and some are deserving and some aren't, or, you know, it's very, very influential. But also when you're giving a birthday present, you know, if you have to give it, oh my God, it's her birthday,

or it's Christmas, we have to do it. But also, who gives a bigger present? Who feels bad because they can't afford to give it? It's not, because giving, in a to give it it's not because giving in a gift economy it's just things flowing where they're needed and it's not sacrifice because this person needs it and you don't need it it's and it's not brownie points because you're doing without or you're doing something super unusual and in fact people aren't very grateful it's sad because of course,

wherever exchange enters, it destroys gift. What happens when money comes in, too, because if you could store up wealth in certain kinds of accumulative ways, then there is a cost to giving. There becomes a cost rather than that being just a security in just what you do. So there's all kind of reasons why giving as an economy doesn't persist. And insofar as it persists, it's distorted. But there's still lots and lots and lots of ways. I think I was saying the other day how women very often are very reluctant to charge the full value of what they give. And that's often interpreted as women lacking any sense of self-worth and have to you know smarten up and start getting assertive enough to charge what we're worth or to demand it and and i think women are more reluctant than men to actually do these exchanges without a gift element

because we are less human when we do that. And women have been trapped in giving. And that's not good. A lot of feminists are very suspicious of the notion of a gift economy, because women have just given and given and given. And that's another way in which it's not reciprocal. So with giving, you said, you mentioned that stuff flows to where it's needed. So if you do have that then you need people to be able to ask for what they need right to be able to know where to flow yeah so it's not i'm i'm walking around giving giving giving i'm also listening to what needs to be given and then giving then so if you take this example of women and money and that kind of thing

it's if they do need more money for subsistence or basic needs, I don't know how you would describe that, but then that they can ask for really what they need, but that they're not asking for more than they need. Is that kind of what you're... Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking when you're in these gift economies, people know what's needed. It's not secret.

Yeah. Certainly in the vestigial gift economies that exist a lot of these places if anybody admires anything you do give it to them you give it to them whether it's your favorite dress or whatever there's no thanks given for most most things when they're given this is to do with how the value we need to change the values and change the understanding but we are working in a situation, I talk about distorting the gift, women have given, given, given, given, and it's been exploitative. And it's oppressive. And so are we going to just refuse? It's not a very joyful strategy to start saying,

you're on your own. I mean, it's diminishes so hugely. You're listening to Upstream and we're in conversation with Angela Miles. We'll be back in the second half of our program. When I came, when I came, when I came, I came in peace. I had just sins away. When I sing, when I sing, when I sing, my heart bells ring in the verse. In the verse, they reply and I'm part of everything When we kiss, when we kiss, when we kiss, please don't miss Cause my lips are like my hips, they swing and you might miss When I dream, when I dream, when I dream I see real things and I don't fear

The future dear, saw it in my dreams When I hurt, when I hurt, when I hurt when I hurt when I hurt I know that I'm alive cause it's then my heart beats and it pumps me back to life so when I go when I when I go, may it be in peace. And I'll know at the very least, when I go, I'll go in peace. That was When I Go by The Wild Reads. Welcome back to Upstream. We're speaking with Angela Miles, professor, author, and a member of the International Feminist for a Gift Economy. So can a gift economy work within an exchange economy?

Because it sounds like it's about paradigms and worldviews. about your paradigms and worldviews and so can i on one day enter into a gift uh situation and then an exchange situation and one thing that comes to mind is the practice of donna the buddhist practice of donna where teachers will freely give their teachings and then at the end of a course or a workshop or a retreat they'll have a chance for the people who went to offer a gift in it's not exchange because there's no value associated it's really what you'd like to give so i do know times when i've done that practice and that is gift economy and then of course walked out and done exchange economy so i know that's possible but can a full thriving gift economy work well i think it's unlikely but there are many many many many on a whole continuum of activities now where people are approaching that or trying to do that or to move in that

direction in a lot of different ways including trying to do the gift and do gift stuff. Now, this brings me to another very key element in the particular theorizing of the gift that Genevieve Vaughan has been so important in developing, but also that the international network is involved, is that we do need to understand it in terms of patriarchy. We do need to see that this alienation from our humanity was gender and class and we have to tackle that and we have to very very consciously recognize for instance that

all of us are born into the gift. None of us would survive and we could say without mothering. Now, the mothering may be done by a village, it may be done by male or female. We're not talking about some kind of essentialist notion that everybody has a birth mother who breastfeeds them. But all of us are shaped by early gift relationships. And this is reciprocal. I mean, the receiver is very active, and there's a lot coming both ways. But oftentimes the fact that there's a lot going both ways is understood as an exchange relation,

which is crazy. Do you know what I mean? Oh, it's not the parent doing everything for the child. There's an exchange there. No, there isn't. It's gift. So that a part of being able to deeply theorize this and to get a consciousness that we need in so many of the areas where we're working. When you see this,

the gift, it's not like you stop working on what you're working on. It's just that it brings an understanding of what you've been intuiting and a knowledge that can help one do whatever work is in different areas. It's feminist. This is a feminist network for the gift economy. And you would be surprised how many people are out there doing the gift have never noticed. I'm saying that the exchange economy is patriarchal

and the gift economy is matriarchal. And in a gift, in matriarchies, male and female are matriarchal. That's how we're raised. It just flows. The priority is the life, is the care. In a patriarchal society, when we have this vast area of exchange, and so many of our relationships are interrupted and you have developed a masculine gender definition that is other than the caring and then you have a an opposite gender that is the one who does the caring and the whatever and it's not as valued and in this context males are less caring than females they're not valued for that. They're

not supposed to do that. And females, we aren't functioning as males and females do in a matriarchal society, but we are stuck there. We keep one of our feet in there for sure, even when we're working in the paid labor force. We do the providing, do you know what I mean? The cleaning up, what's needed. And in a patriarchy, that is not respected. In a matriarchy, by both males and females, that is the central thing that everybody does. And even if there's a division of labor, it's all for the whole. And it really is not a gendered difference of caring, even if there's a sexual division of labor in a matriarchy. But there is a gendered, and I don't mean male-female, I just mean that structure and the dichotomies that are imposed and the male attributes are the valued ones. And the less human, I think it might be Aristotle, somebody. The male is the human and the female is not quite.

And even the whole of the Christian thing, you've got this notion of God and man's relation to God. And women kind of gets in the way or she supports it. And she's the one who ate the apple and fell from the garden. Yeah, the dichotomy, this dichotomy in some senses, it's gender in the beginning separated from the giving, having something. And our whole society, even now,

we're told, or the presumption is, that we really became social when we began measuring things. Before that, we were primitive. They weren't real social relations because we weren't measuring them. And now that we can measure them, we're social. We're advancing here now into being really social so we can measure things and know who's better than who and who gets more and all this. And the many, many, many tens of thousands of years before that, where that wasn't happening, was just waiting for history to start, right? And waiting to be able to do all this stuff

that is an alienation. So, just to go back to make sure i'm understanding so a matriarchy is one not where women are in control and that's a probably a common assumption but what it is is it's there's no value judgment of one gender above the other or race or race and everyone is seen as a carer or only female bodied people are seen as carers everybody everybody's value everyone everyone values caring or everyone cares both i mean but but not necessarily in the same ways because there is a sexual division of labor usually okay. Okay, so there's a sexual... So some people go out and hunt and get food, and some people, you know, look after the babies. Some people plant the corn.

But everything is of equal value? It's egalitarian. It's egalitarian. Like, there's no class. Okay. And there's no gender. Right. So why isn't it an egalitarian society instead of a matriarchal society?

You can call it what you like. Okay. This is another network that overlaps with and is connected as the Matriarchal society you can call it what you like okay this is the another network that overlaps with and is connected is the matriarchal studies network feminist matriarchal studies they they choose to call it matriarchal because they want to have the discussion about patriarchy do you know what i mean and it's always avoided it's not even avoided it's just it's just so easy to ignore this thing ignore all that work ignore women ignore the whole thing so everybody's trying to be better people and get into gift and it's fascinating if you jennifer vaughn has a i think i mentioned the book uh for giving that her which was her first book. And it's For-Giving, a feminist critique of exchange.

She has a new book, came out in 2015, that I think is called Gift in the Heart of Language, The Maternal Roots of Gift Economy. It doesn't matter philosophy, science, anthropology, economics, early child development, any area you look at, it doesn't recognize how we come into the world, what the basic relationships are, and what shapes us. And it's a very, very, very strange literature when you start looking at it and really seeing it. It is seriously a problem for all of us

as human beings wanting to survive on this planet and getting to the end game. And there's so much new interest in the commons, there's a new interest in giving, there's a new interest in all these, and a recognition of nature, and learning from indigenous cultures, and all these things. learning from indigenous cultures and all these things. And somehow that patriarchy piece is rarely actually noticed. And I think the feminist theorizing of the gift economy is not just important because patriarchy, anybody can mention patriarchy, but because the early mechanisms or the alienations,

it's a materialist basis. It's a materialist analysis of our spiritual, cultural, social, economic malaise. And I think I've said this before, and I think it's really important, but it's that Karl Marx was very, very interested in trying to understand alienation and a materialist base of alienation. And he did a lot of major, magnificent theorizing. And he wrote in the 1844 manuscripts about alienation,

but when he came to do his really important analytical work, he explored the nature of exploitation under capitalism and the particular alienation of labor under capitalism, where workers worked for a wage and received in return the value of what it took to produce them. But all of the surplus value of what they produced went to the owner of the means of production. And therefore they were alienated because their working activity built the power over them. But it was really looking at exploitation under capitalism and particular forms of alienation, but not the basic forms of alienation from our humanity. And I think that the gift theorizing and the notion of exchange

and not just unequal exchange in the wage relation, but exchange itself as a basis of human alienation is really exciting and goes deeper. Even deeper. Deeper. To the heart of it. Deeper. Yeah.

And that's, you know, it's a big claim. That's exciting. So it's really these two paradigms we're talking about are gift, and it's gift for the sake of gift, not gift so that you owe me something. And it's not gift so I can feel better about myself. It's gift because maybe I see you need. Gift because relation.

Gift because human because of relation. It is who we are, and it is our relationship. It's not separate. Right. It's not separate from our relation, and we are homo donans, and we're in relation to all our relatives. And then there's that, and then there's the exchange paradigm, which is putting a value on an hour of your time versus an hour of my time

versus this lamp versus that chair, and they all are measured differently in different values, we use money to do that. And then that separates. What happens is those exchange relationships are a relationship to yourself not to the other person because you you engage when you want something right okay so it's for you buy it or you trade something because what they have you need yes so it's for you and it's about you right and that's true even if it's equal yeah and that's how partly how you can tell the difference between a reciprocal

gift and exchange because reciprocal giving even if there's even if it's mutual you would be doing it anyway you're not simply doing it because you need that stuff but you do find things that you both need yeah okay so there and there's there's um but uh but when it's sort of by definition the definition of exchange is a relationship with yourself because you need something or because you want a profit right and it doesn't matter if it's equal you know it doesn't matter if the intention is it cuts off the relationship as well in your in your exchange relationship you may want to get what you need or get a profit yeah Yeah. But it's not a direct relationship with between the people or with the things. The things become something else.

Totally. They become commodities. And it's big. And of course, we have to have, we have to say that GDP is awful. We have to say that development is a mask for appropriation. We have to see the enclosure that's going on. We have to see the enclosure that's going on. We have to see all the ways that pay is unequal and that most of the work that's done isn't paid. And we have to see that trade isn't fair. And we have got to try to make it better, but at the heart of it and at the root of it.

And if we want transformative economics, gift has got to be understood and seen, recognized as a paradigm. And exchange has to be seen as an alienation. And we can't be afraid to talk about patriarchy and matriarchy and how they relate. We have to understand gift. We have to see that our separation from our humanity and a separation from a gift economy and from the major social priorities or most recognized aspects of who we are and activities was the caring and the giving and the life.

Once you get a separation from that society, exchange is a very key piece of that. And with that comes gender. that comes gender. Gender as a structure of power and gender, a masculine gender, where those priorities aren't there defining what makes them important. And they aren't the social priorities of society anymore. And in fact, women are trapped there. It's under-resourced, disrespected, marginalized. Considered outside of the economy. Yeah the gift economy tomorrow if i wanted to start to practice this idea in my mind one thing that i can see as you mentioned is start giving start giving where i see there is a need and i don't feel a sense of guilt or like i need to where i'm i'm sacrificing like you mentioned but i'm sure you do it a lot

i think you can start by noticing yeah by right by recognizing how we all receive all the time and we all give all the time yeah and there's way more gift in our life than there is exchange even today really right when we go through the people open the door for us. Do you know what I mean? Yes. And I think that is major. Yeah. Really. Because unless and until we see it, unless and until we understand it as a paradigm, we can't really begin working on doing the shift. So first we start to see it, we start to notice it,

and then we start to practice it more to kind of up the ante. And that is by doing it in our lives, giving more, noticing when we are receiving, and then talking about it. And in groups, when we're trying to organize, from or where it is, prioritizing that and seeing it as a value, seeing it as a resource. I mean, so often if you're trying to provide something that's needed in a community or you're trying to have an event or do something, it's seen as a weakness not to have money. To be doing it without is considered to be not sustainable

or it's less than, and we to get it on to to really start doing what they did in the in the when the when the group that you described said no we don't want to do it for that my one question though that comes up is around privilege because that group that was able to volunteer their time and be behind the bar and open the cinema they were people who had extra time to donate to this cause now there are people who need to pay bills and need to pay rent and with rising income inequality and rising rent prices it's difficult to say to someone don't worry about charging give your massages for free or your time for free and you know i can see how people would feel uncomfortable with that

telling them to not worry about sustainability. I think in an ideal world, what we would need would flow to us, yes, and we need to be able to ask for what we need. But how do you deal with this sense of privilege? No, absolutely. Most groups are not sustainable without there being some money. So I think it's a good point you've made. I'm glad you pointed it out.

That group happened to be able to do it without. It's not a problem that most groups can avoid. But I thought they were an interesting example because many groups presume you need it. Even when it is actually a viable and functioning thing, they don't see it as a strength. Right. So I was choosing that group because it was one where, and there aren't many, that most groups, if you want to do more, you're looking for more resources,

and it tends to be money that you're looking for. And that isn't always avoidable. So that's true. And that isn't always avoidable. So that's true. But I do think, for sure, we have to stop thinking that the way we can put, that that is the way to put value on what we do. Or that that then does make us more useful.

When it might be, in fact, undermining it. In fact, it always does in a certain kind of way. When those relationships start coming in. One of the things, well, the story i want to say i don't know it's just a really interesting uh research that was done with kids uh children about three years old i think they were someone was sitting at a desk and would drop their pen and all and the little kids would all run and pick it up and give it to her and this went on and the kids did it every time, and they really enjoyed giving her a pen that she dropped on the floor. And then they had one group where she gave a reward,

and those kids, for a short while, ran even faster. But they eventually didn't continue to do it because the same joy wasn't there, the same relationship wasn't there through doing it. And then, of course, when she stopped, there was another group where she stopped at a certain point. They stopped it absolutely quickly. They just stopped.

Once she had given a reward for a few times, they no longer ran to pick the thing up for her. The relationship was broken, right? And meanwhile, the others who had never been given anything just carried on just getting the same amount of joy out of so it's the intrinsic value of the action yeah and how how just simply introducing exchange destroys the relationship the connection the flow the initial thing it's scary because it's powerful yeah very powerfully alienating yeah Yeah. Like so big. So that's a sort of a... Yeah, that's a great anecdote.

So can you talk a little bit about the books and projects that you've been involved in and maybe are currently working on? Back in the day when I was studying feminist radicalism, actually, I was looking for the really transformative feminisms. And I started out thinking that for the really transformative feminisms, and I started out thinking that this would be the feminisms that wanted to integrate means and ends, and the feminisms that wanted to live now as much as possible the world that we wanted to move toward. And when I went in, I interviewed, I started out interviewing feminists whose writing I knew, or who I had heard speak, who I felt fit that.

And then I asked them to refer me to people locally, so I didn't have just the published people and so on. So I went to a number of centers and interviewed people like that. centers and interview terms like that. And I discovered as I was interviewing all these, and they were very diverse, that all of them affirmed female-associated values. They were challenging the androcentric definition of what were the important human characteristics, how you define what is human on all levels.

What is androcentric? Male-centered. Okay. So the male characteristics are the human characteristics, or the things that men do are the important things. You're challenging the basic values. And the feminists I interviewed were lesbian feminists, black feminists, eco-feminists, socialist feminists. The self-definition under all those categories, you have integrative feminisms you also have Equality frame feminisms. They're important. I don't want to put them down, but they are not Transformative they the full potential or significance of feminism. They don't don't reach that so I

Thought of this terminology integrative feminisms because it was holistic It did take race, class, gender into account. It was refusing the dichotomies and the dualisms. And the values that were affirmed were the caring and the connections and the relational. They were not separative. And what was the name of that book? Integrative Feminisms, Building Global Visions. And then what was the latest book that you've worked on? Well, the most recent collection I've done is called

Women in a Globalizing World, Transforming Equality, Development, Diversity, and Peace. The global feminist movement was an anti-globalization movement of neoliberal movement well before there was an anti-globalization movement. And the feminist peace activism defines peace so much more deeply than the non-feminist peace movement. How does it define peace?

Peace in the home, as well as peace in the society. It's an anti-violence movement, it's anti-militarism. If you look at eco-feminism compared to a lot of environmentalisms, do you know what I mean? There's a way in which in each of the areas, feminist theorizing, feminist activism is not about women over here, the integrative feminist stuff. It's about all of the many, the economy area, every area,

the spiritual area, militarism, every area that is a deeper analysis, more broad, more integrated analysis of all the kind of changes we need. So, and to see, okay, there are different tendencies of feminism. And of course, the integrative feminisms, as I say, are so compatible with Indigenous perspectives. And it's also a way of having a good solidarity, relationship, connection, without coming from a feminist place, a women's place, understanding the stuff that's been marginalized,

disrespected, exploited. And affirming that stuff is, at the same time, affirming cultures that do that. The solidarities are powerful and kind of necessary, really. The most significant forms of feminism, in my view, the most progressive, the most transformative, are integrative in that way. And yet, you have a lot of radical feminists who are integrative, and a lot of radical feminists who just don't want to be trapped into this woman-associated stuff. And they don't feel they can define what that means. They have to refuse what has been meant.

It's very interesting that the terminologies... I think that notion between integrative and equality-framed feminisms is a more useful political way of looking at the politics of different feminisms. And another thing that I think is worth adding here is solidarity as opposed to alliances. Alliances are connections and support for each other's struggles. And it's good. But solidarity means it's really gift in politics alliance actually makes me think of exchange yeah i'll back you if you back me yeah yeah solidarity is gift it's flowing it's ours we're in it together yeah we're putting it same team it's yeah that's a sort of an interesting thing i think because there is something so much more enlarging and exciting and joyful in solidarity than alliance.

Yes. which reifies the differences and different interests and needs and priorities, rather than seeing how they're, the potential of seeing how they're all connected and how they can all deepen. I mean, if we're changing at that very, very, very, very basic level, every single, everybody requires everybody else and can support everybody else and will have an interest in changing it, not by overlooking privilege, not by thinking we're all homogeneous or it doesn't matter or, you know, who cares, you know, race doesn't matter

or gender doesn't matter. It does, you know, and we have to be grounded where we are. But from that, then, solidarity is exciting. Well, thank you so much for your time. And if our listeners want to know more about the gift economy, they can visit gift underscore economy.com. Are there any other last things that you'd like to say? Well, just that I'm very glad that we had this chance to speak and that this will be included in your series of really important information interviews.

Thank you so much. You've been listening to Upstream, which is part of the Economics for Transition project. You can listen to other interviews and episodes at www.economicsfortransition.org. And we've been speaking with Angela Miles. Flowers blooming from our boats that break To the morning we run To shoreline