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June 9, 2024
Our Hidden Blueprint
Our economic institutions - capitalism, trade, money, the market - are based on one fundamental principle: Quid Pro Quo. Something For Something.
It is said that these systems sprung out of the age-old human tradition of trade, of exchange. That huma...
Our economic institutions - capitalism, trade, money, the market - are based on one fundamental principle: Quid Pro Quo. Something For Something.
It is said that these systems sprung out of the age-old human tradition of trade, of exchange. That humans, from the dawn of time, have exchanged with each other for our needs - goods, services, emotions, care, language - that our very nature is transactional.
Our guest on this episode, independent researcher Genevieve Vaughan, has spent her life theorizing and proving the very opposite - that Quid Pro Quo, or “the exchange economy” is completely incompatible with human life and human needs.
That in fact, it is the basic interaction of unilateral giving and receiving, “the gift economy”, that is the hidden blueprint of human life, and that the “exchange economy” is indeed a parasitic system - an economy that rests on a sea of unseen and unacknowledged gifts.
In this episode we talk about the maternal roots of the gift economy, the gendered division of these opposing economies, how “the exchange economy” destroys mutuality, empathy and human connection, and why we need to find our way back to our original gift-based economies. And that “when we base our economy on giving and receiving rather than exchange, we create completely different human relations.”
Genevieve Vaughan's Links:
maternalgifteconomymovement.org
Contact Us
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Credits
Host: Elle Kamihira
Produced by Elle Kamihira
Audio Engineering by Jason Sheesley at Abridged Audio
Cover Art by Bee Johnson
Music by Beware of Darkness
Genevieve Vaughan
Researcher, Semiotician & Author
Genevieve Vaughan is an independent researcher (Bryn Mawr College ’61). Born in Texas in 1939, she has lived between the USA and Italy most of her life.
Her first article in semiotics, Communication and Exchange, appeared in the journal Semiotica in 1980. She founded the all-women multicultural Foundation for a Compassionate Society, 1988 – 2005. She also founded the academic and activist network International Feminists for a Gift Economy, 2001- present.
Her books are For-Giving; A Feminist Criticism of Exchange, Plainview Press (1997), Homo Donans, VandA Press (2008), The Gift in the Heart of Language; The Maternal Source of Meaning, Mimesis Press (2015). She is editor of Athanor: Il Dono/the Gift, Meltemi (2004), Women and the Gift Economy; A Radically Different Worldview is Possible, Inanna Press (2007), and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy, Inanna Press (2018). Genevieve’s other collective work can be found in Canadian Women’s Studies Journal: Vol. 34, Feminist Gift Economy: A Maternalist Alternative to Patriarchy and Capitalism (2020) and Mothering, Gift and Revolution: Honoring Genevieve Vaughan’s Life Work, Vanda Press (2021).
Many of her books and articles as well as her three children's books and a collection of her songs can be found free at gift-economy.com. An ongoing series of webinars on various aspects of the gift are available at maternalgifteconomymovement.org and on Gift Economy channel on YouTube. She has three daughters and two grandchildren.