Economic Rationality and Hierarchical Gift Economies: Value and Ranking Among British Pakistanis

Abstract

This article analyses the tendency of Pakistani immigrants in Britain to transform commodities into gifts, and the rationality of their economic behaviour. Central to the argument is the view that South Asian gift economies may be typified as 'hlerarchical gift economies' and that this is reflected in specific consumption patterns. The argument extends recent discussions of unilateral gifting in South Asia and elsewhere, and focuses on the systematics of gift economies and the way such economies come to be embedded in capitalist, market economies, and in plural societies. Consumption and exchange In his Theory of the leisure class (1950 [1899]), Veblen analysed consumption as displayconspicuous waste and leisure. As display, consumption was, he argued, a primary dimension of individual competition for status. The social dynamics he describes are thus the dynamics of emulation and self-indulgent individualism. He ignores, apparently, the use of goods in exchange, as objectifications of valued social relationships; the creation through consumption of social debts which generate trust and underline the durability of relationships. Douglas and Isherwood (1978) criticise his theory on similar grounds, and point to the embeddedness of goods within cultural systems, the metaphoric significance of goods, and their function in the creation and maintenance of social relationships. Consumption, production and social reproduction are inseparable features of a continuing cycle.