The Curse

Abstract

In contemporary language, gifts and curses can be spoken of as interchangeable opposites, which can alternatively bestow ‘good’ or ‘bad’ qualities on a person, an object or a service. Similarly, the ability for reflexive inversion can be expressed by the ambiguous saying that something is both a ‘gift and a curse.’ This phrase embodies an unusual aspect of economic anthropology of exchange – the indelible association of the curse and the gift. The latter has been a popular subject for academic consideration over the past few decades, but its inverse has received significantly less attention. In essence the gift is an obligation: to receive, and to give back, and the foundation of gift-transactions is reciprocity, regardless of whether that which is given and returned is to the benefit or detriment of the person receiving it. We can therefore draw on the literature and analyses of gift theory to examine curse exchanges. Why do we see in the literature a prevalence of curse exchanges as an accompaniment or ancillary to gift exchanges? What does their exchange tell us about the nature of gift-giving and its relationship to curse exchanges? And what implications might this have for theories of community based around the exchange of gifts or curses? In order to address these questions, this thesis examines economies of exchanging harm in the form of curses. Chapter one sketches out the primary components of the gift, demarcating the principal elements that have made it a popular subject of inquiry: inalienability, obligation, and the invocation of regard between two people or two communities. A literature review introduces anthropological accounts of gift giving and shows how these bear out the theory of influential French sociologist Marcel Mauss. According to his approach, gifts bind social agents to one another. The Maussian gift is essentially communitarian, potentially linking together entire networks of individuals through a single exchange. Mauss emphasised that discrete transactions take place within a wider social framework of continual reciprocal giving and taking, meaning that consideration of the isolated gift always implies a host of subsidiary and complimentary exchanges. One such exchange is that of ‘the curse.’