[Reader-list] Mali's Gift Economy

[Chintan]

*Mali's Gift Economy*

by Beverly Bell

http://www.yesmagazine.org/economies/malis-gift-economy?utm_source=27jul09&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=15_Mali

Excerpts:

Coumba says, “If you ask any number of people how they live, what they eat,
where they get what they wear, you would quickly notice that most of it has
been given by someone.” *dama* is a time-honored, well-honed means of
keeping away hunger, prolonged illness, and early death. It provides the
social safety net which the state—egged on by the World Bank and IMF—has
neglected: a working health system, social security for the elders,
education, and child care.

In addition to trying to prevent anyone from being too poor, yet another
purpose of *dama* is to prevent most everyone from becoming too rich. While
in the U.S. there often exists social reinforcement to accumulate as much as
possible, with wealth and the wealthy frequently being revered, in Mali the
cultural norm is to give away as much of your accumulation as possible, with
generosity and the generous being most respected. The social pressure to
give acts as a disincentive to hoard, or what we call save. Coumba offers,
“Being rich here means that the person has abandoned his or her values, that
he or she is not giving enough to the needs around. People really start
worrying about what has happened to that person.”