Category:Redistribution

These entries focus on open secrets in societies related to the redistribution of resources. From economies of favours to the exchange of gifts and informal payments, the ‘elephant in the room’ here is the banality of informality, invisible because it is, on the one hand, everyday, routine, taken for granted, common and small, and yet, on the other hand, omnipresent and therefore voluminous and influential outside its narrower context. The social contexts of gifts, favours and payments that defy clear borders between materiality and non-materiality, between pure gift and reciprocity, make such social exchanges particularly elusive and hard to pin down.