Potlatch
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Related e |
Featured: |
- A ceremony amongst certain Native American peoples of the Pacific northwest in which gifts are bestowed upon guests and personal property is destroyed in a show of wealth and generosity.
The potlatch is a festival or ceremony practiced among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. At these gatherings a family or hereditary leader hosts guests in their family's house and hold a feast for their guests. The main purpose of the potlatch is the re-distribution and reciprocity of wealth.
French sociologist Marcel Mauss's most famous work The Gift, studies potlatch, reciprocity and gift economies.
See also
- Koha, a related concept among the Māori
- Kula ring, a similar concept in the Trobriand Islands (Oceania)
- Moka, another similar concept in Papua New Guinea
- Sepik Coast exchange, yet another similar concept in Papua New Guinea
- Guy Debord, French Situationist writer on the subject of potlatch and commodity reification.
- Gift economy
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Potlatch" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.