On Reciprocity

We all know the saying "There's no such thing as a free lunch". For some of us, it may be a rather cynical way of looking at the world. After all, what about things like altruism? Magnanimity? Salvation? If there's no such thing as a free lunch, well, there really ought to be.

We anthropologists approach the saying from a rather different angle. The fundamental job of anthropology, you see, is to try and identify what is universal about the human race by examining its diversity. The anthropological study of economics is built around the idea of exchange, which we regard as a social as well as an economic transaction. And one of the few universal rules that anthropologists have discovered (it's right up there with rules like the universal incest taboo — all societies believe it's wrong to sleep with or marry close relatives — or the universal practice of marriage — which is a social and economic union between one or more males and one or more females) is the fundamental law of reciprocity.

It's the law that says, well, basically, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

You see, anthropologists regard exchange — the exchange of gifts, of goods, of services or of people — as being far more than simply the exchange of objects. Exchange, for anthropologists, is a social event. Simply put, economics is a marker of relations between people.

Let me explain this with a few examples.

1. A man sees a pair of shoes in a shoe store, fishes into his wallet, takes out some cash, hands it to the cashier, and walks away with the shoes in his hand.
2. A homeowner hires an immigrant to weed the yard. The immigrant works all day in the hot sun, but when the time comes to be paid, the homeowner is nowhere to be found.
3. A woman raises her children the best way she knows how. She works overtime, she puts them through school, she makes calls on their behalf, she struggles and struggles until they make successes of themselves.

In each of the cases above, the exchange has a social component. In the first one, the social exchange is cut short. The man sees the shoes, picks them out (during which time he may or may not engage with the salesperson), pays for them (during which time he may or may not engage with the cashier), and leaves. The social exchange is neutral; the players involved in it are as indifferent as they can possibly be to one another.

In the second, the social exchange is one-sided, uneven. A person is hired to do a job, but is never paid for that job. The relationship between the players is one of power and powerlessness; one person gets what he or she wants without paying for it.

In the third, the social exchange is long-term. On the surface, it appears that the mother is giving far more than she is getting in return. However, what she is doing by investing her time, money and effort into raising her children is creating a social exchange that will last over time. Ideally, she will get some reward in the end, whether it be something as intangible as love and gratitude, or whether it be as concrete as her children's building her a house in which to live and taking over the paying of her bills.

Exchange, you see, is far more complex than it would appear.

So what does all of this mean on the ground?

Well, think of it this way. The law of reciprocity covers three main kinds of exchanges, and these kinds of exchanges apply to different kinds of social contexts.

Balanced reciprocity, where the value of the exchange is carefully calculated and paid for as soon as it takes place, is the kind of exchange that happens generally between acquaintances, or among strangers that we consider to be more or less equal to ourselves. It's the kind of exchange that happens every day in stores, in offices, at gas stations, and the fact that we fundamentally expect it to be basically a fair process is underscored by our outrage at the practice of price gouging.

Negative reciprocity is where one person gets more out of the deal than the other. Usually it signals an unequal relationship. Stealing is the kind of negative reciprocity that occurs when one person, generally the thief, considers himself or herself to be situated in an inferior position from the victim; cheating is the kind of negative reciprocity that occurs when one person considers himself or herself superior to the victim.

Generalized reciprocity best describes the kinds of exchanges families carry out with one another, and it's the kind of exchange on which societies are built. The practice of sacrificing our own desires for the welfare of other people, or the practice of giving without counting the cost fall into this category. In either case, what is more important than the gift itself is the creating of social relationships.

So you see, lunch is never really free. Sometimes it's a rip-off; the giver has some food to off-load, and decides it's cheaper to give it away. Sometimes it's a bribe; the giver is looking for payback. Sometimes, it's a sacrifice. But it's never something that can be accepted and left behind.

In this time of need and of giving, it's well worth remembering the anthropologist's law of reciprocity. In times like these, the only moral kind of giving is the kind we call generalized reciprocity, where the gifts are given as symbols of a social connection that exists and that is important. Let's give without expecting anything concrete in return — not favours, not votes, not thanks. Let's give very simply because we are all Bahamians, and when one hurts, we all hurt.

On Amnesia

I sat down to write on 9-11 with the commemoration activities for the World Trade Center bombing going on in the background. From time to time I would look up at the television or pull up a website and be reminded of the magnitude of what happened on September 11, 2001. Three years have passed, and no American — no citizen of the world — is allowed to forget that date.

I couldn't help but contrast the American commitment to remembering with our own approach to significant dates in our history. We all know the saying unless we know where we have come from we cannot know where we are going, and we have become very good at mouthing it. But putting it into practice is a far different matter.

I say this because we are nearing the end of 2004, a year which has — or should have — particular significance for Bahamians. When we talk about freedom, democracy, liberation, or any other lofty ideal that has basic resonance for post-colonial peoples, the significance of this year is fundamental. Let me explain why.

August 1 marked the 170th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.

January 1 was the 200th anniversary of the creation of the state of Haiti, a republic that was founded by slaves who fought, successfully, for their freedom against one of the greatest European empires of the time.

September 29 is the 275th anniversary of unbroken parliamentary democracy in The Bahamas.

Now I ask you.

How many of us, besides the intellectuals and oddballs like myself, have any real awareness of these events?

I'll wager you this. If I were to walk into any classroom in this country and ask the students there to explain to me the importance of September 11th, I would find no shortage of people who could do so, just as I suspect that the numbers of people who could tell me of the achievements of Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks or Malcolm X would far exceed the numbers of people who could tell me about Cyril Stevenson or Milo Butler or Arthur D. Hanna.

And I bet if I asked them, or anyone on the street, or regular callers to radio talk shows, or other average Bahamians — why 2004 was a significant year, they would have a similar difficulty. You see, we Bahamians are generally able to speak to the triumphs and challenges of our immediate experience, but when it comes to remembering the triumphs and challenges of the past, we are hard-pressed.


Unlike our American neighbours, who approach the dates that are important to their history with a sense of reverence that subsumes everything else, we in the Bahamas practice a kind of collective amnesia that enables us to move forward at a rapid and bewildering pace, but that erases from our identities the memory of those things that make us who and what we are.

The year 2004, you see, is a year whose significance goes far beyond the glory and devastation of August and September. In addition to the dates I listed above, there are others. For example:

In 1844, the Nassau Guardian was established, which marks 160 years of unbroken press coverage in the Bahamas. The fact that 2003 was the centenary of the establishment of The Tribune has its own significance. For 160 years, Bahamians have had the opportunity of being fed news, of being served by writers who enable us to look at ourselves in all our aspects.

In 1929, Nassau and Andros were struck by a hurricane even stronger and more devastating than Frances. Like Frances, the hurricane of 1929 parked over the capital for days — three days and nights to be exact — but unlike Frances, it was estimated to be a Category 5 hurricane. No building in the capital was unscathed. The impact on the Bahamian economy was far-reaching. The cost of rebuilding Nassau was such that none of the other islands that were affected by the various hurricanes that struck the Bahamas between 1926 and 1932 could adequately be supported. This fact, combined with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929 and the resulting Great Depression, changed the demography of the Bahama Islands forever.

It behooves us to remember these events. 275 years of unbroken parliamentary democracy, 200 years of the struggle against slavery, 170 years of emancipation, 160 years of consistent press coverage, 75 years since the devastation of the capital by the 1929 hurricane — these dates matter. They matter because they form the bedrock of our existence, whether we know it or not, and they matter because they tell us who we Bahamians are: a people born from slavery and colonialism, a people who have faced adversity and who have triumphed without outside help, a people who have plenty to celebrate in our past, our present, our selves.

Next week we will celebrate. We will acknowledge our most recent athletic achievements, and we will use our celebrations to expand our local hurricane relief efforts even further. Let us do both with our whole hearts. But let us also take some time to look behind us, to mark our milestones, to reflect on our past and on our ancestors.

And let us mark this date in our history somehow as well, or else our commitment to amnesia may mean that in five years' time the events of this year may have faded into the background as well. And to do that will serve none of us well.

On Selfishness

Just lately, I've noticed a tendency for us to become selfish, or, at kindest, self-absorbed. You'd think that material prosperity would make a people more generous, not less; surely the more one has, the more one would want to share. But it doesn't appear to work that way. The more we accumulate materially, the more we seem to demand.

Here's why I say this. During the passage of the hurricane, which, when it hit the Bahamas, was a strong Category Four, I listened with some disbelief to the people who phoned into radio stations to complain that they had no water or no electricity or (I laughed out loud at this one) no cable service.

What struck me was the fundamental selfishness of such observations. The people who called in to complain seemed to have no concept that Bahamians other than themselves have to put their own lives at risk in order to provide such services. And what struck me even more was that the response to these complaints was not the outrage I expected, but an encouragement of them, a discussion of the inability of our utilities to provide Bahamians with the kind of service that Bahamians had come to expect.

It was a hurricane, for heaven's sake, a time when safety comes before comfort. Electricity is shut down to keep people from being unnecessarily electrocuted; water is turned off to avoid contamination. In the middle of an act of God, it would seem that prayer is a more appropriate response than gluing oneself to a television screen.

I was reminded of the Americans who asked me, when I was a front desk cashier in a local hotel, whether I thought the travel agent would refund them their money because it had rained for the whole time they were in the Bahamas. Only I tend to forgive tourists more, because, well, they're tourists. And at the time I thought how I never thought I'd hear a Bahamian make such a complaint, because, well, Bahamians know better than to expect the weather to accommodate their whims and desires. But this last storm has proven me wrong.

Then there were the people who took advantage of the heavy weather and the desertion of the streets to go and rob businesses, or the men who dressed up as policemen and used the storm to gain entrance to the homes of unsuspecting citizens whom they robbed.

It takes a special society, to breed people who prey on others in the midst of misfortune. The nation that produces citizens who find nothing wrong with complaining that they are uncomfortable when others are losing their homes, or with pretending to offer help when all they are intending is harm is a nation in which selfishness rules, in which neighbours mean nothing.

Contrast these attitudes to the defiance and the pride demonstrated by the man who must be the greatest leader this region has ever known, no matter whether one agrees with his politics or not — the man who brought first world health and educational standards to a country not 100 years out of slavery — Fidel Castro. In preparing his people for Ivan's onslaught, he declared that he would not accept aid from any country currently levying economic sanctions on Cuba. By being willing to suffer material deprivation for the sake of a principle, he demonstrated to his people that there are things more important than comfort in this world. It's a lesson we Bahamians would do well to learn.

You see, self-sufficiency and independence are hard things to come by these days. It's far easier to be materially comfortable and financially dependent on someone else. But there's something to be said for the kind of independence that Castro preaches; for it's one thing to declare oneself politically independent, to have a flag and an anthem and a head of state. But it's quite another to demonstrate oneself willing and able to survive a storm and to look after oneself.

We’re very good at waving our flags and donning our colours. But if we can't survive for long without electricity and running water, there's not much to be said about the ability of our nation to survive over time.

And survival is the thing at which we Bahamians were once very good. Until only sixty years ago, we were one of the poorest countries in the region. Ours was not a colony that produced profits for Mother England; even white Bahamians were poor. Whatever "superiority" they asserted resided in the colour of their skin, not in the girth of their purses. Despite our poverty, however, we were rich: in selflessness, in community, in our abilitiy to survive. It's a part of our culture that's rapidly disappearing; but it's a part that we would do very well to preserve.

You see, it's all very well and good to ask Caricom for help with the rebuilding of Grand Bahama and Abaco in the wake of Frances. But even our northern devastation pales in the face of the decimation of Grenada; and we must remember that Bahamians, by and large, are people with means, and Nassau escaped the worst of the damage. I believe that before we beg others for help, we must offer some ourselves.

The good Lord said that it was is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. I begin to understand what exactly He meant. Now I cannot imagine what it must be like to be a Grenadian at this moment, with 90% of the capital damaged, including the hospital, the disaster management headquarters, the parliament buildings, the prison, and the Prime Minister's home. The magnitude of the rebuilding effort boggles my mind. I believe that even though we have suffered our own damages, as the richest nation in Caricom, we must have some obligation, to contribute at least something to the rebuilding of the capital there. I would be a far prouder Bahamian if, while we talked about helping Grand Bahama and Abaco, we spared a thought for and sent a coffer to Grenada and our other neighbours.

On Monkey See

My grandmother's house was built in the late 1860s out of materials salvaged from ships destroyed in the Great Bahama Hurricane of 1866. The house is made of wood, raised on limestone blocks. It weathered the five awful hurricanes of the 1920s, and stood. It weathered Betsy in 1965, and stood. It took David in 1979, Floyd in 1999, Michelle in 2001. For the last few years it has fallen prey to vandals, being unoccupied and the estate not fully settled.

My grandmother's house weathered the 24 hours of Frances, and still stands. Not a shingle is gone from the roof. The damage to the outside is the result of termites and vandals.

I'm writing this article because I have had the privilege of living in old houses all my life. I realize my experience is unusual for many Nassauvians. We urban-dwellers have developed the tendency to bulldoze things that bear the weight of history; we seem to prefer to pull down and rebuild rather than to shore up and restore. Why fight with termites and dry rot and having to replace wood as time goes by when it's just as easy to build something fresh and new?

My grandmother's house is testimony as to why. Our ancestors knew what they were doing when they built their houses. And I'm not talking about the fancy houses downtown here; I'm talking about the clapboard houses that we see everywhere in the older parts of town. If those houses have had any basic care throughout their histories, and have not been used as quick-rent-earners by rapacious landlords, who take out more than they put in (and let's face it, some of us are guilty of this), chances are they are still standing now, when many newer houses have failed in some way.

Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers knew what they were doing. They were building houses for themselves and their families to live in, not to sell to people they might not know at all. They cared about what they were building. It had to be strong, and it had to last. And so they took their time with their work. They took pride in it; and they were concerned about the quality of it.

They didn't build their houses on mortgages from banks that hurry the process; they built them out of their own savings, and often with their own labour or that of their friends and neighbours. It might take them years of living in one room or two, years of working on the house until it was finished, but they made sure what they did was good and strong.

And third, they knew what country they were living in.

They knew that they were building for a land with torrential rain and regular hurricanes, some of them extreme.

They knew that they were building for a country with a long, hot, humid summer, and they had no air conditioning to cool it down.

And they did what any intelligent human being would do: they designed houses that fit our climate, our dangers, and our lives.

Take a look at the houses our ancestors built. Drive through Grant's Town and Fox Hill and Bain Town and down Shirley and Dowdeswell and East Bay Streets, and look at the principles of building they used. Note the things they all had in common, even after the Second World War, when ordinary people began building with concrete and stone. Note what we Bahamians built before we started looking north and copying What The Americans Did.

Our old houses have porches. They keep the people and the houses cool.

Old houses are raised up on blocks. To get into my grandmother's house, you have to climb up six or seven steps; the floor of her porch is level with the top of her wall, nearly four feet off the ground, and floor of the house is one step up.

Old houses have shutters on their windows. The push-out kind have a double purpose: they provide shade for the inside and protection for hurricanes.

Old houses are built to let heat out, not hold it in: with have high ceilings and higher roofs, and ample cross-ventilation. My grandmother's house had a door at the front and a door at the back, and a passage down the middle. Most days when the front door was open (the back door always was) there was a lovely breeze wafting down the passage, no matter how hot it was outside.

Our ancestors were the experts in building for the kind of country in which they lived. So why have we all but given up their ways? Why are we dying to inhabit the kinds of houses our northern neighbours do?

Well, the old people have a saying: monkey see, monkey do. We have a penchant for copying the Big Guys, as though we have no technology worth anything ourselves. And so we have gone in for building low, squat boxes with low ceilings and roofs, high windows which give no breeze to any part of the body that really needs it, and nowhere for water to go but into the house itself. There's no cross-ventilation. Now that we can afford it, we do what the Big Guys do, and burn up fossil fuel air conditioning our places, rather than letting God do our air conditioning for us. And when hurricanes come along, instead of leaning out of our windows and pulling our shutters to, as Grammy and Granpa used to do, we line up for plywood (like the Big Guys) and lose our tempers when the lumber yards run out. And when we go too far (as, I'm told, Grand Bahama did for a time, by having different building codes from the rest of the Bahamian nation), we run the risk of suffering as the Big Guys do when hurricanes hit.

Come on, Bahamians. We are people, not monkeys. Our ancestors were in this region long before the Americans even owned Florida. We're the experts here. The only reason we copy Americans is that we don't know how good we are. It's time to acknowledge our strengths, and to celebrate them. Not to do so isn't only injurious to our self-esteem; it's hard on our economy, and it impacts our very lives.