“Ko te hau tēnā o tō taonga…”: The words of Ranapiri on the spirit of gift exchange and economy

Abstract

In the service of hau 'the spirit of the gift', this paper traces the exchange of ideas between people and cultures that led to Māori concepts of reciprocity being enshrined by Marcel Mauss (1923-24; 1950) in his seminal work, The Gift, and debated ever since. Most importantly, it identifies an error of transcription and translation that has considerable impact for understandings of the teachings of Tāmati Ranapiri as received by Elsdon Best and utilised by Mauss. By correcting this error we get closer to the meaning of Tāmati Ranapiri's writing and can demonstrate that Mauss's (1923-24; 1950; [1954] 1967; 1990) intuitive explication of the meaning and significance of hau was not an inappropriate conflation of French spirituality with Māori metaphysics. This paper emerges from the author's doctoral work, "The Changing Images of Nineteenth Century Māori Society-From Tribes to Nation", completed in 2003 at Victoria University, Wellington. Tikanga hau, the spirit of gift exchange or the ethic of generosity and its associated values, including mana (understood as 'status, prestige and credibility'), is identified in this study as a principal motivation of Māori leaders or rangatira from ancestral times until today.A focus on the metaphysics of things, in particular the politics and economics of reciprocity in early to mid-19th-century Māori society and the layers of meaning in gift exchange, is instructive for understanding and interpreting the ethic of generosity as practiced by 19th-century Māori leaders and their people. In anthropology, exchange theory and gift exchange are often presented in the form of the following propositions: that exchange is a fundamental social system; that gift exchange is a system prior to capitalism; that a gift economy is animated by the spirit of the gift (hau); that the spirit of the gift creates an indissoluble bond between persons engaged in the exchange; and that Anglo-Western societies were responsible for the separation of persons and things (

Artefact Categories, Artefact Assemblages and Ontological Alterity

“…(Henare 2007, 47)As Henare (2007, 56) goes on to stress, taonga ‘more than simply “representing”, “signifying” or “embodying” ancestral efficacy and power, are it in specific form’. Within the anthropological literature, discussion involving taonga originally developed around the work of Mauss (1990) on exchange, particularly his appropriation of the Māori concept of hau (for discussion, see Henare 2018; Nicholson 2019; Stewart 2017). However, contemporary Māori scholarship has criticized the appropriation of such terms.…”

Manahau: Toward an Indigenous Māori theory of value

“…By nonhuman communities we mean te taiao-the environment embodied within Papatūānuku (earth mother) and Ranginui (sky father) and their descendants as elements of nature (Rout et al, 2021). Productivity, innovation, and enterprise are thus driven not by an ethic of satisfying individual want but by a concern for the wellbeing of others (others being both human and nonhuman communities), consistent with Hēnare's (2018) conceptualisation of reciprocal relations between spiritual, ecological, and human societies.…”

“It’s Beyond You, But You’re A Part of It”: Mountaineering in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa New Zealand

“…This position justified the colonial process, such as re-naming and erasing of te ao Māori or the Māori world, as helping the growth of Civilization. Though there are differences between iwi, the Māori world consists of Mauri, which can be incompletely translated as lifeforce (Henare 2001). All-natural phenomena, from the water to the mist and rocks have mauri and therefore te ao Māori or the Māori world is comprised of deep interconnection between human and nonhuman existence.…”

“…After hearing that American climber Edward Fitzgerald and his well-known guide, Matthais 9 For further reading see Durie 1998;Panelli and Tipa 2007;Henare 2001. Zubriggen, had arrived in the country to claim the first ascent, Fyfe and Company decided to make another attempt (Haynes 1994). Climbing the North Ridge (that did not see a second ascent until 1955), the group displayed excellent rock climbing abilities and summitted at 1:30pm, Christmas day (ibid).…”

“…Social Anthropologist Heonik Kwon has written about the agency of the dead, of the ghosts of those who died an unjust death (chet can) in Vietnam as agentive "invisible neighbours" (Kwon 2006, 86). In Aotearoa New Zealand, Manuka Henare (2018) has written of the agency of Māori taonga or treasures as physical objects.…”