Exchange Revisited: Individual Utility and Social Solidarity

Exchange -the giving up of something in return for receiving something else-is one of the most ubiquitous of all human behaviors. Indeed, in all societies only the most aberrant social behavior, if that, ever appears altogether lacking in some element of exchange, direct or indirect, shortterm or long-term. As many views of exchange and its nature exist as there are viewers, but two in the non-Marxist world stand out as apparent polar opposites. One is the utilitarian position that exchange enhances the individual utilities of the participants respecting the goods being exchanged.' The other, illustrated by Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics,2 is that certain patterns of exchange-categories of reciprocity-enhance social solidarity and not individual utility respecting the goods being exchanged, whereas other patterns enhance such individual utility and harm solidarity.3