Is any subculture not a gift economy? Smuggling in ‘small’ connotations to exclude things like ‘the gay community’ (though ca. 1960 maybe them too) or ‘goths,’ but I think it’s the default and it’s notable when a subculture deviates from it.
Possible places to find exceptions, highly monetizing and/or systematizing, many of which I suspect are as much gift economies as us:
How small is small? Subcultures I think mostly aren’t gift economies, a non-exhaustive list:
Magic the Gathering and associated Friday Night Magics/game stores.
The average community soccer league.
Toastmasters.
Your average martial arts dojo.
They do have some gift, but it’s not what they principally run on. Of those, MtG has the most gifts (I got my start playing magic using a gift of a friend’s extra cards) but the local game store I frequented years ago was making a pretty deliberate profit off me, and I expect the whole thing would look different if Wizards of the Coast suddenly public-domained Magic and vanished.
I think those are all more gift economies than they are market economies. I’ve never been part of a dojo long-term but there was ‘hey want a ride’ ‘sure I’ll pick up dinner’ at least a bit even with the one I was part of briefly. Buying and selling MtG was something you did with the store, not the other players, almost always. (Some people were aggressive value traders but they were almost their own subculture because no one really enjoyed dealing with them.) And for the kind of card trades that didn’t look at all at what book value was and just swapped what seemed good to them… Man, I guess that’s at least 40% market economy but it sure didn’t feel transactional. And it died pretty rapidly when the aggressive value traders who were indisputably a market economy showed up, which feels like that’s a sign the market economy part was fragile and noncentral?
I have never been part of a (non-children’s) sports league but I would guess they did a lot of ‘sure do you a favor’ the same way I’d expect from dojos. And I avoid Toastmasters* like it’s radioactive, so IDK.
I think there’s a very fuzzy distinction between ‘technically gift economy but not ~integrated enough to meaningfully be trading’ and ‘not a gift economy’. Probably a similar distinction exists at the low end of market economy, though I suspect on no direct evidence it’s less fuzzy.
(*Even if I witnessed some Master Toasts trading things or doing favors, I still wouldn’t know, because my experience is that a Master Toast emits primarily Simalacrum-Level-4 statements with the occasional S3 or S2 and so I couldn’t begin to guess whether their ‘favors’ were actually favors.)
Is any subculture not a gift economy? Smuggling in ‘small’ connotations to exclude things like ‘the gay community’ (though ca. 1960 maybe them too) or ‘goths,’ but I think it’s the default and it’s notable when a subculture deviates from it.
Possible places to find exceptions, highly monetizing and/or systematizing, many of which I suspect are as much gift economies as us:
Anglophone quant traders
Pro and semi-pro poker players
Crypto coin boosters
/r/WallStreetBets
How small is small? Subcultures I think mostly aren’t gift economies, a non-exhaustive list:
Magic the Gathering and associated Friday Night Magics/game stores.
The average community soccer league.
Toastmasters.
Your average martial arts dojo.
They do have some gift, but it’s not what they principally run on. Of those, MtG has the most gifts (I got my start playing magic using a gift of a friend’s extra cards) but the local game store I frequented years ago was making a pretty deliberate profit off me, and I expect the whole thing would look different if Wizards of the Coast suddenly public-domained Magic and vanished.
I think those are all more gift economies than they are market economies. I’ve never been part of a dojo long-term but there was ‘hey want a ride’ ‘sure I’ll pick up dinner’ at least a bit even with the one I was part of briefly. Buying and selling MtG was something you did with the store, not the other players, almost always. (Some people were aggressive value traders but they were almost their own subculture because no one really enjoyed dealing with them.) And for the kind of card trades that didn’t look at all at what book value was and just swapped what seemed good to them… Man, I guess that’s at least 40% market economy but it sure didn’t feel transactional. And it died pretty rapidly when the aggressive value traders who were indisputably a market economy showed up, which feels like that’s a sign the market economy part was fragile and noncentral?
I have never been part of a (non-children’s) sports league but I would guess they did a lot of ‘sure do you a favor’ the same way I’d expect from dojos. And I avoid Toastmasters* like it’s radioactive, so IDK.
I think there’s a very fuzzy distinction between ‘technically gift economy but not ~integrated enough to meaningfully be trading’ and ‘not a gift economy’. Probably a similar distinction exists at the low end of market economy, though I suspect on no direct evidence it’s less fuzzy.
(*Even if I witnessed some Master Toasts trading things or doing favors, I still wouldn’t know, because my experience is that a Master Toast emits primarily Simalacrum-Level-4 statements with the occasional S3 or S2 and so I couldn’t begin to guess whether their ‘favors’ were actually favors.)