Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

One could even bring money—there was nothing inappropriate in that—provided one did so at a discreet interval, and above all, that one did not bring the exact cost of the eggs. It had to be either a bit more or a bit less. To bring back nothing at all would be to cast oneself as an exploiter or a parasite. To bring back an exact equivalent would be to suggest that one no longer wishes to have anything to do with the neighbor. Tiv women, she learned, might spend a good part of the day walking for miles to distant homesteads to return a handful of okra or a tiny bit of change, “in an endless circle of gifts to which no one ever handed over the precise value of the object last received”—and in doing so, they were continually creating their society.