Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy Exchange and the Sacred in Africa (Yale Agrarian Studies (Hardcover))

About this book

This groundbreaking book addresses issues of the keenest interest to anthropologists specialists on Africa and those concerned with international aid and development. Drawing on extensive research among the Luo people in western Kenya and abroad over many years Parker Shipton provides an insightful general ethnography. In particular he focuses closely on nonmonetary forms of exchange and entrustment moving beyond anthropologys traditional understanding of gifts loans and reciprocity. He proposes a new view of the social and symbolic dimensions of economy over the full life course including transfers between generations. He shows why the enduring cultural values and aspirations of East African people--and others around the world--complicate issues of credit debt and compensation. The book examines how the Luo assess obligations to intimates and strangers including the dead and the not-yet-born. Borrowing lending and serial passing along have ritual religious and emotional dimensions no less than economic ones Shipton shows and insight into these connections demands a broad rethinking of all international aid plans and programs.