In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, The Serviceberry, she uses beautifully simple language to make some profound points and state some deep truths and observations, about: modern-day greed, hoarding, exploitation, and purely transactional interactions vs. reciprocity, giving, sharing, connection, “enoughness,” sufficiency, ecological economics, and gift economies.
Something that I have found, in my own life, is that giving and sharing make me feel really good—and I mean good as in happy and not just as in virtuous. I’ve also found that giving is somewhat addictive, in a good way. The more you do it, the more you want to do it. And giving anonymously often feels the best, even when you don’t know who the recipients of your gifts will be or how the gifts will affect their lives. It just feels satisfying and right.
Throughout the book, there is some repetition of the main themes (where Kimmerer uses different words to convey similar ideas), which I think can be helpful in allowing some of the concepts to really sink in. It’s a fairly short book; but if you don’t read the whole thing, I’ve pulled together a few excerpts that I think are among its many highlights, presenting some of Kimmerer’s best distillations of her primary points.
(Note: The page numbers listed below are from the hardcover version of the book. They might differ in the paperback version.)
“Whatever your currency of reciprocity—be it money, time, energy, political action, art, science, education, planting, community action, restoration, acts of care, large and small—all are needed in these urgent times.” (p. 109)
[Note: Some specific examples of reciprocity and gift economies are listed at the end of this post.]
“Recognizing ‘enoughness’ [or ‘sufficiency’] is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more. Data tell the story that there are ‘enough’ food calories on the planet for all 6 billion of us to be nourished. And yet people are starving… “ (p. 12)
“Climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss are the consequences of unrestrained taking by humans.” (p.12)
“Why…have we permitted the dominance of economic systems that commoditize everything? That create scarcity instead of abundance, that promote accumulation rather than sharing? We’ve surrendered our values to an economic system that actively harms what we love.” (p. 25)
“In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away. In fact, status is determined not by how much one accumulates, but by how much one gives away.” (p. 32)
“Well-known examples of gift economies include the potlatches of Pacific Northwest peoples, in which gifts circulate in the group, solidifying bonds…. This ritualized redistribution of wealth was banned by colonial governments, under the influence of missionaries in the 1800s. Potlatches were seen as contrary to ‘the civilized values of accumulation’ and undermined the notions of individual property and advancement essential assimilation to the colonial agenda.” (p.35-36)
“Rebecca Solnit, in her stunning book A Paradise Built in Hell, describes how gift economies seem to arise spontaneously in times of disaster. When human survival is threatened, compassionate acts overrule market economies.” (p. 43)
“Let’s remember that the ‘System’ is led by individuals, by a relatively small number of people, who have names, with more money than God and certainly less compassion. They sit in boardrooms deciding to exploit fossil fuels for short-term gain while the world burns. They know the science, they know the consequences, but they proceed with ecocidal business as usual and do it anyway. …They’re all thieves, stealing our future…” (p. 71)
“I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do. The Serviceberries show us another model…one where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” (p. 72)
“Thriving is possible only if you have nurtured strong bonds with your community.” (p. 73)
“In ecological economics, the focus is on creating an economy that provides for a just and sustainable future in which both human life and nonhuman life can flourish.” (p. 74)
“…Natural selection favors those who can avoid competition. Oftentimes this avoidance is achieved by shifting one’s needs away from whatever is in short supply, as though evolution were suggesting, ‘If there’s not enough of what you want, then want something else.’ This specialization to avoid scarcity has led to a dazzling array of biodiversity, each species avoiding competition by being different. Diversity in ways of being is an antidote.” (p. 76-77)
“…scientific evidence is mounting that mutualism and cooperation…play a major role in evolution and enhance ecological well-being, especially in changing environments.” (p. 77)
“It is manufactured scarcity that I cannot accept. In order for capitalist market economics to function, there must be scarcity, and the system is designed to create scarcity where it does not actually exist.” (p. 79)
“It was previously unthinkable that one would pay for a drink of water; but as careless economic expansion pollutes fresh water, we now incentivize privatization of springs and aquifers. Sweet water, a free gift of the Earth, is pirated by faceless corporations who encase it in plastic containers to sell. And now many can’t afford what was previously free.” (p. 80)
“The Indigenous philosophy of the gift economy…has no tolerance for creating artificial scarcity through hoarding. In fact, the ‘monster’ in Potawatomi culture is Windigo, who suffers from the illness of taking too much and sharing too little. It is a cannibal, whose hunger is never sated, eating through the world.” (p. 81)
“An economy based on the impossibility of ever expanding growth leads us into nightmare scenarios. …It is an engine of extinction.” (p. 85)
“…the grinding system…leaves most of us bereft of what we really want: a sense of belonging and relationship and purpose and beauty, which can never be commoditized.” (p. 90)
“An investment in community always comes back to you in some way.” (p. 88)
“…the infinitely renewable resource of kindness…multiplies every time it is shared rather than depreciating with use.” (p. 91)
“This transition from exploitation to reciprocity, from the individual good to the common good has been seen as a parallel to the transition that colonizing human societies must undergo, from hoarding to circulation, from independent to interdependent…if we are to thrive into the future.” (p. 100)
“The…economy of extractive capitalism, of abusing the gifts of Mother Earth, is a crime against Nature. I believe that theft is punishable by law, and we need to elect leaders who believe in the rule of law.” (p. 102)
“I’ve begun to think that berry-picking is the medicine we need to create a legion of land protectors.” (p. 104)
Kimmerer provides some specific examples of gift economies in action:
- “…I routinely ask students if and how they participate in gifting networks. I learn about active circles of freecycling, repair cafes, donated mugs in the coffee shop replacing disposables, clothing swaps, the Buy Nothing movement, and campus free stores, where dorm room necessities are passed among generations of students…” (p. 45)
- “They quickly cite access to open-source software and the existence of Wikipedia…where knowledge is freely shared on digital platforms in an information commons.” (p. 46)
- “…I take a field trip to go foraging for videos on gift economies and find them everywhere. I learn about mutual-aid societies, alternative local currencies, money-free work exchanges, cooperative farms, peer-to-peer lending…” (p. 47)
Elsewhere in the book, she also mentions shared garden produce, front-yard giveaway piles, free food pantries, Little Free Libraries, public libraries, lending libraries, local Master Gardener programs and offerings, and as shown in an excerpt above, indigenous peoples’ potlatches.
A few other examples that sprung to my mind when I was reading this book include: repair cafes, as well as “time banks” or “skill share” programs and other forms of bartering.
I hope this inspires you to think about these and other examples of gift economies in action and forms of reciprocity that you see around you or that you could create around you. We should all encourage and support these types of efforts in our own neighborhoods and communities.
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