Soliciting Gifts and Negotiating Agency: The Spirit of Asking in BotswanaAuthor(s): Deborah DurhamSource: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp.111-128Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and IrelandStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3034231 .Accessed: 23/06/2011 18:35

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SOLICITING GIFTS AND NEGOTIATING AGENCY THE SPIRIT OF ASKING IN BOTSWANA

DEBORAH DURHAM

Sweet Briar College

This article explores the playful asking for things that occurs daily in Botswana, and connects it with the frequent solicitations one receives there to aid public and private projects. In these transactions people mutually construct themselves as independent actors: such constructions are not a priori to the interchanges. Requests and solicitations, organized around the possibility of denial, configure the actors as essentially of equal agentive positions. This particular subject position can be contrasted with those in other kinds of transactions in Botswana, which may configure hierarchy or interdependence. This approach is contrasted, in the article, with that of much conventional literature on exchange, which assumes the independence and equal agency of actors prior to their interaction.

Introduction: 'Give me ten thebe please!'

This formula, uttered as an insistent demand by children in urban Botswana, inevitably annoys Westerners to whom it is addressed. And indeed, these force- ful requests are inappropriate to local people as well, although not for the same reasons. Many Westerners in Botswana see the begging by local children as continuous with, and parallel to, the recipient status of Botswana in an interna- tional economy of development aid. The loans, gifts and projects that originate in the United States and Europe are an essential part of defining Botswana's Third-World status, just as the necessity for begging defines the children as impoverished. But this parallel between asking for things and poverty or de- pendency, although it is available for contemplation and suggestion, is not a necessary one for the people of Botswana: another interpretation is available. In Botswana, the act of asking for money or goods need not be embarrassing, and ought not be offensive, in many social situations. In fact, it can positively highlight the social dimensions of independence and self-determination of both the asker and the giver.

In this article, I explore the ways in which agency is created for actors in social situations. I am most interested in the manner in which a kind of egali- tarian and autonomous position is established for people in the very context of, and not prior to, exchange interactions. But, as I will discuss, Botswana is not 'an egalitarian society'. Nor is it 'hierarchical'. In contrast to approaches which seek to characterize a society by one or the other term (cf Kent 1993), I found the situation in Botswana to be more complex. Hierarchy and egalitarianism,

J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 1, 111-128

112 DEBORAH DURHAM

interdependence and autonomy were present as possibilities in Botswana as they probably are everywhere. And in demands for gifts, or in requests for donations, people in Botswana created, or denied, an agentive position for themselves and others. (A similar case is Myers 1989 and 1986 on 'the dialectic of autonomy and relatedness' among Australian Pintupi; cf also Peterson 1993.) Although I learned to accept with gratitude unsolicited gifts from people who

were palpably poorer than I (cf Maurice Bloch's (1989) Western unease with gifts from Malagasy, I was never comfortable asking for things from other people, nor turning down requests made to me. In the latter event, I felt uneasy with the debt I perceived to be suggested by the other person, the asker, and with the introduction of a possible asymmetry into our relationship that I had not sought. In the first instance, I often sat hungry in Herero compounds, hoping that someone would 'have the courtesy' to offer me something to eat, although I knew that it was not only acceptable but expected that I would demand tea and bread, porridge, or even meat. At other times, while walking in the hot summer sun and having (again) forgotten to bring cash with me, I watched my companions buy Coca-Cola or other drinks, unwilling to impose upon their generosity. I felt horrible on the occasions when one of my village friends had to make a payment for me, for food or funeral donations, and I insisted, quite contrary to local usage, on defining the act as a loan and specify- ing a time of return. Whereas one of my Herero friends would have said, indji pao oyimariva! ('give me money') or indji sutira! ('pay for me'), I would ask, mba sokuyazema oyimariva, mee tji yarura muhuka ('I have to borrow money, I'll return it tomorrow').

On the other hand, people were constantly asking for things from me, and from each other. (My status as wealthy or American did not single me out for these requests: other villagers, including those who were relatively poor - but never indigent - were also constantly asked for things.) 'Give me your skirt!' 'Buy me a Coke!' 'Give me your earrings!' 'Make us tea!' 'Give me a pula!'l Some of these requests demanded fulfilment - providing food at one's home, for example, is expected. But most are avoidable through a lively conversational banter in which the item is 'enclaved' (cf Appadurai 1986: 22sqq.): that is, defined as actually belonging to another person, described as a special (i.e., inalienable) gift from a spouse or lover, or otherwise reserved from being given. Or the person solicited might claim that the object requested (money or food) simply is not available at the moment (katji po, 'it is not there'). She or he should never, however, claim not to possess money or goods (hi notjimariva, 'I do not have money'). The form of these claims, in which the object is simply made unavailable at the moment and never completely unavailable, is very important to understanding the kind of transactions that are occurring, and the social relations that are under construction, as will become clear below. Finally, the request might even be fulfilled, a drink purchased, some small object given (perhaps not the skirt), money handed over, although this happens relatively infrequently. In the everyday encounter, the whole conversational exchange is extremely playful, full of mock indignation, patently false excuses, intransigent insistence, exaggerated claims of need.

DEBORAH DURHAM 113

In a fairly prototypical example of one of these interchanges, a group of young women would encounter an acquaintance while walking downtown. After greetings, which introduce all meetings in Botswana, the acquaintance might demand of one of the women, 'buy me some bread in town, I am starving'. And then be told, 'ao! This money here, it is my aunt's money and I must bring her some meat'. 'Then after that you will buy me bread'. 'Look - look at this money Two pula! It is not enough, it is too little, we are hungry at home'. Where is your money? You must return home and get some. Let us go now'. We are walking to town now, I want to make a phone-call, it is too far'. Ao! You are refusing! I will come to your house tonight to receive my bread'. All right'. Laughter, anger, indignation and frowning indifference colour the various statements. The demander might never come, or if she should choose to make an evening visit, the requested bread would not resurface in fact or in conversation. Two things are important here. The interchange has been playful, the possibility of giving and receiving bread open but not quite expected. And this is related to the fact that few of these playful demands are in fact fulfilled. In my experience, food or tea at home, perhaps a lift in a vehicle, these things, although still deniable, were generally given. But in the larger number of cases, nothing apart from the requests, excuses, demands, hedges, was actually given or received.

These small interchanges punctuated daily life in the Botswana village of Mahalapye. Everyday visits to neighbours and friends, roadway encounters with old friends and brand-new acquaintances were occasions for demanding, or asking, for money, food or goods. Just as remarkable to me as the persistent solicitation was that there seemed to be no expectation of eventual return (if anything was actually given) and, indeed, sometimes no continuation at all of social relationship. That is to say, these interchanges often occurred between only casual acquaintances of the moment, and did not initiate closer relation- ship over the long term. Unlike buying rounds of drinks in a pub, where buying and receiving all evens out in the end, no one in Mahalapye was count- ing, and some were giving more than others, without the consumers engendering debt. The contrast is an instructive one. I have noticed, in over- heard conversations, that in America requests are often made strictly in reciprocating terms: 'I helped you out last week, now it is your turn to help me'. In Botswana, this was rarely the case. More often, each request and each actual gift stood on its own. The more playful demands, in particular, had no histories, but instead each constituted a new intercourse. My familiarity with the anthropological literature on reciprocity, debt and gift did not prepare me for these apparently unencumbered gifts, the requested donations that pro- duced no visible or audible debt, either of goods or of agency. But beyond the problems of gift and debt, it became clear that here the act of asking was perhaps the more important act, more important than giving and receiving, at least in casual everyday intercourse. My own discomfort with requests sig- nalled to me that asking for things may be subject to very different cultural constructions from those of Euro-American culture, and I was compelled to think about my previous perceptions of debt, asymmetrical statuses, and the impropriety of asking for things. My inability to participate easily in the playful

114 DEBORAH DURHAM

banter surrounding these requests implied something more: that the playful- ness served to frame very sensitive and subtle negotiation of social relationships, social relationships that I was only beginning to learn at the time. These small and common transactions of words and things were integral to the creation of personhood and agency, for both the asker and the asked.

It is the aim of this article, then, to explore the power of asking in Botswana. Although I have taken as the prototype the half-serious demands that are play- fully exchanged among acquaintances, asking for things is not restricted to person-to-person relationships. It may also include as a party to the exchange the state, a locality/community or a family group, and these other examples share much, though not all, of the process and effect of the playful demands. Whether young women on the street, the village council or a household, the parties to the interchange take on an appearance of self-determination and independence, affirmed through recognition of the power to demand and to deny. In the following sections I examine first how asking fits into a Western morality (or moral economy), and then give some background description of the community in which I encountered so much solicitation. I then discuss some requests that illuminate the process of asking, and return in the end to examine how deniable and unreciprocated demands contrast with other forms of request made in Botswana, and to examine the kinds of agentive positions created in the different requests.

Reflections on asking and the Western gift Although Western' religious and moral history values highly the act of giving, as an instance of caritas or charity, and as an unfettered outpouring of friendly sentiment (Carrier 1991; Parry 1986), it is also true that Western culture now considers the complementary acts of asking and receiving as rather embarrass- ing. The spirit of capitalism, from its Protestant roots, has condemned begging for both the 'sin of slothfulness [and] the violation of the duty of brotherly love' (Weber 1958: 163): begging was an open acknowledgment of the lack of a 'calling,' the inner manifestation of moral worth and the religious spirit. To ask for things from others is to admit their lack in oneself, either as part of one's spiritual endowment or its material signs, or both. Hence, when nineteenth- century travellers in southern Africa repeatedly condemned the begging and insistent demands that they encountered among Africans, they were reiterating a Victorian image of Africans as morally deficient.

In keeping with this ethic, anthropological analyses of gifts and of exchange have generally focused fairly closely upon the moral demands to reciprocate gifts received, and upon the power or improved status of the giver. Marcel Mauss, whose essay on the gift established the agenda for anthropological study of non-commoditized exchange, in discussing alms-giving to the poor, analyses only the interchange between the giver and the gods: the moral implications for the recipients are completely passed over (1967: 15sq.). And although he mentions briefly 'the obligation to receive' gifts in his essay (1967: 11), it is the 'obligation to return' them that is emphasized in his own work and in much of the literature on exchange inspired by it. A focus upon this obligation to return, characterized (literally) by the embedding of the person of the giver in the gift,2

DEBORAH DURHAM 115

privileges the agency of the giver. The recipient, by contrast, is caught by the demands of the gift and its giver: indeed, in the classical Maussian formulation, his or her personhood is encumbered by the personhood of the giver, embod- ied in the hau of the gift.3 In so far as some aspect of persons is itself being transacted, and this transaction reforms the agency, or power of independent self-determination of the transactors, it is a moral economy indeed.

The consequence of this classical Maussian approach to gifts, then, is to emphasize the agency of the giver, and the power of the gift. It is the giver who seems to have ultimate control over the transaction: his demand for a return overwhelms the ability of the recipient to determine a response. This depriva- tion of independence for the recipient, and the material debt engendered in receipt, may produce a hierarchical relationship between the two parties: the recipient, chained to the giver by the gift, is thereby subordinated to the giver, who attains a superior status (cf Sahlins 1972: 208). The recipient may, how- ever, redeem his individuality and independence by making a return for the gift, and if it is of equal value then the balance sheet of social status and material goods is even. The movement of goods not only creates subordinate and superordinate relations, but it also makes possible their eventual transfor- mation and a return to the prior and ultimate equality of each actor in this reciprocating drama. The Maussian theory of the gift supports and repeats the tenets of a Western liberal individualism, acknowledging (or assuming) the equal agency of individual actors prior to social intercourse.4

Bourdieu (1977: esp. 5-9) did much explicitly to return agency and self-control to the gift recipient, by stepping aside from more abstract models of exchange to discern the strategies through which social relations are constituted in time. As he describes both for the Algerian peasant and 'in every society', the recipi- ent in any transaction retains a great deal of power over the situation: he may determine the time of return, or the quantity/quality of return, or may negate the gift in failing to return. But Bourdieu retains the notion that the actors in these transactions are necessarily self-empowered agents, individualistic actors whose actions are rational, even calculated: it is not coincidental that in the English translation of Bourdieu the word 'agent' is frequently used for the actors, and that their activities are represented as 'strategy'. 'While acknowledg- ing the importance of the recipient, then, Bourdieu retains the underlying assumptions of strategizing and individualistic agents being necessary parties to any gift. More recently, Thomas has pointed out that there is nothing in the logic of exchange itself that demands an initial equality between transactors: instead 'the nature of specific prestations is thus dependent, not just on the form of prestation.. .and cultural constructions of objects..., but also on the political and cultural construction of agency, which differentiates people's ca- pacities' (1991: 22; cf also Thomas 1985). Thomas (1985) has argued that the notion of the individual as an actor, with capacities and rights to action, is not inherent to any situation. Instead, the person must be 'qualified' (i.e., given the qualities) to act. And these qualities are not simply accomplished at some point in people's lives: 'subjects are continuously and recursively (re)constituted through their interactions with others' (Thomas 1985: 225). These observa- tions are hardly new - ironically, Mauss's own study on the notion of the

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person (Mauss 1985, originally published in 1938, well after The gift) has in- spired much recent study on the cultural construction of persons, individualisms, and agencies (cf Carrithers et al. 1985; Jackson & Karp 1990).

In the small, day-to-day asking that pervades Botswana's streets and homes, people are constituted as individuals and as moral persons, as actors with both the agency to demand attention and caring and as equals with resources to affirm a social position. Recognition as such must be demanded and then negotiated, because independent agency is not something one is born with or matures into naturally. In fact, the banter and negotiation of asking for things is very delicate, and there are modes of asking, and of denying gifts, that empha- size the non-independence of the asker, a lack of self-determination, and subordinate or encumbered agency. Individuals exist in Botswana, but they do not pre-exist social intercourse: they must be created, or create themselves repeatedly and repetitively

Before turning to discuss in more detail the processes of asking and self-assertion in Mahalapye, it is necessary to recall that, contrary to the models of gift exchange and reciprocity that I have been discussing, these small de- mands in Botswana are often unfulfilled and, when fulfilled, seen to be without return. As such, they might conceivably be categorized as 'pure gifts' in older exchange schemes (cf Malinowski 1961: 177,191), or as the altruistic extreme of 'generalized reciprocity' (Sahlins 1972: 193sq.). And yet, whereas Malinowski and Sahlins clearly assign both pure gifts and generalized reciproc- ity to a tight family or household domain, where altruistic generosity prevails, the requests that occur on the streets of Botswana are between related and unrelated friends, and even among the merest of acquaintances, partial strang- ers. Before examining how these requests create or invoke certain kinds of 'subjectivity' and agency (for the point is, of course, that there are more than one), it is necessary to give a brief profile of the community in which I lived.

Mahalapye, Botswana Although the 'spirit of asking' and the system of solicitations occur throughout Botswana, it is within the Herero community in Mahalapye that I encountered them. Mahalapye is a settlement of nearly 30,000 people, of whom perhaps 2,000 are Herero. Other residents are of Tswana, Xhosa, Kalanga, Lozi, Afrikaner and other origin^. In spite of the image of Botswana as a Tswana state, and in spite of the fact that Tswana do comprise the bulk of Botswana's popu- lation, the country is actually an amalgam of different ethnic groups, all participating to greater or lesser extent in the political and popular culture of the nation as a whole. This has long been the case for Central District, in which Mahalapye is situated (cf Schapera 1952). In Mahalapye today, close to the capital Gaborone (200 km distant), lying directly upon the country's main road, it would be misleading to suggest that there is a Herero population that is entirely 'Herero' as distinct from 'Tswana'. Instead, it is better to consider both Tswana and Herero as cultural identities whose construction is currently being forged along with a national culture in Botswana (cf Durham 1993).

Mahalapye shares characteristics of both 'town' and 'village'. The ward struc- ture, the importance of the chief's court and the ward headmen, the

DEBORAH DURHAM 117

meandering pathways among compounds, and the partial dependence of most residents on the agricultural fields at the settlement's perimeter construe Ma- halapye as a village, as the term is understood in Botswana (size is not a central issue: 'villages' have historically been very large in this region). But a growing sense that many of the residents are now 'strangers' and perhaps threatening in a non-personal way, the presence of a busy shopping area, and increasing im- portance of local wage work often prompts characterizations more typical of urban towns (cf Durham 1993: 38-49). For this article, I use the more neutral term 'settlement'.

Mahalapye Herero, like their Tswana neighbours, work in middle- to lower- level government positions, in education, and in private enterprises; others hold less desirable positions as laundresses, gardeners and maids. A number of the households in Mahalapye, Tswana and Herero, are headed by women, caring for their children and their children's children. Many women never marry; if they do, it is generally after having borne several children, when in their 30s or 40s. A very large proportion of the employed men and women are posted elsewhere by their jobs; others choose to live and work at their cattle- posts while their wives or female relatives care for school-going children in town. Remittances from salaried children, siblings and spouses are very impor- tant for the survival of households, and are supplemented with the sale of grain and livestock. There are also those who are nearly destitute, without house- holds or kin for support. In some cases an entire nuclear family, parents and children, may be indigent or dependent upon others working on a fairly per- manent basis or in short term, task-specific projects, with little or no remuneration. On Herero cattleposts, one finds many of these dependants, both Tswana and Herero, as well as Sarwa.5 They provide a valuable and much exploited source of labour for many cattle-owners.

Again as with Tswana (Comaroff & Comaroff 1992), cattle have historically formed an important means for the creation of self-value: to own cattle is to have a kind of self-reproducing security against financial want that does not simply dissipate in the way that money does. While to own cattle endows a person with a kind of independence and a sense of self-reliance, it is only through transacting the beasts that social transformations are achieved. With cattle, for example, one may form alliances of marriage or of patronage. In the past, for both Tswana and Herero, cattle were in both material and symbolic senses the means by which relationships of inequality and power were forged. The transfer of cattle, in loans or bridewealth, articulated the transactors in relations of power and debt because of the ways in which individual social identities were embodied and bound up with the cattle transacted (Comaroff& Comaroff 1992: 142). Something of the giver, his biography, remained in the loaned cow, or accompanied the bridewealth, and sought return in the form of the bride, labour and acquiescence of political will to that of the giver. The Herero 'chief' (omuhona) of the nineteenth and early twentieth century created and retained his position to a large extent through his ability to control people through cattle, through the ability to attract followers by loans of cattle, and through the abilities of large herds to attract dependants. Today, while cattle remain 'fetishized' in Botswana to some degree (Comaroff& Comaroff 1992),

118 DEBORAH DURHAM

they have lost some of their unique power to garner support and enforce power. The path from owning a beast to creating influence and power is often transacted through commodities such as clothes and radios, through such items as tractors, 'tipper' trucks, shops, taxis and conspicuous display, or may even be usurped by manipulative middle-men who actually control cattle sales as well as profits. Access to these commoditized items, loans and favours is essential if one is to negotiate both status and productivity. And yet the evalu- ation of these latter items is often combined with an assessment of an imagined underlying cattle herd. An owner of a profitable junk yard or bush mechanic's trade or a Mercedes driver will always be referred to, or described, as an owner of many beasts.

The ramifications of cattle transactions, and of more contemporary capital such as tractors or trucks, for identity and hierarchy form an important con- trastive domain to the small solicitations of day-to-day encounters. Through cattle and their modern substitutes, relations of unequal power are both created and transformed; individuals are either enriched or reduced in influence, inde- pendence and the power of self-determination. At the extreme end of dependency, cattleless people, often whole families, live in semi-servitude at the remote cattleposts of others. However, subordination and dominance are not the only subjective stances that individuals (and other actors) may take towards one another in Botswana's society. There is also the possibility of a fairly egalitarian interchange, in which an individualized agency for self-deter- mination for all parties is recognized and acknowledged. And this is what the small interactions of everyday life are all about: each playful interchange is initiated with the possibility either of hierarchy, dominance, and one-sided power, or of mutual construction of equal terms of interaction. It follows, then, that people are not construed as independent, self-determining actors of full agentive powers prior to any interchange, but that their definition as such must be forged, and perpetually reforged, in each social encounter. In the following sections I describe in detail some of the processes of asking and self-assertion in Mahalapye, using examples with disparate parties of askers. In the conclu- sion, I return to discuss how the spirit of the person that is formed in small, playful solicitations represents only one of a range of subjective stances possible in Botswana today.

An invitation to give

My friend Fredricka Heii handed me the pink invitation card illustrated in fig. 1 one day in July. She and her husband had been building and stocking a small 'general dealer' store over the past couple of years, and now, finally, it was ready to open. The store, a sturdy cement-block structure, had been in various stages of near-completion since my arrival in Mahalapye. Close to the centre of He- rero ward, it would compete with several other nearby general dealers for customers of soap, shelf foods, and sundry household items. Whereas many Herero held hawkers' licences, and some ran small shops in the eastern cattle- post area, this was the first Herero-owned store in Herero ward. But although Fredricka hoped that ethnic loyalty would bring notoriously fickle Herero

DEBORAH DURHAM 119

MR & MRS J HEII REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF

............................0..............................................

ON SUNDAY 29 JULY 1990 AT 730A.M.

AT A PARTY TO OPEN THEIR NEW GENERAL DEALER

(OMBANDI GENERAL DEALER) AT

MAHALAPYE

129

FIGURE 1. An invitation card.

shoppers, she told me her real strategy was to undersell the neighbourhood competition.

Although I was delighted to receive the printed invitation, I knew that an invitation was not really necessary, for people from the neighbourhood attend all local celebrations, whether invited or not. In the two years I lived in Mahalapye, invitations had not figured at any weddings or at other parties, although I had been shown invitations printed for the Mahalapye marriage several years pre- viously of one young couple. I viewed Fredricka's invitation as a statement of the formality of the event, a slightly extravagant marker to an exceptional party, marking not only the opening of the first Herero shop but also officially recog- nizing, in the Western motif of an invitation, a new investment in bourgeois status (cf Schapera 1940:16 on an early Western-style invitation in Mochudi). The party would be all the more exciting because Fredricka and her husband were both members of the Zionist Christian Church, the ZCC, and members of the church from all over the country would come and consecrate the open- ing with the vigorous song and dance which is characteristic of their prayers (cf. Comaroff 1985 on ZCC). All through the night of Saturday, 28July, the ZCC visitors danced and sang,

as they would continue to do throughout Sunday. On Sunday, everyone else, invitees and others, arrived to join in the plentiful food and the formal opening of the store, complete with speeches and prayers and choral performances. It was indeed grand and exciting.

I had not brought my printed pink invitation: the Heiis and most of their friends knew me well, and I had viewed the invitation only as an an- nouncement and a commemoration. I had stuck it in my fieldnotes, and I wanted to keep it. I was very surprised, then, to discover that I was expected to

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bring the invitation and return it, along with a monetary gift to the Heiis. A small table was set up in one corner of the Heii compound, and Fredricka's brother, a schoolteacher in a nearby village, was carefully recording in a note- book the number on each invitation (in my case, 129), the name of the invitee, and the amount of that person's donation. When it was found that I had 'forgotten' my card, there was some consternation. They did not need the invitation, but they did want to record faithfully my number: in the end, I was simply issued a new invitation, and made a donation. It is important to note that while the invitations did constitute a request, a donation was not coerced. The invitation cards, although provided with a line for the invitees' names, had not been filled out and did not have names written on them. Nor had a list been kept before the party, connecting persons and the numbers on the invita- tions. If I had not inquired about the activities at the little table in the corner of the compound, no one would have remarked upon my negligence to donate, nor asked around to find out what had happened to missing card number 129.6

The invitation had not been merely an extravagance, an announcement or a commemoration. It had been a request, a solicitation for a gift. In this case, the gift did not contribute towards food that would in turn be eaten, at least in theory, by the contributors (as happens at burial feasts): it was a straightforward donation, whose return was intangible and unspecifiable, and unanticipated. This donation would ideally be followed by continued support of the Heiis, through later purchases at their store.

The Heiis did not need the money donated (and it seems to have come to quite a substantial amount) to subsidize their store nor, given the large amounts involved, to throw the party. They had slowly been building up capital in the store, constructing it over a number of years and finally converting livestock and money savings into shelf stock. Cash to finance small enterprises like theirs is also fairly readily available through the National Development Bank, and Mr Heii, who had a secure job in Selebi-Pikwe, would have been virtually guaranteed help. They were clearly a relatively well-off couple. Al- though their house was small, Fredricka (who always wore the Herero long dress, which takes around 10 metres of cloth) had an extensive wardrobe, some of it made of very expensive fabrics. Their six children were all in school and were doing well. The request for money, embodied in the invitation cards, was not made out of need.

It became even clearer to me later that the donations were not made to the enterprise in itself The contributions did not serve to constitute the store with a public, corporate character; contributors were not able to claim special rights and privileges of Fredricka (who was the shopkeeper) or the store. They were given no special credit, or special access to enclaved stock, but instead had to pay in cash for what was on the shelves, like all other customers.

Instead, the pink cards were indeed markers, but carrying a much more complex message than I had realized at the time. The request for donations that they embodied announced simultaneously a new social state for the recipi- ents - as shopowners, sellers, providers of goods and staples - and also attempted to reassert an essential equality of status between the new Heiis and their old friends and neighbours. That the Heiis, and Fredricka in particular,

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were attaining a new position of both prestige and power in the community was undeniable. To the ambitious Herero chief, this couple exemplified people who were 'doing things' with their resources, and who formed an admirable contrast to others who either 'did nothing', or just 'ate' their income and stock. The couple's ability to draw upon income and stores to help others would give them an influence over family members and friends. But at the same time, with the invitational requests, the Heiis were soliciting recognition as persons with no more and no less power than others in their community Neither needy, in which case the gifts would have carried the demand of return, nor coercively powerful, the Heiis acknowledged for themselves an agency equal to that of their guests. When, near the end of the opening party, the amount of donated contributions was announced, there was a great deal of excitement and approbation. It was not only the amounts which generated interest, but the process itself (I had often seen collections for village projects that had raised truly paltry sums of money, and yet received similar overt enthusiasm at the time of announcement). This was the moment at which the status of the Heiis as free and unencumbered members of the community was confirmed, able to make requests that could be denied or honoured, and worthy of receiving the care of others. Simultaneously, the donors were announced as independent givers, their contributions voluntary and generous.

'We request help': contributions to a project Handwritten on a neatly torn half-piece of notebook paper, but graced with the important officializing stamp of the 'Ngwato Tribal Administration, Mahalapye Customary Court', the solicitation illustrated in fig. 2 circulated in Mahalapye in early May 1989. The words written in Setswana read: 'We request help of your children. They are still here, they are Herero refugees. Now they are returning home to Namibia. The month of May 1989, the 13 May'. Accompa- nying the request was a typewritten sheet of similar form in Otjiherero, also featuring the authorizing stamp, which asked for assistance for a thanksgiving party to be given by the refugees for the 'families and communities' of Botswana. The Herero version was the one on which contributors had in- scribed their names, and several people had contributed by the time the sheet came to me. None of the contributors on this list was Herero: they were Tswana, Kalanga, and Afrikaner, all Batswana (that is, citizens of Botswana).7 I was assured, however, that other lists were circulating in Herero ward. People

Re kopa dithuso tsa bana ba lona bantse bale mono ba batshabi ba Herero. Jaanong ba boela ga Namibia. Kgwedi ya May 1989 ka di 13 May.

NAME CONTRIBUTION ADDRESS

FIGURE 2. Circulated request for donation to Namibian refugees.

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had donated between 50 thebe and 5 pula each, the amounts that people usu- ally contributed to the many solicitations that regularly circulated in Mahalapye.

During my fieldwork, I received numerous such solicitations. I was even sometimes asked to participate as one of the circulators of the requests (there were always many for each project, each with her or his own stamped and official sheet for recording contributions). Collections were made for the beau- tification of the Herero public court, for an opening celebration for the new Botswana Railways repair shops in Mahalapye, for the support of a neighbour- hood crime prevention committee, for a gift for the pending marriage of Ngwato royal Anthony Khama, for erecting a statue of the late Sir Seretse Khama, Botswana's revered first President and controversial Ngwato chief Each solicitation featured officially stamped pieces of paper, on which con- tributors wrote their names and contributions, and which were collected together along with the monies at the end of the enterprise. What happened to these lists, I never found out.

Contributions were never coerced or heavily pressured. One could fairly easily avoid the solicitations by simply claiming to have no small change. On the other hand, people actually did give fairly readily in the small amounts expected, 25 or 50 thebe. The frequency and readiness of this flow of cash was always surprising to me, in that much of it came from people who were not well-off, whose own livelihood depended primarily upon the generosity of working children or siblings.

It can be argued that the public solicitations created the sense of a public, corporate nature of the sponsors, especially in the case of the district statue of Seretse Khama, or the crime prevention committee. The inscription of con- tributors' names simultaneously joins them in a community of mutual interests, personalizes the faceless cash, and endows the gifts with the identities of the donors. The recipient becomes, in a partial sense, a conglomerate of the donors - and the neighbourhood (for the crime prevention committee), the district (for the statue), and the nation state (in the railway workshops) become indeed a res publica. No specific return is demanded, because no one wants to de-publicize the state or community. But it must be added that, because the contributions are not coerced (as, for example, taxes are), the solicitation proc- ess also acknowledges the independence of the donors. The givers are not subsumed by the state, or the neighbourhood; nor are the latter completely absorbed by the people's names collected. Instead, an impression of an equality of agency, an ability to request without claimning need, and an ability to deny without acknowledging indigence, is retained. This impression, or affirmation in the process of asking, of an equality of power between the district, state, or other group, and the individual donor (or denier) is an important correlate to the construction of citizenship in Botswana's version of democracy.8

And what of the Namibian refugees, on their way to a soon-to-be inde- pendent Namibia? Their 'home' in Botswana was at Dukwe, a refugee camp over 300 km north of Mahalapye, and it was there that they intended to hold the thanksgiving party before being repatriated a few weeks later. Very few if any of the contributors to the event had any intention of attending the party;

DEBORAH DURHAM 123

indeed, only a small handful of young Herero even voiced an interest in going. In the end, the party was cancelled by Dukwe police: rumour had it that a petrol bomb was found in the camp, an ominous warning of the suspected factionalism and violence that people feared might mar the Namibian electoral process.

Not only did contributors not plan to attend the party, and receive the grati- tude, of the refugees, no one complained that the project was not carried out. I never heard anyone wonder where the money had gone. Nor did contribu- tors complain when the Herero public court was not beautified, nor when the crime prevention committee never met (or, at least, people did not complain with reference to the money collected). The request itself was as important as the contributions actually made. Like the Heiis, the Namibian refugees had suddenly attained a new status, and the officialized requests acknowledged that fact. For many years totally dependent upon Botswana, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and upon various German, Soviet, Finnish and other aid providers, and with highly restricted choice as to where to live, learn or earn, the refugees were like the indigent, impoverished families that populate Botswana's cattleposts and towns. Formerly citizens of no state, they had again become international persons, Namibians not only in a passive, tribal sense but also actively. As with the Heiis, the solicitations were an insistence that the Namibians had a position not dependent upon, but parallel to, and worthy of the respect of, their former hosts.

The small interchanges that take place on the streets of Mahalapye between friends and acquaintances, the playful demands and the indignant denials and the occasional gifts, parallel the solicitations for projects and the subscriptions to them that periodically take place throughout Botswana. The playfulness of the everyday encounter is absolutely necessary: it is a game in which each participant constructs an independent and roughly egalitarian agency for her- or himself The teasing aspect of the interchange may be absent from more formal solicitations, but there is still the possibility of fulfilment or denial, a tension between the formal intransigence of the demand ('give me...!', 'give.. .to project X!') and the easy deniability of the request. And both the interchanges between acquaintances and the subscriptions to projects are un- ambiguously thought of as fun. The mock indignation and demands, or the announcement of donations (paltry or large), are looked upon with enthusias- tic enjoyment. When the playful or enjoyable aspect of a transaction is completely absent, it is surely a different kind of exchange, as we see in the following section.

Non-playful denials and short-changing the game There are, as I have suggested earlier, other kinds of exchange and interaction in Botswana. Demands made on kin are rarely characterized by teasing, or easy acceptance of denial. When a farmer asks his nieces and cousins for help har- vesting corn, when a nephew asks an aunt for a goat for a special purpose, when a niece or daughter asks a man for a new dress, these requests are serious and intended to produce results. Denial of the requested gift might easily be construed as denial of the relationship; in fact, construed as an acknowledgment

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of the free and independent nature of the requester. And the form of the request quickly indicates its more constrained character by circumscribing the relationship between the two actors. 'I have been living here many years, you are my father, our mothers were born in the same house and lived together', a niece once pointed out to an uncle as she asked for a new dress. She also pointed out, angrily, the times he had made relationship-based requests of her to work in his fields, and to live in his compound and maintain the household. It is important to note that when she referred to work performed for the uncle, she was not necessarily imputing that he owed her something material in exact exchange for the work. Such a suggestion would significantly alter the nature of the relationship to one of strict dependency, or of contractual employment. Rather, the reminders served emphatically to recall the history of the relation- ship between the niece and uncle, and to reassert, or prove the kinship between them. The relationship of kinship constrains the requester and her uncle within an expected web of family interdependencies, within which one should honour reasonable requests and provide such help as is available. The persons involved in these familial transactions are not fully independent agents for the purposes of this encounter, with complete power of self-determination and self-responsibility. In these transactions, denials that are viewed as unreasonable sometimes provoke not mock indignation, but real anger and even an occa- sional court case. Yet another kind of transaction is characterized by the reduction, or virtual

denial, of the personhood of the asker. In some situations, demands initiated as half-serious, half-hopeful fall flat. A sneer, a real (and not a playful) scolding, a simple turning away can relegate the asker to the position of beggar. This is a serious turn of events: the power to ask for things, to solicit recognition as an individual deserving care and attention, is denied to the asker. I could discern no actual difference in asking in these instances and in those described above, unless there was a subtle difference in tone that indicated that demands were being made out of real need and not as a social challenge. Batswana in Maha- lapye readily recognized, however, the indigent and non-related children as beggars, and refused to engage in the kind of repartee I have been describing. There were often subtle clues to be found in dress, in demeanour, and in companions (or lack of them) that could signal the indigence of an asker. It is also true that, while Mahalapye is a settlement of some 30,000 people, because there is one centre in which all the banks, courts, government offices, and most of the shopping are located, many residents are visually familiar. Other strang- ers may be distinguished from the truly indigent by the company they walk in or talk to. Someone in very ragged clothing, interacting with others deferen- tially, would very likely be rebuffed in the asking game, and only infrequently given requested money. And it should go without saying that the truly indigent are never themselves asked for things, even in play.

In fact, however, very poor people who actually needed cash, food, or cloth- ing rarelyjust asked for them. Instead, they would offer to do some work, such as sweeping a house yard of debris, raking dead grass, or washing cars, in return for 50 thebe or a pula. The exchange of work for cash thereby made a relation- ship of employment, similar both to 'real' jobs in the formal sector and also to

DEBORAH DURHAM 12E

the long-term dependencies developed by those who lived on and cared for cattleposts in return for food, clothing, and occasional cash. In both cases, the recipient is subjected to the demands of the giver. And this is why, as I men- tioned earlier, people do not claim not to possess money, or things, when asked for them, but simply say the things 'aren't here'. A claim of absolute material lack would be a ready admission of a lack of self-determination, of the necessity of subjection to the demands of others and dependence upon others.

Equality as an agentive ability must be asserted in Botswana because it is not taken for granted. Persons are not naturally recognized as self-possessed, self- determining actors, but must continually reconstruct and reforge themselves and others as equals and as individuals - or conversely as unequals. Egalitarian individualism, in the construction of unconstricted personal agency, is only one form of subjective stance that people experience in Botswana. The experience of hierarchical authority, of impotence, of constrained choice and programmes, is just as present as the possibility for equality and independence. Cattle, in the past, have been a primary means of disrupting individual self-possession as already mentioned; today, the constraints are as likely to originate in wage labour, in the enforced hierarchies of government bureaucracy (where many people work), in unequal access to tractors, loans, capital and labour. If the state approaches its citizens at times as if both it and the citizenry are equally em- powered, it also simultaneously holds a very real sway over the people.

This is not to say, however, that the creation of agency between a requester and a subscriber, nor between two young women on the streets, masks a more real presence of power and hierarchy in society. Instead, it should be under- stood that these are two subjective stances, present as possibilities in Botswana's culture. Both are essential to the current configuration of power and polity in the country, to the unequal distribution of wealth and to the general understanding of citizenship and democracy, in which all citizens are equal participants and members in their society. Both are stances understood, and perhaps attempted, by different people (or, sometimes, by institutions such as the state as actors) at different times.

Women are more likely to seek relations of playful equality than men, espe- cially older men. The fact that men are more likely than women to own the means of influence and domination in cattle, employment opportunities, trac- tors and trucks, significantly accounts for this fact. Further explanation lies in the cultural construction of women as non-authoritative, non-domineering actors in Botswana society. While the economic and cultural constructions of women may be undergoing revision in urban centres and in some sectors of employment, in Mahalapye, women retain and even enjoy less 'modernized' social positions. But both women and men, young and old, are able to take advantage of the possibilities inherent in every social interchange to assert independence and rough equality, or domination and subordination.

Conclusion

Finally, I want to evaluate my findings in Botswana against the general state- ments made by Bloch and Parry (1989) on money and moral economies. It is clear that the solicitations that are the topic of my article involve, for the most

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part, money or highly commoditized goods. And, although some of these items are highly personalized in the course of transactions (as donations are inscribed with names onto lists, or as items are 'enclaved' in playful interchanges), it is also clear that the exchange relationships are very short-lived in nature. Indeed, some are so short that they are ended before any object is transacted, others seem truncated at the moment of giving, in so far as there is no clear or accounted return. In the sociology of exchanges proposed by Bloch and Parry, short-term transactions are opposed to a sphere of transactions concerned with the 'reproduction of the long-term social or cosmic order' (Bloch & Parry 1989: 24) in which images of transitoriness are denied in favour of, or are transformed into, images of a perduring structure. Short-term transactions are, by contrast, 'associated with individual appropriation, competition, sensuous enjoyment, luxury and youthful vitality....often identified with exchanges be- tween strangers' (Bloch & Parry 1989: 24). But, contrary to what Bloch and Parry suggest, the short-term and apparently acquisitive interchanges of de- mands, denials, and solicitations that occur daily in Botswana (and which so annoy Westerners) are, in fact, concerned at the most fundamental level with long-term categories, although they are sometimes between strangers (or partial strangers) as Bloch and Parry suggest. Through these transient interac- tions, long-term social positions, such as individuality, independence, and self-determination or such as subordination, submissiveness, servility and in- debtedness are marked out and recreated in Botswana. The individual as fully agentive, fully self-determining, is an essential part, if only a part, of Botswana's society and culture. But he or she is not a pre-social being, naturally occurring, set up to be contrasted with more perduring social roles of hierarchy and agentive constraint. In these small and seemingly insignificant encounters be- tween both friends and strangers, one of the most fundamental elements of the social order is repetitively and recursively reconstituted. The question is, really, not how does the individual become socialized, but how does the individual as individual become accounted for, created. In Botswana individuality is recog- nized not in the spirit of Weberian calculation (and acquisitiveness), but in the spirit of asking.

NOTES

Research was carried out in Mahalapye, Botswana and other locations within Botswana from December 1989 to August 1990 and from February 1991 to May 1991. The research was gen- erously supported by a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for Doctoral Dissertation Research, a Na- tional Science Foundation Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, No. BNS-8819432, and a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research. John Comaroff, Eric Gable, David Graeber, Arjun Guneratne, Charles Piot, Johanna Schoss, Debra Spitulnik, Becky Tolen, and Keith Adams made many excellent suggestions and comments. I would like especially to thank Hastings Donnan for his contributions, and the two anonymous reviewers for their quite appropriate suggestions. Finally, I want to thank Phillip Vavirikiza Heii, who in 1994 found the basic ideas of this article both reasonable and interesting.

I Pula and thebe are the currencies in Botswana. One pula was equal to about fifty U.S. cents during 1989-91, and is composed of 100 thebe. Ten thebe, therefore, is the equivalent of about five U.S. cents.

2 'Hence it follows that to give something is to give a part of oneself' (Mauss 1967: 10). See also Gregory (1982: esp.18-19).

DEBORAH DURHAM 127

3 Gregory differentiates 'gifts' from 'commodities', in part, by this definition: 'commodities are alienable objects transacted by aliens; gifts are inalienable objects transacted by non-aliens' (1982: 43). His argument has been well criticized with respect to the nature of the object transacted (cf. esp. Appadurai 1986; Thomas 1991). My primary concern in this article is with the nature of the transactors. Just as the nature of the object cannot be defined abstractly prior to any transaction, so the relationship between the actors has no firm a priori status. My posi- tion follows Strathern's argument for Melanesian societies: 'the creation of inequalities be- tween men and clan groups is based on a premise of equality....Such relationships are, how- ever, separate from those asymmetrically construed, where interaction proceeds on the basis of and in reference to the particularity of an inherent difference between the parties' (Strathern 1988: 49). Strathern, examining closely the ways in which 'gender demarcates different kinds of agency' (Strathern 1988: 93), critiques approaches that see exchange as producing sociality, on the grounds that they assume a single human agency.

4 Sahlins (1972: ch. 4, 'On the spirit of the gift') also remarks upon the continuities of Mauss's theories and the liberal philosophers of the Enlightenment, Hobbes and Rousseau. The points of similarity that he chooses to emphasize, however, are different from the one I observe here. Sahlins notes the similarities between the gift and the 'social contract' that binds together opposing selfish interests (cf. Strathern 1988).

5 People known in Botswana as 'Sarwa' are often referred to in popular literature as Bush- men, a term now rejected for its derogatory content. The term 'Sarwa' itself has generated some controversy, as well, for its own negative history in the region. The Herero language calls these people 'Ovakuruha'.

6 Debra Spitulnik has pointed out the similarity of the card with its number to a raffle ticket. Raffles were, in fact, a very common means of raising money by various school groups for trips, reunions and the like. Students would roam the streets of Mahalapye selling tickets to any buyers they could find. As with the invitation, there were numbers distributed, contri- butions made, names carefully recorded on stubs, and usually some unredeemed (or 'unre- turned') tickets. And raffle-type collections are very similar to the solicitations I describe later in the article.

The solicitations described below are also similar to requests made under the official seal of the chief's court, when donations are carefully inscribed on a sheet of paper along with the donor's name, as I describe in the following section.

7 I make somewhat idiosyncratic use of the terms Batswana, Motswana and Tswana. Bantu languages make extensive use of prefixes added to noun bases to construct words. The prefixes locate the nouns in one of several classes, and are integral to the meaning of the full word. 'Tswana' is a root which refers to an ethnic category: with prefixes it becomes 'Botswana' (place of Tswana), 'Setswana' (Tswana language or culture), 'Motswana' (Tswana person), 'Batswana' (Tswana people). As has become common in English writing, I drop most of these prefixes, relying upon context or modifiers. When referring to an ethnically Tswana person or people, I call him or them Tswana (without distinguishing plurality). Similarly, I use 'Tswana' to refer to the language or culture. I retain Botswana, the name of the country. Rather idio- syncratically, I use the term 'Batswana' (or its singular 'Motswana') to refer to a citizen of the state of Botswana, not all of whom are ethnically Tswana.

Although the Tswana language is the common language spoken in Botswana, most foreign phrases in this article are in the Herero language (Otjiherero). Where I have used Tswana language text, I specify the language.

8 Of course, there are other versions of state power that do not refer to local constructs of democracy. South African incursions into Botswana in the mid-1980s, for example, prompted military road-blocks with powers of search and seizure. Often, as well, government bureaucracy suggests to the citizen a more radical divide between a statist government and subject population.

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L'esprit de la requete au Botswana, ou comment appeler les dons et negocier le pouvoir d'agir

Resume L'article, qui explore la fagon enjouee et quotidienne de quemander au Botswana, relie ce phenomene aux nombreuses sollicitations assaillant ceux et celles qui sont pergus comme ayant les moyens de financer les oeuvres publiques ou les projets particuliers. C'est au cours de ces transactions que les gens se constituent mutuellement en acteurs autonomes. Pourtant, les echanges ne dependent pas a priori de ces constructions. Etant donne que requetes et sollicitations sont organisees autour de la possibilite de refuser, les acteurs sociaux sont places dans une configuration essentiellement paritaire. Un tel positionnement du sujet peut etre contraste avec les positionnements caracterisant d'autres formes de transaction au Botswana, comme celles modelees par la hierarchie ou l'interdependance. L'article termine en contrastant cette approche avec celles qu'on trouve dans la plupart des ecrits conventionnels concernant l'echange, et qui assument que les acteurs sont independants et ont un pouvoir d'agir equivalent avant meme d'entrer en interaction.

Department of Anthropology, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar VA 24595, U.S.A.