Mauss understood the gift as a total social fact. Building on this notion of the gift as an integrator of numerous social behaviors, Lévi-Strauss(1949) extended the significance of gift giving through some previously unexpected cultural dimensions. For example, the exchange of women as vehicle of alliance formation is conducted in some societies in the idiom of gift giving. Underscoring this integration Riches(1981) has described the three-fold obligation discerned by Mauss as the multiplex predicament." An individual evaluates the circumstances of a single transaction in the context of multiplicity: because it is so thoroughly embedded, gift giving cannot be accurately interpreted in isolation from other behaviors. In Western society, giving appears to be somewhat more selective(insofar as all values are not exchanged via gifts), and is juxtaposed with direct exchanges(Schneider 1974). Firth(1967), Harris(1968) and Schieffelin (1980) have in turn extended these considerations