Sharing has long been identified by anthropologists as a key feature of
human sociality, especially within small groups. It was once common to
assimilate these practices of sharing within the frame of reciprocity (e.g.,
Sahlins’s “generalized reciprocity” [1974]), but more recent scholarship is
adamant that (in Woodburn’s fine phrase [1998]), “sharing is not a form
of exchange.” Attention to what Peterson (1993) has termed “demand
sharing,” in parÂ�ticÂ�uÂ�lar, has illuminated the need both to distinguish proÂ�
cesses of allocation from the giving of gifts and to take note of the gap
between Western ideas of sharing as a form of generosity and practices
that in actuality operate according to another logic altogether.