Salon 51 The Maternal Gift Economy is Deeper Than Ethics

The maternal gift economy is our first interpersonal interaction and it never disappears but runs like an invisible river underground. The exchange economy is exploitative and needs to be controlled by ethics, right and wrong, The maternal gift economy is deeper than ethics.

Genevieve Vaughan is an independent researcher who lives part time in Italy and part in Texas. She created the multicultural all-woman activist Foundation for a Compassionate Society (1987-2005) and the Temple of Sekhmet in the Nevada desert (1992 – ongoing) and she co-created the network: International Feminists for a Gift Economy (2001 – ongoing). Her books are For-Giving, a Feminist Criticism of Exchange (1997), Homo Donans (2006) and The Gift in the Heart of Language: the Maternal Source of Meaning (2015). She has edited Il Dono/The Gift (2004), Women and the Gift Economy (2007) and The Maternal Roots of the Gift Economy (2019). A volume of the Canadian Women’s Studies Journal dedicated to the maternal gift economy has just appeared (2020). More information @ www.gift-economy.com.