Carrier has suggested that the modality of gift-exchange in modern American Christmas rituals can evoke the attractive warm atmosphere (Carrier 1995:70). But Robbins and Akin more directly express the transforming capacities of the modality of exchange. Sharing creates kin in Melanesia, and trade between kinsmen therefore threatens to change the kinship ties to another type of relation (Robbins and Akin 1999:6f, 14ff). In their example the change is not desired, and the negative consequences that trade is imagined to have on kinship relations makes trade between kinsmen worrying and immoral. However, it is of course also possible to influence a relation in a positive direction.
An illustrative example of this is Lévi-Strauss’ well known account of two strangers eating platte du jour at the same French restaurant. One pours his wine in the glass of the table companion, and the other immediately returns the gesture. Although the glasses of wine exchanged may be more or less identical, the atmosphere can from the moment of these gestures only be one of cordiality (Lévi-Strauss 1969:58f). The example shows two things: First, that even though the modality is gift-exchange and
20 A similar point is made by Maurice Godelier, who writes that money and feelings are morally held apart in France, as though money were fatal to feelings and as though money killed affection. Gift-giving has become the
not economical trade, the idea of reciprocity is not forgotten. And second, that the modality of exchange may influence the relation – or more precisely the way the relation is perceived by the two men individually. Both aspects can be transferred to relations in general.
Giddens actually suggests that pure relations can not exist without a substantial element of reciprocity (1999a:93; 1999b:139). He is however not talking about the exchange of glasses of wine or gifts in general for that matter, but about the exchange of emotions (1999b:67). Friendships as well as romantic relations require commitment, but in order to decide whether a relation is worth the effort, it is continuously reflected upon, and one normally stay friends for only as long as sentiments of closeness are reciprocated (ibid.90). Thus, pure relations may be devoid of economical interests, but they are not devoid of ideas of reciprocity.
Surely, such evaluations of a relationship require communication or exchange between the partners. As I have argued in the previous chapter, emotions must be seen as embodied social relations, but one can only experience these relations through ones own body and not (at least not directly) through the body of others.
Emotions concern social relations, but are experienced individually. It is not possible to actually know if feelings of closeness are reciprocated, and one must rely on gestures and signs expressed by the other (Giddens 1999a:96, 186f). Pure relations require, however emotionally involving and spontaneous they may be seen by an individual, the exchange of signs of affection, and as Carrier and Belk have argued, gifts are in Western modernity seen as symbols of emotions (Belk 1995:95; Carrier 1995:60). So one way of approximating a relation to the pure relation is by using the modality of gift-exchange.
But while distinctions between objects exchanged, modalities of exchange and relations are theoretically important, they are in practice inseparable. Relations are in general visible through communications and exchange of words, facial expressions, gifts, favors, touch, or other signs, and pure relations as well as relations in general
bearer of a utopia of solidarity and open-handedness and is contrasted to money-economy associated with calculation (1999:5, 208).
Pure Relations and Cool Cash 52 are experienced as forms of exchange. The modality and objects exchanged can actually influence how a relation is seen or felt by the individuals engaging in it.
Sharing creates kin in Melanesia. Exchange of glasses of wine creates cordiality in France. Giving presents at Christmas creates warm and homely atmospheres in America. All of the examples show how the modality and objects exchanged can create a sense of a certain type of relation belonging in the corresponding sphere of exchange.
Music can invoke emotions and can by individuals be felt as social relations belonging in as sphere of exchange appropriate for gift-exchange and incompatible with money-economy and anonymity. Fans are, as I have argued earlier, often emotionally touched by the music, and the mixing of the modality of economic exchange and emotional relationships is in Western modernity considered an inappropriate cocktail. Music can invoke emotions, and since emotions are so closely linked to the ideal pure relation and to the warm sphere of gift-exchange, the music creating these strong emotions can not simply be repaid with cool cash. By repaying the emotionally involving music in the modality of gift-exchange the relation is adjusted by being “placed” in the right sphere of exchange. Thinking of the artist behind this touching music as a trade partner or a merchant is quite contradictory to the emotional impact that the music has. Music invoking emotions, invoking embodied social relations, must be repaid with gifts and the relation must be thought of in terms that are not economical.
Thus, when fans construct the singers as independent from the musical industry and seek to repay the singers with gifts, I do not see it as a resistance to economical institutions. Rather, fans are actively trying to transform a relation from being based on trade between strangers to being based on the exchange of gifts symbolizing emotions. This is done through changing the modality of exchange, and must be seen as a sign – not of resistance - but of the informants being part of a society where a separation between anonymous money-economy and emotional relationships makes sense.