Editing Potlatch (section)

==Anthropological theory==
[[File:Milwaukee Public Museum April 2023 071 (West Coast- Land of the Giants--The Potlatch, Kwakiutl, British Columbia).jpg|thumb|''The Potlatch, Kwakiutl, British Columbia'' diorama at the [[Milwaukee Public Museum]]]]

In his 1925 book ''[[The Gift (Mauss book)|The Gift]]'', the French ethnologist [[Marcel Mauss]] used the term potlatch to refer to a whole set of exchange practices in tribal societies characterized by "total prestations", i.e., a system of gift giving with political, religious, kinship and economic implications.<ref>{{cite book|last=Godelier|first=Maurice|title=The Enigma of the Gift|year=1996|publisher=Polity Press|location=Cambridge, UK|pages=147–61}}</ref>  These societies' economies are marked by the competitive exchange of gifts, in which gift-givers seek to out-give their competitors so as to capture important political, kinship and religious roles. Other examples of this "potlatch type" of [[gift economy]] include the [[Kula ring]] found in the [[Trobriand Islands]].{{r|graeber|p=188–208}}