Plus précieux que l'or : relations et échanges entre hommes et femmes dans les sociétés d'Océanie

More Desired than Gold : Exchange and Female/Male Relationships in Oceania In this essay, I demonstrate that specific kinds of material objects used as currency and as the markers of social relations, gain their ultimate value from their actions as they manifest cultural principles of decay and death, and simultaneously, the history of successive acts of rebirth. These objects, all of them in a categorical sense, "cloth", are manufactured by women from fibrous plant materials. As "cloth" takes on greater physical durability, the object becomes a more precise recorder of history, documenting the power of cosmological phenoma (ahistorical time), and acting on and notating the socio-political dimensions of historical time. In Oceania, I argue that such "cloth", forms the basis for the development of political stratification.Weiner Annette B. Plus précieux que l'or : relations et échanges entre hommes et femmes dans les sociétés d'Océanie. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 37ᵉ année, N. 2, 1982. pp. 222-245