Too Many Bananas

The article “Too Many Bananas, Not Enough Pineapples, and No Watermelon at All,” by David Counts has brought a quite impressive story to readers for the first time reading it. With three lessons that he and his family have learned from the Kandoka Village on the island of New Britain in Papua New Guinea, Counts has described generically and fairly clear about the concept of reciprocity and its nature in an easy way for readers to understand. On the other hand, his three lessons are considered as three object lessons in living with reciprocity. In anthropology, Reciprocity is the first and most ancient mode of exchange within cultures around the world. It is divided into three different subcategories include generalized reciprocity, balanced …show more content…
If anyone were to try -- like this woman from Lauvore --then we should refuse.” The leader does not allow the author to buy anything from the villager, only trade. This is a feature of reciprocity, exchanging things with others for mutual benefit. They do not trade if there is no benefit, benefit is the key word. In the next part of the article, the villagers bring goods to his house for trading. Counts writes, “It seemed clear to us that when an adult needed a stick of tobacco, or a child wanted some chewing gum they would find something surplus to their own needs and bring it along to our "store" and get what they wanted.” This is balanced reciprocity, when exchange is made with the expectation that those who give an amount will get the same in return with a specified time limit. In the last part of the article, a villager often stops by unwanted at the author’s residence, asking for things, but never bringing anything as she is described, “unlike almost everyone else in the village, when