Marvin Harris (Our King): On Freeloaders

During the reign of reciprocal exchange and egalitarian headmen, no individual, family, or ocher group smaller than the band or village itself could control access to rivers, lakes, beaches, oceans, plants and animals, or the soil and subsoil. Reports to the contrary have not survived close scrutiny. Anthropologists once thought that families and even individuals among Canadian hunter-collectors owned private hunting territories, but these ownership patterns turned out to be associated with the colonial fur trade and did not exist aboriginally.

Among the !Kung, a core of people born in a particular territory say that they own the water holes and hunting rights, but this has no effect on the people who happen to be visiting and living with them at any given time. Since !Kung from neighboring bands are related through marriage, they often visit each other for months at a time, do not have to ask permission to do so, and have free use of whatever resources they need. While people from distant bands must make a request to use another band's territory, the "owners" seldom refuse them.

The absence of private possession in land and ocher vital resources means that a form of communism probably existed among prehistoric hunting and collecting bands and small villages. Perhaps I should emphasize that this did not rule out the existence of private property. People in simple band-and-village societies own personal effects such as weapons, clothing, containers, ornaments, and tools. But why should anyone want to steal such objects? People who live in bush camps and move about a lot have no use for extra possessions. And since there are only a few-score people and everybody knows everybody else, stolen items cannot be used anonymously. If you want something, better to ask for it openly, since by the rules of reciprocity, such requests cannot be denied.

I don't want to create the impression that life within egalitarian band-and-village societies unfolded entirely without disputes over possessions. As in every social group, nonconformists and malcontents cried to use the system for their own advantage at the expense of their fellows. Inevitably there were freeloaders, individuals who consistently took more than they gave and who lay back in their hammocks while others did the work. Despite the absence of a criminal justice system, such behavior was eventually punished. A widespread belief among band-and-village peoples attributes death and misfortune to the malevolent conspiracy of sorcerers. The task of identifying these evildoers falls to a group's shamans, who remain responsive to public opinion during their divinatory trances. Individuals who are well liked and who enjoy strong support from their families need not fear that the shaman will accuse them. But quarrelsome, stingy people who do not give as well as take or who are aggressive and outspoken had been weeded out.