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This article examines socio-cultural circulations associated with dams and other water management technologies in central Japan. Such technologies and the circulations of water they enable link communities across Japan's rural and urban spaces in social, political, economic, and cultural ways. They also produce anxieties by highlighting social inequalities and the disparate impacts of water resource development in modern Japan. Using Makio Dam in central Japan as a case study, I argue that actors in both upstream and downstream communities actively imagine and enact social relationships that work to ease the tensions that arise from unidirectional flows of water by producing sensations of harmony and common identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an act-nomination (N = 15) and an act-frequency study (N = 235), we attempted to assess spontaneously generated reasons for gift-giving and how these reasons differed across the sexes and as a function of individual differences. Primarily, both sexes gave gifts for special occasions and to build or maintain interpersonal relationships. However, men were more likely than women were to want to build and maintain one particular type of interpersonal relationship, that being romantic/sexual relationships. Men were more likely than women were to give gifts to escalate relationships to sex/dating and as a mate-retention tactic. Of all the personality traits examined, it was agreeableness that was correlated with the most reasons to give gifts. Moderation by the sex of the participant suggests that men who are low on extraversion and self-esteem may use gifts to do the "talking" for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates the recent shift away from a “thin” reading of monetary exchange, which views money transactions as universally market-like and profit-motivated, towards “thicker” readings of exchange, which identify the permeation of wider economic relations and not-for-profit logics. To do this, an empirical study is reported of what happens when money penetrates informal exchanges between family, friends and neighbours. The research findings lead to a more nuanced reading of monetary exchange being brought to light. The main finding is that the imagery and perception of paid informal transactions may be constructed and interpreted in “thin” terms by participants, even if the core motives and personal relations involved in paid mutual aid remain “thick.” Significantly, while such a finding does not constitute a change in behaviour towards “thin” marker readings of economic exchange, it may explain why some people are dissuaded from undertaking paid mutual aid. In this way, while the paper does not reject the social and cultural embeddedness of economic exchange, it does serve to problematize the move towards thicker descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern gift literature an anti-utilitarian and a utilitarian view on the gift can be distinguished. From the anti-utilitarian perspective, the freedom of the gift is seen as one of its main characteristics, while the idea that gifts are caught in a cycle of reciprocity is downplayed. In the utilitarian approach, assumptions about rational actors weighing their preferences according to some utility are predominant. In the first approach, reciprocity is seen as undermining 'genuine' gifts. The utilitarian approach does take reciprocity into account but fails to analyse why the principle of reciprocity is so effective. This article attempts to provide such an explanation. By illuminating both the variety of the forms of the gift and the universality of the underlying principle, it is argued that gifts reflect a multi-purpose symbolic 'utility' that transcends both utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]