TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Anthropology > Marilyn Strathern's Relational Approach to Exchange
Marilyn Strathern carried out work in Melanesia. She argues that Melanesians do not conceive of objects and persons as independent entities involved in exchange.
She argues that the person who gives does not exist before they give and the relationship that occurs with this giving. This person only has an identity as part of and as a result of the giving relationship.
Thus, she concludes, people only acquire their identities from the relationships in which they participate.
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