SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This essay, part of a wider forthcoming publication, discusses the general principles and the underlying cosmology upon which gift-giving rests in central Sardinia. Gift-sending (imbiatu) is presented as a 'total social fact' reflecting the key role it plays in community life and the motivating force behind 'being and belonging'. If tradition (su commotu), including customary law - often in opposition to state law - has resulted in delivering the 'code of vendetta barbaricina', it has also stimulated a gift-giving system (imbiatu) which positively complemented the ethical but 'inconclusive' code of vendetta. This 'archaic' system is not necessarily anti-modern, anti-rational and pre-logic, as psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists studying this area have tended to underline. On the contrary, the common tradition which supports both gift-sending and the code of vendetta accentuates the role of women as gift-givers who choose life over death and vendetta.