… I think we are perhaps overly concerned with ‘unwrapping,’ with revealing the perceived essence of things, where we might do well to examine a little further the nature of the concealment used.
This is from the Introduction to Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Presentation and Power in Japan and Other Societies by Joy Hendry (1993):
… When we present a gift, which may also often just as well be called a ‘present,’ we must also be concerned with how it is to be presented. This concern includes several decisions: is the gift to be wrapped, and if so, how; when and where is it to be presented, in what way, and with what form of words should the presentation be made? Are there certain clothes which should be worn in order to make the presentation properly? In other words, is it important that the person presenting the gift be presentable? Should the presentation be made in a particular place? Standing, sitting, even bowing, perhaps? And should it be made at a particular time? Similar questions may be asked about how the present should be received, and, if it is wrapped, when and how it should be opened.
… Mauss’s principles of gift exchange have been adopted, applied, criticized, and adapted in many other arenas of social life, from … rather trivial examples … to complicated systems of exchange concerning trade, marriage arrangements, and other forms of long-term communication. In effect, as the work of Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, and a number of others have demonstrated, they are among the most basic tenets of social life. I hope to show here that style of presentation is important in all these arenas, too, material and non-material.
… Here we shall be concerned then with the significance of the wrappings of presents, with the way they are wrapped and the way they are unwrapped. We shall also be concerned with the wrapping of the people who present those presents, with the clothes they choose to wear and with other aspects of their external presentation, whether they are presenting presents or not. We shall also be concerned with the words they use, with the way they offer the presents they give, whether they be material gifts, invitations, or words of solace or consolation. We are ultimately also concerned with a much wider range of interaction, with the use of words, clothes, gifts, and any number of other devices found in the presentations people make to one another. We are concerned, also, with the relationship between these different forms of presentation in any one social context.
… I would like to use the Japanese case to demonstrate what I think may be some limitations in Western analysis of other peoples. … During my research on the subject of wrapping in its broadest sense, I have been struck repeatedly by some fundamental differences in approach to the whole notion of wrapping. … I think we are perhaps overly concerned with ‘unwrapping,’ with revealing the perceived essence of things, where we might do well to examine a little further the nature of the concealment used.
[Please note that she is not denying or even commenting on the presence of a concealed essence -- this is not about what is concealed (clearly the word implies that something is hidden ...). This is not an either/or discussion.]
The point is made rather well by Michael O’Hanlon in his introduction to Reading the Skin, a study of the significance of the elaborate bodily adornment used by the Wahgi people of the Western Highlands of New Guinea, which is a very good example of wrapping. He writes,
In English, the notion of ‘adornment’ suggests the superficial, the non-essential, even the frivolous. We often think of adornment as an artificially added layer, concealing what ‘really’ lies beneath. The Wahgi concept is rather different. For them, the decorated appearance is more often thought to reveal than to conceal. Far from being frivolous, adornment and display are felt to be deeply implicated in politics and religion, marriage and morality.
… In the end, it is almost certainly our theoretical constructs which have made the subject of social anthropology interesting, over and above the intrinsic interest most of us have in personal interaction. Perhaps we have been so concerned recently with the notions of ‘deconstruction’ and of ‘unpacking’ that we have failed to take enough notice of the construction itself, of the value of the packaging that we so quickly throw away. In the environmentally conscious green world in which we now live, perhaps I may make a plea for another level of recycling, before we find ourselves irrevocably post-.
-Julie
