The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance
As seen:
By Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Burgoyne, and and, Robin Wall Kimmerer
avg rating
1 review
Brought to you by Penguin.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, an inspiring vision of how to reorient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity and community
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most?
Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival.
The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”
© Robin Wall Kimmerer 2024 (P) Penguin Audio 2024
TweetReviews
I received this as a gift - and I will pass it on as a gift.
I thought this was going to be a book about ecology, botany, looking at the relationship between plants and people, but it's a little different than I expected. It's about Ecological Economics; the idea of abundance and reciprocity in the natural world (given in the title) and how we can extend this idea of a 'gift giving' economy as opposed to our current market-driven commodity based economy. Or more precisely, how can we can encourage and enhance gift giving economies within the larger system in which we live, copying the botanical serviceberry in its giving in times of abundance?
This was originally published as an essay, and has been extended to a small book; Kimmerer's writing is hopeful and poignant. It's not difficult to read (despite being about economics!), and shows there is already some movement towards biomimicry in modern economics taught at universities. That's a start.
I don't share the optimism that our world can return to an indigenous-based gift-giving economy entirely, but the idea that these economies can exist in tandem is an interesting and hopeful one.
Pass it on.
