The apple is grown, the grape is given: Two modes of Mapuche Exchange

This article explores and contrasts two modes of social drinking among the Mapuche of southern Chile: the drinking of cider and the drinking of wine. Although cider is produced and shared without much elaboration, the exchange of wine is highly elaborated and understood as the paradigmatic act for the creation of a social relationship. This analysis suggests that these very different evaluations of two superficially similar types of drinking stem from the fact that wine and cider stand metonymically for market exchange and domestic production, respectively: whereas cider is produced domestically, wine can only be obtained by entering into market relations with white people. This devaluation of production over exchange serves as a starting point for thinking about Mapuche conceptualizations of economic activity, and additionally affords a new perspective on recent anthropological attempts to portray Amerindian societies in general as characterized by "exchange" rather than "production" models of social relations.