The Potlatch reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Potlatch

A potlatch is a ceremony among certain First Nations peoples on the Pacific Northwest coast in which someone gives away or destroys property in order to enhance his or her social status. The potlatch was banned in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries by state administration.

• See also Conspicuous consumption.

The term potlatch is sometimes used to refer to a potluck.

It was also the name adopted for the review published by the Lettrist International in Paris in the 1950s.

Further reading

• Marcel Mauss: The Gift (1925) [1]

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