Barkley Rosser's interesting comment about patterns of mourning and
self-awareness among elephants prompts me to suggest that the Linguistic
and Anthropological concepts of emic versus etic analysis may be useful
in thinking about elephants and in thinking about whether or not "trade"
is unique to humans.  As most on this list will be aware, emic(or
inside)analysis is done from the perspective of the language or culture
user; it is analysis that is valid for only one language or culture.
Etic, or outside analysis, involves use of a metalinguistic or
metacultural framework and set of tools.  

We cannot know whether or not elephants who do appear to mourn their
dead have what we humans call a religion, but as Barkley suggests, it
certainly seems possible and the suggestion that they may is based on an
etic assumption.  That is, it is based on the assumption that there may
be some processes that are similar across the otherwise very different
patterns of living of humans, elephants, and perhaps other mammals.  A
purely emic analysis, which is what scientists who wish to avoid charges
of being anthropomorphic employ, would simply say that elephants do
alter patterns of behavior when a member of their local group dies. Even
the statement that they mourn is etic for it involves attributing a
category of human reaction to an animal with whom we necessarily have
limited ability to communicate. 

Karl Polanyi's perspective on the movement of goods across space and
between individuals and groups was emic.  He quite deliberately
attempted to avoid the assumption that such movements involved the same
set of expectations and rules of accepted behavior (habits of the heart)
that could be assumed in large parts of modern western economies.  His
core argument was that such movement could be and often had been
organized quite differently and only through an emic approach (an
anthropological approach) could one discover the organization as
understood by the human participants in such movement.

The very word "trade" tends to involve some etic baggage no matter how
careful we may be to try to modify the term.  There is an assumption of
deliberate transfer of ownership-for-use with the intent to gain a thing
of greater value, where there is a common measure of value (as money)
that is used by all involved parties to make the valuation, and the
advantage of the trade is in the things being traded rather than in
other aspects of the human interaction involved.  What Polanyi argued
was that there is evidence of other reasons for movement of things among
people and across space and we need an emic approach to understand what
those reasons are.  

In thinking about the discussion about trade as well as about bonobos,
elephants, and other animal kin, it seems to me that there are good
reasons for using etic analysis in some cases, but only if we are always
aware that this is what we are doing, and good reasons for using emic
analysis in other cases , again with recognition that we are doing so.
I am quite prepared to say (etically) that elephants mourn, that dogs
and cats can be tricksters, and that bonobos, and other chimps as well,
can be altruistic. Emically I would also add that I do not know how they
perceive the actions that I interpret in this way.  I have more trouble
using the word "trade" to describe the actions of fellow mammals and
even of humans in a variety of settings because it is harder for me to
leave room for needed emic analysis once I have used the term.  The etic
baggage of the term is so weighty as to create more confusion than
clarity.

Anne Mayhew