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