Genevieve Vaughan (born November 21, 1939) is an American expatriate semiotician, peace activist, feminist, and philanthropist, whose ideas and work have been influential in the intellectual movements around the Gift Economy and Matriarchal Studies.
Vaughan writes that while the journal did not materialize, her husband wrote several books about this topic, and she found herself in disagreement with his framing of language as a form of exchange.
In 1981, she was at the Virginia Woolf Cultural Centre in Rome, an independent women’s university started by feminist philosopher Alessandra Bocchetti.
After attending summer semiotics institutes at the University of Urbino for several years, she introduced a feminist element in 1982, organizing a women's group and presenting a paper about care as non-sign human communication.
"[10] In 1983, when The Gift by Lewis Hyde was published, Vaughan was not in accord with his emphasis on obligation, reciprocation, and gratitude, instead emphasizing the role of needs as a coequal component.
In 1980, Vaughan hired her cousin Frances Farenthold, a former Texas legislator, gubernatorial candidate and president of Wells College, to help her embark on a course of socially effective giving from her personal fortune.
[13] Returning to the US in 1983, Vaughan began to acquaint herself with a wide range of women’s and feminist activities related to peace, culture, and economics.
[23] For another project, Vaughan funded a survey designed by epidemiologist Rosalie Bertell, to study health effects of pollution on military bases in Texas and the Philippines.
She is credited by Florence Howe with financially rescuing The Feminist Press, and serves as an honorary member of its board of directors.
[30] When the Foundation closed, Vaughan ceased considering funding proposals, and turned full-time to analyzing and explaining the Gift Economy.
[38] Since For-Giving, her major works include Women and the Gift Economy: A radically different worldview is possible (2007) (edited), and Homo Donans (web book).
In 2002, a position statement from the network was presented at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil,[42] and a first general meeting was held in San Marcos, Texas.
It begins: "This collection of articles is the product of an international network of women who embrace in one way or another the idea of the logic of gift giving as the basis of a paradigm shift for social change."
Among the more well-known speakers were Mililani Trask, a leader of the Hawaiian indigenous sovereignty movement; Salvadoran theologian Marta Benavides; indigenous Sámi scholar Rauna Kuokkanen; Greek-American evolutionary biologist Elisabet Sahtouris; American feminist shaman Vicki Noble; Heide Göttner-Abendroth, from Germany, founder of Modern Matriarchal Studies; Dr. Kaarina Kailo from Finland; women's development specialist Peggy Antrobus from Barbados;[46] and Corinne Kumar, founder of the World Courts of Women in Tunisia.
In this book, Vaughan cites recent infant psychology research to strengthen her epistemological argument that the mother-child experience is the key paradigm for the structure of both verbal and material communication.
Vaughan criticizes patriarchal, capitalist monetization of gift-giving into a measurable forced exchange, calling it an expropriation of the psychological mechanism of parent-child interaction.