The Serviceberry Book Review
Review on The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer recently came out. She’s the author of the infamous Braiding Sweetgrass, adored by every nature lover, and also Gathering Moss, which is also excellent.
I was anticipating this release since I ran across a book release calendar last summer and spotted it on there. The Serviceberry is a small book at just 124 pages but the ideas in it really pack a punch.
It’s a book that describes the benefits of a gift economy through acts of love and generosity in relationships to people and the earth. It breaks down the illusion of ones ability to acquire self-sufficiency and highlights the fear based thinking of such. For example, people hoarding toilet paper during the pandemic out of fear and feeling the need to hoard months worth of food.
When you pull away from such thinking and focus on the quality of your relationships with others, you will realize we all have everything we need and if we don’t, the gift economy allows us to share what we do have with those in need and also feel confident and comforted in knowing it will be reciprocated when our time of need may come. A gift economy creates thriving communities with strong relationships between people and the earth.
Kimmerer uses the example of the serviceberry tree in her neighbor’s yard to express her views. The tree provides vital nutrients to wildlife and is quite useful to people through the berries, leaves, and branches. Having the berries picked and consumed is beneficial for the growth of the tree and contributes to the web of reciprocity and gift exchange between all life forms.
“When the cedar waxwing gobbles it (the berry) up, some of that carbon becomes the feathers that paint a yellow band on its tail, which flashes in the afternoon light. When that feather falls to the ground it becomes food for beetles, who become food for the vole whose death feeds the soil who feeds the serviceberry seedling just germinating at the edge of the woods.”
Kimmerer argues the gift economy allows for more gratitude in the exchange of goods as well as the feeling of “enoughness” that doesn’t get felt as much with purchasing goods in a transactional capitalist society.
“Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.”
“Ecopsychologists have shown that the practice of gratitude puts brakes on hyper-consumption.”
Imagine three scenarios-
One where you grow a food, say tomatoes, and you feed and nurture the plant until it produces the delicious fruits. Then you pick the tomatoes feeling excitement and gratitude and not wanting to waste them after all your hard work caring for the plants so you eat and savor every bite.
Another, where a friend who has been growing tomatoes gifts some to you, excitedly sharing the process and offering ways you could incorporate them into a recipe that they recently tried.
Then imagine going to the grocery store, grabbing a few (flavorless) tomatoes, buying them, tossing them in a meal and that’s that.
Which of these 3 scenarios are the most enticing? Probably not the store option.
This is the premise of the book.
“In a gift economy, the currency in circulation is gratitude and connection rather than goods or money. A gift economy includes a system of social and moral agreements for indirect reciprocity, rather than a direct exchange. So the hunter who shared the feast with you today could well anticipate that you would share from a full fishnet or offer your labor in repairing a boat in the future. The prosperity of community grows from the flow of relationships, not the accumulation of goods.”
There are many examples of this gift economy already in our lives, such as websites and community pages like freecycle or buy nothing groups. Also, the library and little free libraries (my favorite!). As well as passing on “hand me downs” like children’s strollers or clothes to a neighbor, friend, or relative.
In one section, Kimmerer notes how this gift economy can’t function well when there are people who violate trust, cheat, and break the rules of sharing (mostly taking, not gifting). I think it’s what really keeps it from thriving on a larger scale.
It leads to the capitalist way of thinking and in my book annotations I wrote in the margin “america in a nutshell”.
She mentions when there are cheaters it leads to the privatization of goods and resources out of fear that someone will “take it all” which leads to the theory of “Tragedy of the Commons” outlined by Garrett Hardin.
“His notion is that shared resources- for example, a meadow where all the farmers are allowed to graze their sheep freely- will inevitably be destroyed by competing self interests. In this theory, the people involved were assumed to behave with the strict self interest of the “rational economic man”. The narrative is that someone will always overgraze or spoil the water source and the collective pasture will become useless to everyone due to the reign of selfishness. Therefore, the story goes, land should be privatized rather than communally held, converting a commonly held source of abundance to individual property in order to safeguard against the Tragedy.”
America in a nutshell:
Act in your own self interest, collect everything so that you can sell it and capitalize off your neighbors, get richer, get better, get bigger, more, more, more!
There are more nuggets of wisdom in this book but since it’s so slim, I don’t want to give it all away here but I highly recommend picking it up for an afternoon read.
I think it’s the perfect time for us to ponder the benefits of an “underground” gift economy and focus on our smaller communities in ways we can contribute to each other and the land. With the state of the world as it is, leaning into gratitude and caring for each other is more important than ever.
A few of my favorite ways to participate in the gift economy are picking up trash at the beach and caring for the ocean and sealife, baking treats for unsuspecting friends, hanging a hummingbird feeder outside my home, befriending crows (Edgar and Virginia) and feeding them peanuts every morning, participating in little free libraries, donating canned goods at the holidays, and using discretion when acquiring things and using the earths resources.
I hope you pick it up, and if you do, let me know what you think!
x,
Courtney
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