G. Rossman on Codes and Culture

...clientelism (aka hierarchy, patronage, or authority ranking) is one of the basic modes of human organization. One of the many ways that our culture is WEIRD is that to us clientelism is relatively unimportant in fact and even less so in salience. The logic of clientelism is premised on reciprocity under conditions of inequality. So you have higher status people giving gifts to lower status people, who in turn incur social obligations to the higher status people. In the process the former become patrons and the latter clients. In the extreme case this can turn into debt slavery, but even short of that you see the clients reciprocating with deference (thereby conferring status to their patrons), votes, and fighting in the patron’s military unit.

My favorite example of reciprocity through deference comes from JLM’s Social Structures (p. 206), when he notes that non-military feudal reciprocity “was usually minor or degrading or both: in return for the manor of Hemingstone, the tenant was required to `leap, whistle and fart for the king’s amusement’ every Christmas day.” (For more background on clientelism, read Graeber’s Debt, JLM’s Social Structures, and Fiske’s RMT).

ATSRTWT.   And the links are fascinating...