GIVE AND TAKE AMONG THE RURAL POOR

In the past, social exchange based on reciprocity has been important to the ways in which people in rural areas have made their living. Our study shows that contemporary reciprocal labor exchanges continue to be integral to the ways in which households sustain themselves economically and socially. However, unlike the relations of reciprocity of the past, which were based upon accomplishing harvest work among neighboring dairy farms, the current patterns of exchange are situational and contingent, and often embedded in kin and other social networks, rather than immediate neighbors. Understanding reciprocity reveals a fundamental element in the livelihood strategies of low‐income, land‐based, rural people.