Prestige
Prestige, the respect that a person attracts as a result of having accomplished socially valued exploits or fulfilled socially valued roles, plays an important part in societies around the world.
Potlatch
A classic example of prestige and its cultural expression is the potlatch of the Northwest Coast of North America. The potlatch attracted a great deal of attention from past generations of American anthropologists in part because it demonstrated a system of social organization and cultural value that contrasted with the U.S. culture. Indeed, this contrast was unsettling for many people in the United States and Europe, and was particularly frustrating for missionaries and others who hoped to convert Native Americans to a Western way of seeing the world.
At the core of the potlatch was the principle that one's prestige, and therefore one's social status, derives from generosity. Chiefs among groups like the Kwakiutl stored vast quantities of goods to give away at large feasts to which chiefs of neighboring and even quite distant groups were invited. These feast were the potlatches. At the potlatches, prestige was earned by the chief by giving more than he had received himself at the previous potlatches held by those in attendance. This demonstrated his great generosity. If guests were so overwhelmed that they could take no more while food and goods still remained, the extra would be thrown into the fire or tossed into the river. Attendees would then start to save in order to be able to host even grander feasts and give away even more presents in the future.
The system was based on a conception of wealth in which a chief's wealth was not measured by how much he kept to himself but by how much he gave away to other people. Prestige derived from this wealth. Giving away more than anyone was a tactic for attracting more respect and more power than anyone.
Cargo system
Another clear example of prestige playing a key role in society is the cargo system that has been so central to a variety of traditional cultures in Latin America.