Western popular culture and social science have tended to conflate material goods with selfish individualism. But except under the most desperate circumstances – and sometimes even then – the principal meaning and function of goods and money are to constitute social relationships. This has been most cogently demonstrated by studies of “gifts,” but also by research on eating, raiding, marriage, ritual, and political economy (e.g., Komter, 2004; Lévi-Strauss, 1961/1949; Malinowski, 1922; Mauss, 1925; Polanyi, 2001; Sahlins, 1965; Veblen, 2007/1899). People want and use money and goods primarily to share, give, exchange, flaunt, conspicuously consume, or measure success and achievement. Material goods mediate relationships. Research on the social-relational meaning of goods and money has focused primarily on giving and sharing initiated by the giver, exploring the moral motives and social-relational aims of giving. But the motives and aims of the taker are similarly moral and relationship-constitutive, even when the taker takes violently.