Sahlins (1972: 194-195) further elaborated on aspects of Polanyi's reciprocal mode with generalized, negative, and balanced reciprocity. Generalized and negative reciprocity are opposite ends of a continuum (see Figure 2-1, above). Generalized reciprocity refers to sharing, altruism, and Malinowski's "pure gift", while negative reciprocity is the attempt to maximize personal gain from the transaction through haggling or theft (Sahlins 1972: 195-196). Polanyi's basic modes of exchange have persisted in economic anthropology for almost fifty years. Some argue that Polanyi's modes of exchange are limiting in that they do not provide a means to analyze precapitalist commercial activity (Smith 2004: 84), however the benefit to Polanyi's exchange modes is that they are sufficiently general to be comparable cross-culturally and the three modes are discrete enough to be, in some cases, archaeologically distinguishable. Furthermore, if commercial activity is unlikely in the study region, as in the prehispanic south-central Andes, Polanyi's modes capture the necessarily economic variability.