ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Genre:
Economy & Politics, Society
Author:
James G. Carrier
Publisher:
Agenda Publishing
Language:
English
AUTHOR BIO:
James G. Carrier is an Associate of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Indiana. He is the author of "Gifts and Commodities" (Routledge, 2012) among the others. His recent books include "Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality" (co-editor with Don Kalb) and "After the Crisis: Anthropological Thought, Neoliberalism and the Aftermath" (editor).
Pages:
160
Publication:
Rights available:
All
DESCRIPTION:
Conventional economic thought sees the economy as the sum of market transactions carried out by rational individuals deciding how to allocate their resources among the various things on offer that would satisfy their desires.
Economic anthropologists see things differently. For them, the focus is the activities, relationships and systems through which objects are produced, circulate among people and ultimately are consumed, which take different forms in different societies and even in different parts of the same society.
In this way, economic anthropology takes the rational market actors of conventional economic thought and places them in the world of people, relationships, systems, beliefs and values that begins with production and ends with consumption.
This accessible and authoritative introduction to the field of economic anthropology offers students a fresh and fascinating way of looking at the economic world.
Contents
Introducing economic anthropology
1. Production and what is produced
2. Changing production
3. Circulation, identity, relationship and order
4. Gifts and commodities
5. Commercial circulation
6. Considering Christmas
7. Consumption and meaning
8. Consumption in context
Afterword
REVIEWS:
"This short but informative and compelling volume from a leading economic anthropologist achieves the important yet difficult task of rendering the complexities and contradictions of human behaviour accessible, immediate and relevant. While pitched at a non-specialist readership, all readers, including those steeped in anthropology and/or economics, will enjoy the journey that Carrier invites us to embark on as we encounter the concepts, ideas and practices devised by social actors in very different contexts and environments, as they go about the business of everyday life.” – Victoria Goddard, Goldsmiths, University of London "Carrier draws on his own extensive fieldwork and a sampling of the best and brightest academic thinking, introducing a rich field with growing relevance to th...
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