Economic Anthropology

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Economic Anthropology

9781858987590 Edward Elgar Publishing
Edited by Stephen Gudeman, Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, US
Publication Date: 1999 ISBN: 978 1 85898 759 0 Extent: 608 pp
Economic anthropologists carry out research in all parts of the globe, producing ethnographic studies, cross-cultural comparisons and theoretical works. They explore how growing markets, new technologies and expanding capital affect marginalised people or the control of wealth between genders. The empirical studies of economic anthropologists are based on participation and observation and provide an information bank for testing formal theories. Their findings often challenge prevailing concepts of modern economics, because much of their collected information falls outside accepted paradigms or schemes.

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Economic anthropologists carry out research in all parts of the globe, producing ethnographic studies, cross-cultural comparisons and theoretical works. They explore how growing markets, new technologies and expanding capital affect marginalised people or the control of wealth between genders. The empirical studies of economic anthropologists are based on participation and observation and provide an information bank for testing formal theories. Their findings often challenge prevailing concepts of modern economics, because much of their collected information falls outside accepted paradigms or schemes.

In this important collection, Stephen Gudeman has selected a range of seminal papers which highlight differences and convergence between anthropologists and economists, and which trace the major developments in economic anthropology from 1922 to the present day. The articles draw on the anthropological notions of culture and context, and examine economic processes such as production, exchange and consumption, and the application of theories, such as Marxist, institutionalist and neoclassical explanations, to field data.

This authoritative volume will be an essential reference source for both economists and anthropologists.
Contributors
27 articles, dating from 1922 to 1997
Contributors include: F. Barth, P. Bohannan, M. Douglas, C. Geertz, M. Godelier, E.R. Leach, B. Malinowski, S.W. Mintz, M.D. Sahlins
Contents
Contents:

Acknowledgements • Introduction Stephen Gudeman

Part I: Theories
1. Manning Nash (1961), ‘The Social Context of Economic Choice in a Small Society’
2. Stuart Plattner (1989), ‘Economic Behavior in Markets’
3. Allen Johnson (1980), ‘The Limits of Formalism in Agricultural Decision Research’
4. Maurice Godelier (1978), ‘Infrastructures, Societies, and History’
5. Michael Taussig (1977), ‘The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labor and the Baptism of Money’
6. Marshall D. Sahlins (1965), ‘On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange’
7. Jonathan Parry (1986), ‘The Gift, the Indian Gift and the “Indian Gift”’
8. Stephen Gudeman (1986), ‘Physiocracy: a Natural Economics’
9. Stephen Gudeman and Alberto Rivera (1990), ‘The House’
10. Nurit Bird-David (1992), ‘Beyond “The Original Affluent Society”: A Culturalist Reformulation’

Part II: Processes: Production
11. Fredrik Barth (1964), ‘Capital, Investment and the Social Structure of a Pastoral Nomad Group in South Persia’
12. Paul and Laura Bohannan (1968), ‘Farms and Produce (Yiagh)’
13. Paul and Laura Bohannan (1968), ‘Land Rights: Social Relations in Terrestrial Space’
14. Clifford Geertz (1972), ‘The Wet and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco’
15. E.R. Leach (1960), ‘The Sinhalese of the Dry Zone of Northern Ceylon’
16. Stephen Gudeman (1986), ‘Rice and Sugar: Local Models of Change’

Part III: Processes: Exchange
17. Bronislaw Malinowski (1922/1961), ‘The Essentials of the Kula’
18. Keith Hart (1986), ‘Heads or Tails? Two Sides of the Coin’
19. Caroline Humphrey (1985), ‘Barter and Economic Disintegration’
20. Maurice Godelier (1977), ‘“Salt Money” and the Circulation of Commodities among the Baruya of New Guinea’
21. Igor Kopytoff (1986), ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’

Part IV: Processes: Spheres of Exchange
22. Paul Bohannan (1955), ‘Some Principles of Exchange and Investment among the Tiv’
23. Fredrik Barth (1967), ‘Economic Spheres in Darfur’

Part V: Processes: Markets
24. Sidney W. Mintz (1961), ‘Pratik: Haitian Personal Economic Relationships’
25. Alfred Gell (1982), ‘The Market Wheel: Symbolic Aspects of an Indian Tribal Market’

Part VI: Processes: Consumption
26. Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood (1978), ‘Separate Economic Spheres in Ethnography’
27. Mary Beth Mills (1997), ‘Contesting the Margins of Modernity: Women, Migration, and Consumption in Thailand’
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