An 'Economic Man' in Every Society
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24 Labor As Seen by Social Anthropology José Sergio Leite
24 Labor As Seen By Social Anthropology José Sergio Leite Lopes 1 1. Introduction: the economic sphere and labor in social anthropology Anthropologists have traditionally studied labor in their monographs about indigenous groups, ethnic minorities, the peasantry, fishers and artisans. In these studies of labor, as in the economic sphere in general, it appears as enmeshed in the totality of the social life of these “traditional”, “pre-capitalist” groups. Generally such anthropological studies focus on the centrality of gift giving and reciprocity, which negate or obscure economic interests for the benefit of the logic of honor or of symbolic capital. They regard the gift as a total social fact where the market principal is subordinated to that of reciprocity and redistribution. Labor in these studies is not the central theme of interest, but appears in a form subordinated to other aspects with which it is interrelated. Between the 1950s and 1970s, anthropologists engaged with the question of the critical application or appropriation of concepts from diverse currents of so-called economic theory. Such concepts were constructed to explain the capitalist economy, but anthropologists embraced these economic principles in general to understand all societies. A debate arose between “substantivists”, who praised the historicity of concepts and the necessity of new instruments for the economic analysis of non-capitalist societies and the “formalists” who gave a wider reach to existing economic theories to apply to their ethnographies. The substantivists were located in some American universities and drew heavily on the work of and disciples of the Hungarian economic historian Karl Polanyi; later they would have an important repercussion in the whole anthropological field. -
The Agrarian Question in Tanzania?
The Agrarian Question In Tanzania? CurrenT AfrICAn Issues 45 THe AGrArIAn QUESTIOn In TAnZAnIA? A state of the Art Paper sam Maghimbi razack B. Lokina Mathew A. senga nOrDIsKA AfrIKAInsTITuTeT, uPPsALA In coperation with THe unIVersITY Of DAr ES sALAAM 2 011 1 sam Maghimbi, razack B. Lokina, Mathew A. senga The Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies was established as a university chair at the University of Dar es Salaam in honour of the great nationalist and pan-Africanist leader of Africa and the first president of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere. It was inaugurated on April 19, 2008 by the Prime Minister Honourable Mizengo Pinda in the presence of Mama Maria Nyerere. The main objective of the Chair is to reinvigorate intellectual debates on the Campus and stimulate basic research on burning issues facing the country and the continent from a pan-African perspective. The core activities of the Chair include publication of state of the art papers. As part of the latter, the Chair is pleased to publish the first paper The Agrarian Question in Tanzania. It is planned to publish at least one state of the art paper every year. first published by Mwalimu Nyerere Professorial Chair in Pan-African Studies University of Dar es Salaam P. O. Box 35091 Dar es Salaam Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.nyererechair.udsm.ac.tz INDExING TErMS: Agrarian policy Agrarian structure Peasantry Agricultural population Land tenure State Agrarian reform Land reform rural development Economic and social development Tanzania The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. -
Gifts and Commodities (Second Edition)
GIFTS AND COMMODITIES Hau BOOKS Executive Editor Giovanni da Col Managing Editor Sean M. Dowdy Editorial Board Anne-Christine Taylor Carlos Fausto Danilyn Rutherford Ilana Gershon Jason Throop Joel Robbins Jonathan Parry Michael Lempert Stephan Palmié www.haubooks.com GIFTS AND COMMODITIES (SECOND EditIon) C. A. Gregory Foreword by Marilyn Strathern New Preface by the Author Hau Books Chicago © 2015 by C. A. Gregory and Hau Books. First Edition © 1982 Academic Press, London. All rights reserved. Cover and layout design: Sheehan Moore Typesetting: Prepress Plus (www.prepressplus.in) ISBN: 978-0-9905050-1-3 LCCN: 2014953483 Hau Books Chicago Distribution Center 11030 S. Langley Chicago, IL 60628 www.haubooks.com Hau Books is marketed and distributed by The University of Chicago Press. www.press.uchicago.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. For Judy, Polly, and Melanie. Contents Foreword by Marilyn Strathern xi Preface to the first edition xv Preface to the second edition xix Acknowledgments liii Introduction lv PART ONE: CONCEPTS I. THE COmpETING THEOriES 3 Political economy 3 The theory of commodities 3 The theory of gifts 9 Economics 19 The theory of modern goods 19 The theory of traditional goods 22 II. A framEWORK OF ANALYSIS 25 The general relation of production to consumption, distribution, and exchange 26 Marx and Lévi-Strauss on reproduction 26 A simple illustrative example 30 The definition of particular economies 32 viii GIFTS AND COMMODITIES III.FTS GI AND COMMODITIES: CIRCULATION 39 The direct exchange of things 40 The social status of transactors 40 The social status of objects 41 The spatial aspect of exchange 44 The temporal dimension of exchange 46 Value and rank 46 The motivation of transactors 50 The circulation of things 55 Velocity of circulation 55 Roads of gift-debt 57 Production and destruction 59 The circulation of people 62 Work-commodities 62 Work-gifts 62 Women-gifts 63 Classificatory kinship terms and prices 68 Circulation and distribution 69 IV. -
And Colin Bundy's “African Peasantry”
International Journal of Development and Sustainability ISSN: 2186-8662 – www.isdsnet.com/ijds Volume 3 Number 7 (2014): Pages 1410-1437 ISDS Article ID: IJDS14042304 Chayanov’s “development theory” and Colin Bundy’s “African peasantry”: Relevance to contemporary development and agricultural discourse Anis Mahomed Karodia* Regent Business School, Durban, South Africa Abstract of Part One This paper attempts to look at the work of Chayanov, in respect of contemporary development issues and reexamines his work (on the basis of the work of TeodorShanin and partly by HamzaAlavi). Chayanov was considered during his time as the new Marx. His discourse and thoughts were fashioned upon the political economy and based on intellectual criticism of the USSR. He was sidelined by the then USSR and put to pasture by the many forms of repression in the then Soviet Union. His work bears utmost relevance to contemporary dialogue in respect of agriculture and development issues, in the context of the modern world. On the other hand the second part of the paper will look at Colin Bundy’s book the Rise and Fall of the African Peasantry. It is probably the most influential account of rural history produced in the 1970’s, and is hailed as a major reinterpretation of South African history, in terms of African agriculture which was considered as inherently primitive or backward and capitalism was hostile to peasants. Both parts of the paper look at the preface of the books written by TeodorShanin and By Colin Bundy himself, in order to look at very important and vexing issues that permeate 21st century discourse on development and agriculture Keywords:Development; Agriculture; Peasantry; Reinterpretation; Political Economy; Contemporary Dialogue; Capitalism; Poverty; Legacy; Traditionalism. -
Cash on the Table 1
Cash on the Table 1 Introduction Markets and Moralities Edward F. Fischer Moral values inform economic behavior.1 On its face, this is an unas- sailable proposition. Think of the often spiritual appeal of consumer goods or the value-laden stakes of upward or downward mobility. Think about the central role that moral questions regarding poverty, access to health care, the tax code, property and land rights, and corruption play in the shap- ing of modern governments, societies, and social movements. Think of fair trade coffee and organic produce and the thrift expressed in Walmart’s everyday low prices. The moral aspects of the marketplace have never been so contentious or consequential. Despite this relationship, the realm of economics is often treated as a world unto itself, a domain where human behavior is guided not by emo- tions, beliefs, moralities, or the passions that fascinate anthropologists but by the hard calculus of rational choices. The attraction of this Homo eco- nomicus paradigm rests in its parsimony, in the way it translates the chaos of everyday life and human behavior into a metric system complete with mathematical models based on assumptions about self-interest and maxi- mization (see Beckert 2002; Carrier 1997; Fullbrook 2004; Stiglitz 1993). Authors of economics textbooks often liken the workings of markets to nat- ural forces, distancing themselves from the field’s historical roots in phi- losophy and ethics. On issues of value and morality, many economists plead COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL www.sarpress.org 3 Edward F. Fischer agnosticism—it is not a question of good or bad, they say, but rather of effi- cient or inefficient (see Becker 1996; Becker and Becker 1996; Samuelson 1976). -
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EASA Biennial Conference Experiencing Diversity and Mutuality Ljubljana, Slovenia 26-30 August 2008 Ships passing in the night? Interdisciplinarity, East-West relations and commoditization of knowledge in anthropology of post-socialism Kacper Pobłocki Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Abstract: Debates on 'native anthropology', 'anthropology with an accent' and so forth have usually focused on colonialism as the main culprit of asymmetric relations between anthropological knowledges. By bringing the recent dispute between Western and 'native' anthropologist of post-socialism into the 'world anthropologies' debate, I seek to highlight those aspects of current epistemic inequalities that are not post-colonial in nature, but result from global commoditization of knowledge. I ponder why Western anthropologists who started visiting Eastern Europe from the 1970s, concluded that 'native' academic knowledge is inferior to their own output. This was not due to a prejudice brought from afar, I argue, but rather was a result of their field experiences. I discuss how three types of native 'captive minds' (communist, nationalist, and neo-liberal) emerged, and how encountering (or learning about) them made Western anthropologist uninterested in (and distrustful of) local epistemic production. I focus on the putative nationalist 'captive mind', and argue that the straw man of East European 'positivist' science (as opposed to the superior 'theory-oriented' Western anthropology) emerged due to recent changes in the political economy of the academia. I show how the 'theoretical turn' was experienced differently in Western and Polish academia, and how these changes, explained by the different regimes of value, show that there has been an increase only in 'ritual' exchange between parochial and metropolitan anthropology rather than meaningful communication. -
Latin America
Latin America JOHN GLEDHILL, The University of Manchester ‘Latin’ America is a region constructed in a context of imperial rivalries and disputes about how to build ‘modern’ nations that made it an ‘other America’ distinct from ‘Anglo’ America. Bringing together people without previous historical contact, the diversity of its societies and cultures was increased by the transatlantic slave trade and later global immigration. Building on the constructive relationship that characterises the ties between socio-cultural anthropology and history in the region today, this entry discusses differences in colonial relations and cultural interaction between European, indigenous, and Afro-Latin American people in different countries and the role of anthropologists in nation-building projects that aimed to construct national identities around ‘mixing’. It shows how anthropologists came to emphasise the active role of subordinated social groups in making Latin America’s ‘new peoples’. Widespread agrarian conflicts and land reforms produced debates about the future of peasant farmers, but new forms of capitalist development, growing urbanisation, and counter-insurgency wars led to an era in which indigenous identities were reasserted and states shifted towards a multicultural politics that also fostered Afro-Latin American movements. Anthropology has enhanced understanding of the diversity, complexity, and contradictions of these processes. Latin American cities are characterised by stark social inequalities, but anthropologists critiqued the stigmatisation -
Degrowth and Critical Agrarian Studies
The Journal of Peasant Studies ISSN: 0306-6150 (Print) 1743-9361 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjps20 Degrowth and critical agrarian studies Julien-François Gerber To cite this article: Julien-François Gerber (2020) Degrowth and critical agrarian studies, The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47:2, 235-264, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2019.1695601 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2019.1695601 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 21 Jan 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 2220 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fjps20 THE JOURNAL OF PEASANT STUDIES 2020, VOL. 47, NO. 2, 235–264 https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2019.1695601 Degrowth and critical agrarian studies Julien-François Gerber International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, Netherlands ABSTRACT KEYWORDS Degrowth refers to a radical politico-economic reorganisation that Sustainability; anarchism; leads to smaller and more equitable social metabolisms. Degrowth Marxism; agrarian and posits that such a transition is indispensable but also desirable. environmental justice; However, the conditions of its realisation require more research. This Bhutan; Cuba article argues that critical agrarian studies (CAS) and degrowth can enrich each other. The Agrarian Question and the Growth Question should be addressed in concert. While degrowth should not fall into the ‘agrarian myth’, CAS should not embrace the ‘myth of growth’, even when green and socialist. Ideas of one philosopher and four agrarian economists are presented, with illustrations from Bhutan, Cuba and North America, hoping to offer a preliminary research agenda for ‘agrarian degrowth’. -
Moral Economy: Rethinking a Radical Concept
Moral economy: Rethinking a radical concept Jaime Palomera1 Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Theodora Vetta Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Abstract This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated and attempts to cast it in a new light by bringing class and capital back into the equation. First, it reviews the seminal works of Thompson and Scott, tracing the origins of the term. It deals with the common conflation of moral economy with Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness, differentiating the two concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these perspectives have been criticized. Second, it dispels dichotomist conceptions separating economic practice from morality, or embedded configurations from disembedded ones. Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, it posits that social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values, which can only be fully grasped by delineating the contours and characteristics of capital accumulation. Third, it contends that moral economy is a dynamic concept because it accounts for class-informed frameworks involving traditions, valuations and expectations. 1 Corresponding authors: Jaime Palomera and Theodora Vetta, Department of Anthropology, Universitat de Barcelona, Carrer de Montalegre 6, 08001 Barcelona, Spain. Email: [email protected] Finally, it argues that moral economy can enrich the concept of hegemony because it pays attention to the often-contradictory values that guide and sustain livelihood practices, through which cultural domination is reproduced or altered. Keywords capital, class, embeddedness, hegemony, moral economy, Polanyi, Scott, Thompson Introduction 1 In the last two decades the moral economy concept has reemerged with strength. -
Moral Economies
Moral Economies Edited by Ute Frevert Titel Autor Ute Frevert (ed.): Moral Economies © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525364260 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647364261 Ute Frevert (ed.): Moral Economies Geschichte und Gesellschaft Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft Herausgegeben von / Edited by Jens Beckert, Christoph Conrad, Sebastian Conrad, Ulrike Freitag, Ute Frevert, Svenja Goltermann, Dagmar Herzog, Simone Lässig, Philip Manow, Maren Möhring, Paul Nolte, Kiran Klaus Patel, Margrit Pernau, Sven Reichardt, Stefan Rinke, Monique Scheer, Rudolf Schlögl, Martin Schulze Wessel, Adam Tooze Sonderheft / Special Issue 26: Moral Economies © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525364260 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647364261 Ute Frevert (ed.): Moral Economies Moral Economies Herausgegeben von / Edited by Ute Frevert Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525364260 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647364261 Ute Frevert (ed.): Moral Economies Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.de abrufbar. © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Umschlagabbildung: SchwabScantechnik, Göttingen Satz: textformart, Göttingen | www.text-form-art.de Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-3377 ISBN 978-3-647-36426-1 © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ISBN Print: 9783525364260 — ISBN E-Book: 9783647364261 Ute Frevert (ed.): Moral Economies Table of Contents Ute Frevert Introduction . 7 Ute Frevert Moral Economies, Present and Past. -
Alignment and Unhingement in 21St-Century Capitalism Marion Fourcade*
Socio-Economic Review, 2017, Vol. 15, No. 3, 661–678 doi: 10.1093/ser/mwx032 SASE Presidential Address SASE Presidential Address The fly and the cookie: alignment and unhingement in 21st-century capitalism Marion Fourcade* University of California, Berkeley *Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract This SASE Presidential address given at UC Berkeley in 2016 discusses the entan- glement between morality and capitalism. Moral sentiments—and especially what Adam Smith called the sense of propriety, the sense of merit and the sense of justice—play a productive role in organizing the extraction of economic value. Conversely, relative valuations in the economy (prices, for instance) can be thought of as moral engines that reward or sanction certain behaviors, and are presumed to index underlying moral differences. Economic value is produced both when individuals are morally aligned with the rational goals of capitalism, and when they perform unhinged deviations from the moral standard. I show how modern digital capitalism organizes profit extraction through these twin pro- cesses of alignment and unhingement, building new economic moralities in the process—moral sentiments that are the result of people’s interactions with opa- que but powerful forms of behavioral fine-tuning, surveillance and manipulation. Key words: morality, capitalism, moral economy, digital economy, alignment, unhingement, eco- nomic morality JEL classification: O3, Z1 Moral is a signal that brings a rush of polemical blood to the academic head. —E. P. Thompson (‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, p. 271) There is always a moral economy alongside the real economy of material exchange. -
Rafael De Abreu E Souza Um Lugar Na Caatinga: Consumo
UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS INSTITUTO DE FILOSOFIA E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS RAFAEL DE ABREU E SOUZA UM LUGAR NA CAATINGA: CONSUMO, MOBILIDADE E PAISAGEM NO SEMIÁRIDO DO NORDESTE BRASILEIRO CAMPINAS 2017 RAFAEL DE ABREU E SOUZA UM LUGAR NA CAATINGA: CONSUMO, MOBILIDADE E PAISAGEM NO SEMIÁRIDO DO NORDESTE BRASILEIRO Tese apresentada ao Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas como parte dos requisitos exigidos pra a obtenção do título de Doutor em Ambiente e Sociedade, na área de Aspectos Sociais de Sustentabilidade e Conservação. Orientadora: Prof.ª DRA. ALINE VIEIRA DE CARVALHO Coorientadora: Prof.ª DRA. CÉLIA REGINA TOMIKO FUTEMMA ESTE EXEMPLAR CORRESPONDE À VERSÃO FINAL DA TESE DEFENDIDA PELO ALUNO RAFAEL DE ABREU E SOUZA, E ORIENTADA PELA PROFA. DRA. ALINE VIEIRA DE CARVALHO. _____________________________________ CAMPINAS 2017 UNIVERSIDADE ESTADUAL DE CAMPINAS INSTITUTO DE FILOSOFIA E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS A Comissão Julgadora dos trabalhos de Defesa da Tese de Doutorado, composta pelos Professores Doutores a seguir descritos, em sessão pública realizada em 29/03/2017, considerou o candidato Rafael de Abreu e Souza aprovado. Prof. Dra. Aline Vieira de Carvalho (orientadora) Prof.ª Dra. Lucia da Costa Ferreira Prof. Dr. Luis Cláudio Pereira Symanski Prof. Dr. Paulo Eduardo Zanettini Profª. Dra. Nashieli Cecília Rangel Loera A Ata de Defesa, assinada pelos membros da Comissão Examinadora, consta no processo de vida acadêmica do aluno. RESUMO A região Nordeste do Brasil tem sido vista, ao menos desde finais do século XIX, ora como zona pobre, com base em visões deterministas sustentadas por abordagens simplistas nas quais a desertificação, a seca, a fome e a pobreza são encontradas invariavelmente juntas, ora como região diaspórica, argumentação pautada no fato de incidir, em parte, sob ambiente com características áridas marcado por episódios de seca.