Contested Commodities: Mapping the Moral Landscape of Exchange
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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. -
Fictitious Commodities: a Theory of Intellectual Property Inspired by Karl Polanyi’S “Great Transformation”
Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal Volume 29 XXIX Number 4 Article 4 2019 Fictitious Commodities: A Theory of Intellectual Property Inspired by Karl Polanyi’s “Great Transformation” Alexander Peukert Goethe University, Frankfurt, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj Part of the Intellectual Property Law Commons, International Law Commons, and the Science and Technology Law Commons Recommended Citation Alexander Peukert, Fictitious Commodities: A Theory of Intellectual Property Inspired by Karl Polanyi’s “Great Transformation”, 29 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media & Ent. L.J. 1151 (2019). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj/vol29/iss4/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Fictitious Commodities: A Theory of Intellectual Property Inspired by Karl Polanyi’s “Great Transformation” Cover Page Footnote Professor Dr. iur., Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, [email protected]. This article is available in Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/iplj/vol29/iss4/4 Fictitious Commodities: A Theory of Intellectual Property Inspired by Karl Polanyi’s “Great Transformation” Alexander Peukert* The puzzle this Article addresses is this: how can it be explained that intellectual property (IP) laws and IP rights (IPRs) have continuously grown in number and expanded in scope, territorial reach, and duration, while at the same time have been contested, much more so than other branches of property law? This Article offers an explanation for this peculiar dynamic by applying insights and concepts of Karl Polanyi’s book “The Great Transformation” to IP. -
Why Do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption Richard R
1984 Unpublished Article Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Or, Culture Contact and the Relations of Consumption Richard R. Wilk and Eric J. Arnould Abstract Page 1 of 31 The study of the consumption of goods has never achieved the JBA 5(1): 6-36 prominence in anthropology of either production or exchange. Yet the Autumn 2016 accelerating consumption of western goods in non-western societies is © The Author(s) 2016 one of the most obtrusive cultural and economic trends of the last three ISSN 2245-4217 centuries. This article addresses the general issue of why goods flow www.cbs.dk/jba between cultural groups by re-examining the concept of consumption. It raises questions of importance to studies of development, material culture, ethnohistory, and symbolic anthropology. Keywords Economic anthropology, consumption, acculturation, symbolic anthropology, material culture Wilk and Arnould / Why do the Indians Wear Adidas? Introduction Peruvian Indians carry around small rectangular rocks painted to look like transistor radios.1 San Blas Cuna households hoard boxes of dolls, safety pins, children's hats and shoes, marbles, enamelware kettles, and bedsheets with pillowcases in their original cellophane wrappings. Japanese newlyweds cut three-tiered white frosted inedible cakes topped with plastic figures in western dress. Q’eqchi’ Maya swidden farmers relax at night listening to Freddie Fender on a portable cassette player while Bana tribesmen in Kako, Ethiopia, pay a hefty price to look through a Viewmaster at “Pluto Tries to Become a Circus Dog.” Tibetans, bitterly opposed to Chinese rule, sport Mao caps. Young Wayana Indians in Surinam spend hours manipulating a Rubik's cube. -
Haberdashers' Aske's School
1 Haberdashers’ Aske’s School Occasional Papers Series in the Humanities Occasional Paper Number Twenty-Nine The “Ugly truth” of Facebook Friendship: An expansion of Polanyi’s fictitious commodity to friendship within Facebook and modern social media Freddie Marshall Old Haberdasher [email protected] November 2019 A Haberdashers’ Aske’s Occasional Paper. All rights reserved. 2 Haberdashers’ Aske’s Occasional Paper Number Twenty-Nine November 2019 All rights reserved Freddie Marshall The “Ugly truth” of Facebook Friendship An expansion of Polanyi’s fictitious commodity to friendship within Facebook and modern social media Abstract This essay considers whether Polanyi’s conception of the fictitious commodity can apply to social media platforms, specifically Facebook. The fictitious commodity, a marketisation of a natural good, can apply beyond Polanyi’s original remit towards the new fictitious commodity of friendship within the era of Facebook. To explain this, the essay utilises Polanyi’s theoretical framework and applies it to modern understandings of Facebook’s operation as representative of the wider social media communications revolution. In placing this framework into a modern context, it can be seen that Polanyi’s historical, sociological and political considerations remain relevant to explaining current trends. It is shown how the fictitious commodity can be legitimately expanded; how the market operation of friendship creates this fictitious commodity and lastly how this is a relevant expansion to help understand specific tensions within the wider communications revolution. To consider this thesis, research was undertaken into critiques of Polanyi, modern expansions of his work and understanding how friendship can be defined and operate within the context of Facebook. -
Sacredness in an Experimental Chamber
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2006) 29, 161–209 Printed in the United States of America Moneyastool,moneyasdrug:The biological psychology of a strong incentive Stephen E. G. Lea University of Exeter, School of Psychology, Washington Singer Laboratories, Exeter EX4 4QG, United Kingdom [email protected] http://www.exeter.ac.uk/SEGLea Paul Webley University of Exeter, School of Psychology, Washington Singer Laboratories, Exeter EX4 4QG, United Kingdom [email protected] http://www.exeter.ac.uk/pwebley Abstract: Why are people interested in money? Specifically, what could be the biological basis for the extraordinary incentive and reinforcing power of money, which seems to be unique to the human species? We identify two ways in which a commodity which is of no biological significance in itself can become a strong motivator. The first is if it is used as a tool, and by a metaphorical extension this is often applied to money: it is used instrumentally, in order to obtain biologically relevant incentives. Second, substances can be strong motivators because they imitate the action of natural incentives but do not produce the fitness gains for which those incentives are instinctively sought. The classic examples of this process are psychoactive drugs, but we argue that the drug concept can also be extended metaphorically to provide an account of money motivation. From a review of theoretical and empirical literature about money, we conclude that (i) there are a number of phenomena that cannot be accounted for by a pure Tool Theory of money motivation; (ii) supplementing Tool Theory with a Drug Theory enables the anomalous phenomena to be explained; and (iii) the human instincts that, according to a Drug Theory, money parasitizes include trading (derived from reciprocal altruism) and object play. -
The Green Economy: the Dangerous Path of Nature Commoditization
Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development Vol. 10, Iss. 1 (2013), Pp. 85–98 The Green Economy: The Dangerous Path of Nature Commoditization Mark Wilson Center for Sustainable Development Uppsala University, Sweden email: [email protected] Abstract UNEP’s proposal of the green economy advocates the pricing of ecosystem services in the hope of providing greater environmental protection and eradicating poverty. There are five aspects of the green economy which could undermine its practical implementation as well as its social legitimacy; i) ecosystem services are inherently difficult to price, ii) the consideration of the rebound effect is insufficient, iii) primacy of economics over the environment is ensured, iv) markets offer little protection for the poorest people, and v) existing market mechanisms aimed at safeguarding the environment have not succeeded. The green economy relies upon the discursive power of ecological modernization and our faith in progress to uphold a failing strategy of unfettered economic growth. This discourse limits our capacity to conceive solutions outside the economic sphere. Achieving sustainable development will require a process of social change that could be facilitated by the acceptance that nature is more than just a form of capital. Author’s Note Mark Wilson is a Cemus course coordinator at the Center for Sustainable Development at Uppsala University, Sweden. His research interests include ecological economics and food system resilience. Keywords: green economy; payment for ecosystem services; sustainable development; commoditization of nature; ecological modernization; economic growth. 1. The Future We Want? The 2012 Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) has resulted in a disappointing and rather vague outcome document. -
The Fair and Laissez-Faire Markets: from a Neoliberal Laissez- Faire Baseline to a Fair Market
Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee Volume 5 Issue 1 Article 8 June 2014 The Fair and Laissez-Faire Markets: From a Neoliberal Laissez- Faire Baseline to a Fair Market Eric L. Dixon University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit Part of the Economic Policy Commons, Economic Theory Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Political Economy Commons, and the Public Policy Commons Recommended Citation Dixon, Eric L. (2014) "The Fair and Laissez-Faire Markets: From a Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline to a Fair Market," Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee: Vol. 5 : Iss. 1 , Article 8. Available at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol5/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Volunteer, Open Access, Library Journals (VOL Journals), published in partnership with The University of Tennessee (UT) University Libraries. This article has been accepted for inclusion in Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee by an authorized editor. For more information, please visit https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit. The Fair and Laissez-Faire Markets: From a Neoliberal Laissez-Faire Baseline to a Fair Market Cover Page Footnote I would like to thank David Reidy, Jon Garthoff, and especially Jon Shefner for their continued assistance of my studies in political economy and political philosophy. I would also like to thank my friends and family for their unconditional support. This article is available in Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol5/iss1/8 Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee Copyright © The University of Tennessee PURSUIT trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit Fair & Laissez-Faire Markets: From a laissez-faire baseline to a fair market conception ERIC L. -
Love As a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-For-Sex Barters As Contractual Carriers of Intimacy
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Repository and Bibliography - Luxembourg Sexuality & Culture (2013) 17:598–616 DOI 10.1007/s12119-012-9162-1 ORIGINAL PAPER Love as a Fictitious Commodity: Gift-for-Sex Barters as Contractual Carriers of Intimacy Christopher S. Swader • Olga Strelkova • Alena Sutormina • Viktoria Syomina • Volha Vysotskaya • Irene Fedorova Published online: 7 December 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012 Abstract Gift-for-sex (GFS) barters are a niche practice potentially representing the commodification of everyday dating practices. We inquire how GFS exchanges are practiced and understood in contemporary Russia. Second, we situate these in relation to contemporary economic culture. Our project provides answers in two steps based on online content. First, we identify GFS exchange practices within a major dating website. Next, we take the signals exchanged in those dating profiles and display their intersubjective meanings in Russia based on blogs and discussion fora. Our analysis focuses on gender roles and inter-gender conflicts, the use of economic jargon, the link between luxury consumption and sexuality, and under- standings of gift-giving and generosity, in order to show how GFS barters, despite being contractual, carry emotional and romantic content. As such, love is under a constant conversion process, through the medium of the contractual gift, into the fictitious commodity form. Keywords Compensated dating Á Fictitious commodification Á Gift-exchange Á Post-socialist transformation Á Economic jargon Á Sexuality Introduction How does the modern economic culture influence intimate social relationships? Classically oriented scholars have investigated the ways in which capitalism, consumerism, or money are in constant tension with core human sociality. -
The Anthropology of Money
ANRV287-AN35-02 ARI 13 August 2006 6:41 The Anthropology of Money Bill Maurer Department of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697–5100; email: [email protected] Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006. 35:15–36 Key Words First published online as a Review in abstraction, commensuration, currency, finance, number, Advance on July 6, 2006 quantification The Annual Review of Anthropology is by University of California - Irvine on 09/21/06. For personal use only. online at anthro.annualreviews.org Abstract This article’s doi: This review surveys anthropological and other social research on Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2006.35:15-36. Downloaded from arjournals.annualreviews.org 10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123127 money and finance. It emphasizes money’s social roles and meanings Copyright c 2006 by Annual Reviews. as well as its pragmatics in different modalities of exchange and circu- All rights reserved lation. It reviews scholarly emphasis on modern money’s distinctive 0084-6570/06/1021-0015$20.00 qualities of commensuration, abstraction, quantification, and reifi- cation. It also addresses recent work that seeks to understand the social, semiotic, and performative dimensions of finance. Although anthropology has contributed finely grained, historicized accounts of the impact of modern money, it too often repeats the same story of the “great transformation” from socially embedded to disembedded and abstracted economic forms. This review speculates about why money’s fictions continue to surprise. 15 ANRV287-AN35-02 ARI 13 August 2006 6:41 INTRODUCTION: THE COIN’S The difficulty in reviewing the anthropol- MANY SIDES ogy of money is compounded by the reliance of much anthropological research on theories A special difficulty arises when reviewing the of meaning and symbol that derived analyt- anthropology of money. -
Trademarks As Fictitious Commodities
Munich Personal RePEc Archive Trademarks as Fictitious Commodities: An Erosion of the Public Interest? An Assessment of the use of trademarks over urban space at the example of London’s Regent Street and Paris’ Champs-Elysées Ghafele, Roya and Vanderslott, Samantha University of Oxford, Oxfirst, UK Department of Business, Innovation Skills 26 September 2011 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36321/ MPRA Paper No. 36321, posted 01 Feb 2012 07:25 UTC Trademarks as Fictitious Commodities: An Erosion of the Public Interest? An Assessment of the use of trademarks over urban space at the example of London’s Regent Street and Paris’ Champs-Elysées Roya Ghafele, University of Oxford & Oxfirst Limited Samantha Vanderslott, UK Department on Business, Innovation and Skills Email: [email protected] or [email protected] Key words Fictitious Commodities, Public Interest, Trademarks, Urban Space, International Economic Integration, Global Competitiveness, Branding Street names, Double Movement Table of Contents Trademarks as Fictitious Commodities: An Erosion of the Public Interest? ................................... 1 An Assessment of the use of trademarks over urban space at the example of London’s Regent Street and Paris’ Champs-Elysées .................................................................................................... 1 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... -
Downloaded From
J. Alexander P. Alexander Commodification and consumption in a central Borneo community In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 151 (1995), no: 2, Leiden, 179-193 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 07:02:47PM via free access JENNIFER ALEXANDER AND PAUL ALEXANDER Commodification and Consumption in a Central Borneo Community A long-established tradition of explanation in anthropology and social history has seen money as the principal mechanism promoting individu- alism and greed, and consequently subverting values of community. When money enters a society, so the argument runs, commodification rapidly follows, initially altering consumption patterns and later transforming pro- duction relationships as well. In one recent formulation, money conquers the internal economy of non-monetized societies, setting free the 'drive inherent in every exchange system towards optimum commoditization' (Kopytoff 1986:72). Other anthropological studies, however, suggest that this view of the association between monetization and commoditization is far too simple; when they have had the power to do so, non-industrialized communities have demonstrated a remarkable ability to domesticate money and to resist any presumption that equality in price is equivalent to equal- ity in value (e.g., Parry and Bloch 1989; Humphrey and Hugh-Jones 1992). This essay is concerned with the ways in which a relatively remote and very small Central Borneo community, that of the Lahanan, has responded to its increasingly rapid incorporation into the world system. The speed and the extent of changes, more often than not initiated from outside, are undeniable. In the past thirty years, new forms of political power have been established; new medical, educational and, to a much lesser degree, agricultural services have been welcomed; and some parts of the economy have been commodified. -
314131983.Pdf
Economic Anthropology History, Ethl:)ography, Critique Chris Han� and Keith Hart 'I Dolity ' II ' I I Copyright© Chris Hann and Keith Hart 2011 The right of Chris Hann and Keith Hart to be identified as Authors ofthis Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act Contents 1988. First published in 2011 by Polity Press Reprinted in 2011 Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1 UR, UK Polity Press Preface lX 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA 1 Introduction: Economic Anthropology 1 3 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose Some Issues of Method 'r of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored 'I 6 :,1, The Human Economy in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, Critical Anthropology 9 mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission Organization of the Book 15 of the publisher. 2 Economy from the Ancient World to the Age of the ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4482-0 Internet 18 ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-4483-7(pb) 'I 1 8 I, Economy as Household Management Medieval and Early Modern Roots of Economic A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Theory 20 24 Typeset in 11 on 13 pt Sabon The Rise of Political Economy by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire The Economic Anthropology of Karl Marx 27 Printed and bound in the United States by Odyssey Press Inc., Gonic, New Hampshire National Capitalism and Beyond 29 Conclusion 34 The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external 3 The Rise of Modern Economics and Anthropology 37 websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to The German Tradition 39 press.