The Social life of things : commodities in cultural perspective
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Bibliographic Information
The Social life of things : commodities in cultural perspective
Cambridge University Press, 1986
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Three of the papers were presented to the Ethnohistory Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania during 1983-84; the others were presented at a Symposium on the Relationship between Commodities and Culture, held May 23-25, 1984, in Philadelphia
Includes bibliographies and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The meaning that people attribute to things necessarily derives from human transactions and motivations, particularly from how those things are used and circulated. The contributors to this volume examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past. Focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, the essays illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations. By looking at things as if they lead social lives, the authors provide a new way to understand how value is externalized and sought after. Containing contributions from American and British social anthropologists and historians, the volume bridges the disciplines of social history, cultural anthropology, and economics, and marks a major step in our understanding of the cultural basis of economic life and the sociology of culture. It will appeal to anthropologists, social historians, economists, archaeologists, and historians of art.
Table of Contents
- Foreword Nancy Farriss
- Preface
- Part I. Toward an anthropology of things: 1. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value Arjun Appadurai
- 2. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process Igor Kopytoff
- Part II. Exchange, Consumption, and Display: 3. Two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands William H. Davenport
- 4. Newcomers to the world of goods: consumption among the Muria Gonds Alfred Gell
- Part III. Prestige, Commemoration, and Value: 5. Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric Europe Colin Renfrew
- 6. Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics Patrick Geary
- Part IV. Production Regimes and the Sociology of Demand: 7. Weavers and dealers: the authenticity of an oriental carpet Brian Spooner
- 8. Qat: changes in the production and consumption of a quasilegal commodity in northeast Africa Lee V. Cassanelli
- Part V. Historical Transformations and Commodity Codes: 9. The structure of a cultural crisis: thinking about cloth in France before and after the Revolution William M. Reddy
- 10. The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930 C. A. Bayly
- Index.
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