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The World of Goods
Mary Douglas,Baron Isherwood +1 more
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TLDR
The World of Goods as mentioned in this paper is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.Abstract:
It is well-understood that the consumption of goods plays an important, symbolic role in the way human beings communicate, create identity, and establish relationships. What is less well-known is that the pattern of their flow shapes society in fundamental ways. In this book the renowned anthropologist Mary Douglas and economist Baron Isherwood overturn arguments about consumption that rely on received economic and psychological explanations. They ask new questions about why people save, why they spend, what they buy, and why they sometimes-but not always-make fine distinctions about quality.
Instead of regarding consumption as a private means of satisfying one’s preferences, they show how goods are a vital information system, used by human beings to fulfill their intentions towards one another. They also consider the implications of the social role of goods for a new vision for social policy, arguing that poverty is caused as much by the erosion of local communities and networks as it is by lack of possessions, and contrast small-scale with large-scale consumption in the household.
A radical rethinking of consumerism, inequality and social capital, The World of Goods is a classic of economic anthropology whose insights remain compelling and urgent.
This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by Richard Wilk.
"Forget that commodities are good for eating, clothing, and shelter; forget their usefulness and try instead the idea that commodities are good for thinking." – Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwoodread more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Politics with style: Identity formation in prehispanic southeastern mesoamerica
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine Late Classic (A.D. 600-950) material patterns from the Naco valley, northwestern Honduras, for the light they shed on the proposed integration of political and cultural processes within developing complex polities.
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Gift Giving and the Emotional Significance of Family and Friends
TL;DR: Komter and Schuyt as mentioned in this paper examined the extent to which the relation suggested by anthropologists between the purity of the gift and the degree of distance of the social relationships involved holds for a Dutch sample, who responded to a questionnaire about gift giving in the Netherlands in 1992.
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On a source of social capital: Gift exchange
TL;DR: The concept of social capital helps to explain relations within and between companies but has not crystallized yet, as such the nature, development, and effects of such relations remain elusive as discussed by the authors.
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Youth, waste and work in Mathare: whose business and whose politics?
TL;DR: In Nairobi's Mathare Valley, one of the largest and oldest informal settlements in East Africa, waste has become a source of income generation for youth and a means of asserting slum dwellers' rights to the city.
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The Meaning of Housing in America
TL;DR: In the U.S., despite vigorous initiatives to break down neighborhood lass barriers, zoning laws and court decisions staunchly protect single-family housing areas, perhaps as an expression of a basic conservative instinct to protect and nurture human life as discussed by the authors.