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Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value

01 Jan 2002-
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that both formalists and Substantivists had entirely missed the point, because all their debates had been about distribution and exchange, and they argued that to understand a society, one must first of all understand how it continues to exist, or, as they put it, "reproduces" itself by endless creative activity.
Abstract: tive, both Formalists and Substantivists had entirely missed the point, because all their debates had been about distribution and exchange. To understand a society, they argued, one must first of all understand how it continues to exist—or, as they put it, “reproduces” itself—by endless creative activity. This was quite different from functionalism. Functionalists begin with a notion of “society,” then ask how that society manages to hold itself together. Marxists start by asking how what we call “society” is continually being re-created through various sorts of productive action, and how a society’s most basic forms of exploitation and inequality are thus rooted in the social relations through which people do so. This has obvious advantages. The problem with the whole “mode of production” approach, though, was that it was developed to analyze societies with a state: that is, in which there is a ruling class that maintains an apparatus of coercion to extract a surplus from the people who do most of the productive work. Most of the real triumphs of the MoP approach—I am thinking, for example, of Perry Anderson’s magisterial “Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism” (1974a) and “Lineages of the Absolutist State” (1974b)—deal with outlining the history of different modes of production, many of which can coexist in a given society; the way in which the dominant one provides the basis for a ruling class whose interests are protected by the state; the way that modes of production contain fundamental contradictions that will, at least in most cases, ultimately drive them to turn into something else. Once one turns to societies without a state, it’s not clear how any of these concepts are to be applied. One thing Marxism did introduce was a series of powerful analytical terms—exploitation, fetishism, appropriation, reproduction... —that everyone agreed Marx himself had used brilliantly in his analysis of Capitalism, but that no one was quite sure how to apply outside it. Different scholars would use these terms in very different ways and then would often end up quar-
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1,479 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the commodification of ecosystem services denies the multiplicity of values which can be attributed to these services, since it requires that a single exchange-value is adopted for trading.

767 citations


Cites background from "Toward an Anthropological Theory of..."

  • ...Beyond Marxist economic theory, anthropologists pay attention to the fetishistic character of gift economies, looking at how the latter personify objects and create qualitative relations between them, in contrast with commodity economies which treat human parts as objects and are meant to establish quantitative equivalence value between objects (Graeber, 2001)....

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  • ...However, the pig is an embodiment of such a marital relationship until it leaves the domestic sphere and enters the public sphere of male ceremonial exchange, where its exchange-value comes to embody the importance of relations between men (Graeber, 2001, pp. 41)....

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  • ...…the fetishistic character of gift economies, looking at how the latter personify objects and create qualitative relations between them, in contrast with commodity economies which treat human parts as objects and are meant to establish quantitative equivalence value between objects (Graeber, 2001)....

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Journal ArticleDOI

624 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Abstract: The proposed framework sheds light on the fundamental role that value propositions play in service systems Building on service-dominant logic from marketing and structuration theory from sociology

440 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore possible new analytical frameworks for the study of contemporary dynamics in food networks and develop the concept of "civic food networks" as an overarching concept to explore contemporary dynamics and sources of innovation within agrifood networks.
Abstract: In recent years new types of consumer–producer cooperation in food networks have emerged in which consumers play an active role in the operation and thereby clearly go beyond food provisioning as such. Examples include consumer co-ops and solidarity buying groups of local and organic food, community-supported agriculture and collective urban gardening initiatives. These initiatives raise important new questions that cannot be adequately resolved within existing theoretical perspectives based on concepts such as ‘alternative food networks’, ‘short food supply chains’ or ‘local food systems’. This article explores possible new analytical frameworks for the study of contemporary dynamics in food networks and develops the concept of ‘civic food networks’ as an overarching concept to explore contemporary dynamics and sources of innovation within agri-food networks. Building on the empirical diversity of initiatives, this introduction to the Special Issue argues that the role of civil society as a governance mechanism for agri-food networks has increased in significance compared to market and state actors. Moreover, expressions of ‘food citizenship’ are reshaping the relation between food practices and the market as well as with public institutions in ways that go beyond material and economic exchange and that contribute to a ‘moralization’ (or even ‘civilization’) of food economies.

294 citations


Cites background from "Toward an Anthropological Theory of..."

  • ...…various social and cultural dimensions depending on the different monetary forms and contexts in which they are deployed (zelizer, 1989; dodd, 1998; Graeber, 2001). thus, as north describes, money is no more than a ‘discourse, a social construction’ that can actually take different, better forms…...

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  • ...…relations of solidarity and justice with proximate and distant others, concern for land and for the global environment, social inclusion of the disadvantaged, and the reskilling of everyday life, thus going beyond a narrow understanding of economic value (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2006; Graeber, 2001)....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
20 Jun 1978-Telos
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present La Volonté de Savoir, the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality, which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as human sciences, the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the "other" in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.
Abstract: This writer who has warned us of the “ideological” function of both the oeuvre and the author as unquestioned forms of discursive organization has gone quite far in constituting for both these “fictitious unities” the name (with all the problems of such a designation) Michel Foucault. One text under review, La Volonté de Savoir, is the methodological introduction of a projected five-volume history of sexuality. It will apparently circle back over that material which seems to have a special fascination for Foucault: the gradual emergence of medicine as an institution, the birth of political economy, demography and linguistics as “human sciences,” the invention of incarceration and confinement for the control of the “other” in society (the mad, the libertine, the criminal) and that special violence that lurks beneath the power to control discourse.

15,794 citations


"Toward an Anthropological Theory of..." refers background in this paper

  • ...In both cases, wampum tended to arrive already woven into belts uniform both in color and in size.10 Once it arrived, wampum appears to have been divided among important office-holders, a class who some early sources even refer to as ‘nobles”’ “It is they who furnish them,” wrote Lafitau, “and it is among them that they are redivided when presents are made to the village, and when replies to the belts of their ambassadors are sent” (Holmes 1883:244); though there are some hints of ceremonial dances or other events in which officeholders would “cast wampum to the spectators” or otherwise redistribute the stuff (Michelson 1974; Fenton 1998:128; Beauchamp 1898:11)....

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  • ...Foucault, Michel 1972 The Archaeology of Knowledge (A. M. Sheridan-Smith, trans.)....

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  • ...Most of these usages of course go back to the work of Michel Foucault, particularly Discipline and Punish (1977:170–94), in which he argues that there was a major shift in the way power was exercised in Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century....

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  • ...Michelson, Gunther 1974 “Upstreaming Bruyas.”...

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  • ...It was on the basis of this same kind of structuralism that Michel Foucault (1972) could then go on to argue that the very notion of “man” or humanity on which the human sciences are based is not really a universal category but a peculiar Enlightenment doctrine that will someday pass away....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This domination and the arts of resistance hidden transcripts james c scott, as one of the most enthusiastic sellers here will no question be along with the best options to review as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: You may not be perplexed to enjoy all books collections domination and the arts of resistance hidden transcripts james c scott that we will certainly offer. It is not with reference to the costs. It's roughly what you infatuation currently. This domination and the arts of resistance hidden transcripts james c scott, as one of the most enthusiastic sellers here will no question be along with the best options to review.

3,368 citations

Book
01 Jan 1925
TL;DR: In this, his most famous work, Marcel Mauss presented to the world a book which revolutionized our understanding of some of the basic structures of society as mentioned in this paper, identifying the complex web of exchange and obligation involved in the act of giving, and called into question many of our social conventions and economic systems.
Abstract: In this, his most famous work, Marcel Mauss presented to the world a book which revolutionized our understanding of some of the basic structures of society. By identifying the complex web of exchange and obligation involved in the act of giving, Mauss called into question many of our social conventions and economic systems. In a world rife with runaway consumption, The Gift continues to excite and challenge.

3,197 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Apr 1986
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the production of commodities is also a cultural and cognitive process: commodities must be not only produced materially as things, but also culturally marked as being a certain kind of thing.
Abstract: For the economist, commodities simply are. That is, certain things and rights to things are produced, exist, and can be seen to circulate through the economic system as they are being exchanged for other things, usually in exchange for money. This view, of course, frames the commonsensical definition of a commodity: an item with use value that also has exchange value. I shall, for the moment, accept this definition, which should suffice for raising certain preliminary issues, and I shall expand on it as the argument warrants. From a cultural perspective, the production of commodities is also a cultural and cognitive process: commodities must be not only produced materially as things, but also culturally marked as being a certain kind of thing. Out of the total range of things available in a society, only some of them are considered appropriate for marking as commodities. Moreover, the same thing may be treated as a commodity at one time and not at another. And finally, the same thing may, at the same time, be seen as a commodity by one person and as something else by another. Such shifts and differences in whether and when a thing is a commodity reveal a moral economy that stands behind the objective economy of visible transactions.

3,171 citations