Economic Anthropology Research Articles

“Nothing Feels Better than Getting Paid”: Sex Working Trans Latinas’ Meanings and Uses of Money

AbstractBased on ethnographic research with transgender Latinas in Chicago, this article answers Susana Narotzky and Niko Besnier's (2014) invitation to think “economy otherwise.” I contend that in order to think “economy otherwise” we must think it queerly, and attend to feminist ways money animates possibilities beyond racist‐cisgenderism. I bring together economic anthropology, feminist anthropology, and queer of color critique to queer money, specifically money earned from sexual labor performed by transgender Latinas. An ethnographic examination of trans Latina sex workers’ lives reveals that money accessed through sexual labor is assigned a number of queer and contested meanings. Its use is based in feminist ethics that eschew dominant economic logics in favor of building relations of care. It enables the creation of transgender bodies, and the development of queer networks of care with biological and chosen kin, in the U.S. and beyond. Trans Latinas, then, use money from sex work to support trans Latina ways of being that exceed the racist‐cisgenderism. Sometimes, however, their uses of money reinforce racist‐cisgenderism. I argue that the women's fraught uses of money reveal the complex intersections that sustain racist‐cisgenderism, and how they are experienced and negotiated in people's everyday lives.

Stephen King’s "Needful Things": a dystopian vision of capitalism during its triumph

In Stephen King’s horror novel Needful Things, a stranger comes to town and opens a shop wherein any inhabitant can find exactly the thing s/he desires most, in exchange for playing “pranks” that cause distress to other members of the community, until the whole town is caught in a war of all against all. The paper analyses the novel as a “satire of Reaganomics,” as the author himself happened to describe it. Using insights from economics, economic sociology, and economic anthropology, it aims at demonstrating that the book provides an opportunity to explore the actual and possible evolution of individual behavior in consumer societies, as well as the tensions that such societies engender between ideals of self-realization (via market logics and consumption) and social relationships.

More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology has been written with the intention to offer lessons from the historical trajectory of economic redistribution in societies the world over. Thereby, the book suggests learning from the political-economic history of ‘social-democratic’ policies and societal arrangements. While the data presented speak to the plausibility of looking at social democracy, as understood by Piketty, as an archive for learning about the effects of redistribution mechanisms, I argue that the book, or future interventions might profit from integrating alternative archives. On the one hand, its current line of argumentation tends to underestimate the significance of power relations in the international political economy that continued after formal decolonization, and thus form the flip side of social democracy’s success in Europe and North America. On the other hand, the role of the polity might be imagined in a different and more empowering way, not just-as in Piketty-as an elite-liberal democratic governance institution; for instance, it would be interesting to explore the archive of the French solidaristes movement more deeply than Piketty does, as well as much more recent interventions in economic anthropology that deal with ‘economic citizenship’ in the Global South.

Introducing an anthropology of convenience

This article serves to introduce the Special Issue of Economic Anthropology dedicated to “Convenience as a Driver, Mediator, and Moderator of Social Economies.” The twelve articles in this issue are based on papers presented at the fortieth annual meeting of the Society for Economic Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame from April 30 to May 1, 2020. In this introductory article, I briefly introduce, conceptualize, and generally define “convenience” as a heuristic and part of doxa and as a powerful force driving social economies, freshly revealed in the fractures left by the global COVID‐19 pandemic. I then discuss the etymology of the term convenience and review previous research on the topic of convenience within marketing, technology, business, and the medical sectors, which reveal it to be a fluid, multidimensional concept centered on key concepts such as efficiency, efficacy, ease, comfort, and/or advantage, but also culturally circumscribed. The articles in this issue speak to the complexities of “convenience” with ethnographic cases from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Being one of the cornerstones of consumption driving contemporary global economies, “convenience” as a driver of economies has significant and even positive impacts for issues such as poverty alleviation. It also has, in this hyperscale global economic landscape, negative implications for human societies in its impacts on health and the environment. As such, I argue that convenience is a crucial topic for future anthropological concern.

Amazon Go, surveillance capitalism, and the ideology of convenience

How does convenience operate not just as a highly coveted consumer good that stands to mitigate the demands of life in a fast‐paced society but also as an ideology that is integral to new forms of capital accumulation, domination, and extraction? Taking Shoshana Zuboff's work on surveillance capitalism as a departure point, in this article I explore this question by focusing on one of Amazon's newest business initiatives, Amazon Go. Launched in 2018, the initiative has involved opening twenty‐six stores intended to enhance customer convenience by weaving “machine learning, computer vision, and AI into the very fabric of the store,” so customers “never have to wait in line.” Drawing on a range of data, including promotional videos, marketing reports, interviews with the designers of the initiative, and customer comments, I show how convenience operates not just as a coveted consumer product but also as an ideology that is central to Amazon's abilities to exploit the behavioral surplus of its customers and legitimate new forms of capital accumulation and extraction. By interrogating how convenience functions in this capacity, this article seeks further understandings of the convenience economy while also returning to a long‐standing question within economic anthropology: What role do ideologies play in sustaining and perpetuating exploitative economic systems?

Inconvenient friendship: How successful cocaine dealers manage social obligations

Based on life history interviews with successfully retired drug dealers, this article examines opportunities and challenges in the suburban underground economy. “Friendship” is key. Suburban drug dealing occurs exclusively through networks of friends, kin, and the acquaintances thereof. Friends are functionally necessary for the suburban illegal drug business but also economically inconvenient in that they require sharing drugs, spending time, “hanging out,” and “partying.” Friends represent “transaction costs” in conventional economic terms. The ambivalence produced by this, in profiting from friends and mixing sociality and commerce, is best understood via insights from economic anthropology, preeminently Marcel Mauss. For Mauss, gifts and self‐interest, generosity and profit, are, and ought to be, conceptually inseparable. Dealers vividly demonstrate this entanglement.

Convergence Islamic Values as Economic Development

Tasikmalaya economic growth has been increasing economic growth in the last 10 years .This is influenced by the fulfillment of unlimited human needs.This study aims to analyze the relationship between religious values held by entrepreneurs and economic growth. The method used is descriptive qualitative with an economic anthropology approach. The results show that entrepreneurs who come from various ethnic in Indonesia show that religious teachings really influence the level of their business activities. That business is not only for material purposes only but is further than that as an end day investment. The values of religious sacredness have been inherent in the personality of entrepreneurs such as honesty, frugality, openness and transparency, which are religious values taught when making transactions. These religious values in fact have an impact on increasing the value of sales in their business, with the increase in their business directly driving regional economic growth. income increases, unemployment decreases, local taxes increase. This shows that the work ethic of Muslim entrepreneurs in Tasikmalaya has helped in national economic growth. Finally, the local government can maintain harmony and peace in the economic and political situation of Tasikmalaya so that the climate of economic growth and the prosperity of the people can be maintained.
 
 Keywords: Islamic Work Ethic; Islamic Values; Moslem Entrepreneur

A place for archaeology in the study of money, finance, and debt

This paper establishes the parameters for an archaeological study of money, debt, and finance as interrelated aspects of human economies. We begin with economic anthropology’s roots in the works of Mauss, Malinowski, and Polanyi before proceeding to the individual topics of money, debt, and finance and the ways in which they overlap in theory and practice. Archaeological research into these topics is of particular value because it expands our view of the social and political dynamics of economies beyond production, distribution, and consumption. The insights of economic anthropology and other social sciences can push archaeologists to look beyond material instruments to the effects of money, finance, and debt in the material world. When archaeologists recognize money, finance, and debt as socially enacted and socially transformative (just as they do for production, exchange, and consumption), they are able to study the origins of these fundamental components of human economies as well as their long, contentious, and dynamic histories. This paper showcases the contributions of the other papers assembled as part of a virtual special issue and calls on all archaeologists to examine economies of the past in new ways.

Economic Peace as a Counterpoint to the Warfare Economy: Rethinking Individual and Collective Responsibility

The idea of economic peace is a “counterpoint” to a warlike view of the economy. Viewing things in terms of economic peace makes it possible to develop a different economic anthropology. The idea of economic peace is used to think about a fundamental revision of the relationships to self and between actors. It sits at the intersection of peace studies, social and cognitive psychology, institutional conventionalist approaches, postmodernist philosophy and sinology. By employing the inchoate concept of economic peace, this article explores the opportunity to extend and deepen the relationship between individual and collective responsibility. The article describes individual and collective practices or avenues which could be useful when reacting to complex situations.

Materiality, inequality, and future‐making as focal points of future engagement of economic anthropology with climate change

Materiality, inequality, and future‐making as focal points of future engagement of economic anthropology with climate change

ЕВОЛЮЦІЯ ТЕОРІЇ ОСНОВНОГО КАПІТАЛУ ЯК ПРЕДМЕТ ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ

The purpose of the article is to reveal the evolution of the theory of fixed capital in the development of economic thought as a subject of study. Methodology of research. Methods of reflection of economic thought and historical and economic methods of research are used. Findings. The current systemic crisis has undoubtedly affected both theoretical knowledge and economic life itself. This causes the urgency of the revision of the historical heritage of economic thought as a whole and its individual areas. As well as the implementation of mental reflection on the subject of cognitive abilities and limitations. Analysis of economic thought in historical retrospect highlighted several theoretical and methodological problems. This is the so-called isolation of theoretical calculations from such important aspects of economics as economic anthropology and analysis of social, environmental and even psychophysiological aspects of reality. The ideas of fixed capital, presented in the tradition of economic thought, already in the early stages of emergence and development acquire features that are characteristic of the theory. There is a hypothesis and a theoretical paradigm. The category of fixed capital is described both in statics and in dynamics. The process of fixed capital movement itself is reproduced and subject to certain laws and conditions. The further development of economic thought is going into a single theory that has a common core – the category of “fixed capital”. The evolution of views on the essence of fixed capital and its role in the economy expresses the process of formation and subsequent change of this category. The process of historical movement of theoretical comprehension of changes in objective economic reality allows, on the one hand, to look comprehensively at the problems associated with the functioning of fixed capital, and on the other, to make a deep theoretical generalization, capture and consider abstraction – the idea of phenomenon. And then to make the ascent from the idea to the movement of economic forms – the ascent from the abstract to the concrete. Practical value. The practical significance of the research results. It consists in increasing the heuristic potential of the theory of fixed capital in economic decision-making and implementation of economic policy.

Negotiating Political and Moral Economies in the U.S. Caribbean after Hurricanes Irma and María

Disasters, such as hurricanes, often stimulate moral economic sentiments and behaviors in line with those practiced by artisanal fishers, peasant farmers, and others whom economic anthropologists have been interested in for decades. In some cases, these behaviors are not new following a disaster, but merely more visible, as if they lay dormant between crises. Whether or not such behaviors are sustainable for long periods after disasters or stimulate increased public attention to the uneven and unequal impacts of disasters across different segments of populations, depends on a variety of factors, including predatory capitalist behaviors, state responses, cultural values of affected populations, and, in the case of societies experiencing high levels of migration, the involvement of people of diasporas in the crisis. This paper explores these issues in the context of recovery efforts from Hurricanes Irma and María in Puerto Rico, St. Croix, and St. Thomas.

Институт дарообмена у обских угров в антропологическом дискурсе

Introduction: the work is written in the discourse of economic anthropology. The relevance of the institute of gift-giving among the Ob-Ugric peoples is determined by the interest in the study of their traditional culture, as well as the desire to determine its role and functions in the modern global world. Objective: to consider and analyze different types of gift exchange and related communications among the Ob-Ugric people in the past and in modern practices. Research materials: the author’s field materials collected among different groups of Ob-Ugric people; works of authors of the second half of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries, containing descriptions of trade deals with the participation of the indigenous population of the Ob North. Results and novelty of the research: on the materials about the Ob Ugrians the kinship and friendship gifts connected with the custom of guesting, exchange of gifts in the rites of transition, gift exchange with spirits, gift exchange with the authorities during the period of integration into the system of Russian statehood and elements of gift exchange relations in trade are studied. The essence of the institution of gift-exchange is revealed through the theoretical developments of the classics of economic anthropology, first of all, M. Moss. Gift-giving in Khanty and Mansi culture has both real and symbolic value. The first one is equivalent to the value of things or services, and the second is determined by the fact that gifts are perceived as a pledge of success and prosperity in the future. The gift was a peculiar mechanism of maintaining ties both between different collectives within the community and with the outside world, including otherworldly forces.

МІСЦЕ ЕКОНОМІЧНОЇ СИСТЕМИ В СУСПІЛЬСТВІ: СОЦІЄТАЛЬНИЙ ПІДХІД К. ПОЛАНЬЇ ЯК АЛЬТЕРНАТИВА РИНКОВОМУ ФУНДАМЕНТАЛІЗМУ

This article based on the works of Karl Polanyi (1886-1964), the famous American and Canadian economist, one of the founders of economic anthropology, explores two conceptual approaches to identifying the place of economy in society – societal and economistic. The article examines the substantive definition of economics (as an institutionally formalized process of interaction between man and the environment aimed at satisfying needs) given by K. Polanyi, as opposed to its formal definition by representatives of neoclassical economics (as a process of satisfying needs by choosing alternative options for managing scarce resources). It analyses the core idea of K. Polanyi’s societal approach, i.e. the idea of “embeddedness” of the economy into society as a more complex and polystructural system, that gives economic processes different institutional forms for different societies. The article exposes the fundamental nature of the economistic approach implying a separation of the economy from a set of social ties into a separate sphere, operating according to its autonomous laws. This approach, typical for market fundamentalists, results in the inevitability of submission of all social life spheres to the logic of price forming markets. The author considers Polanyi’s arguments against the economistic approach, which (just like the formal definition of economics), in his opinion, is applicable only for a short historical period of the formation of the industrial system, when the main factors of production – labor and land – become goods and their flow is subject to the market laws not being mitigated by any social “shock absorbers”. This situation threatens with serious social cataclysms and to avoid them the society, in the next stages of its development, blocks the effects of spontaneous market forces by the means of social and labor legislation, strong trade unions, state regulation of money-and-credit relations, and the land market, environmental legislation and other institutional regulators.

Gender aspect of social differentiation of population in modern Russian society: trends of manifestation and leveling measures

This article examines the gender form of division of labor as one of the vectors of analysis of social stratification of the Russian society. The goal consists in determination of the role and specificity of gender factor in the current level of differentiation, as well as in demonstration of its growing relevance in the current Russian conditions. The subject of this research is gender as a stereotype of perception and a stratification category. The study is based on the methods of systemic analysis, gender approach to the analysis of labor market, theoretical positions and methods accumulated in sectoral and cross-disciplinary field of sociology: sociology of labor, sociology of family, economic sociology, and economic anthropology. The empirical base contains the data of the Federal State Statistics Service. Secondary data analysis is applied. The quantitative and qualitative characteristics of gender asymmetry are described. The author highlights the main types and forms of discrimination against women in labor sphere. The article determines and systematizes the key factors of increase in social differentiation of population. The conducted comparative analysis of statistical data demonstrates that in modern world, gender does not lose its importance within the system of differentiating characteristics in the social structure; namely in the Russian Federation, it considerably affects the process of social stratification. The author describes relevant regulatory measures in this area.

In Memoriam Florin Faje (15.10.1984-15.01.2020)

Florin Faje (15.10.1984-15.01.2020) passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35 leaving behind a devastated family and a mourning academic community. His contributions to the anthropology of sport, ethno-nationalism in relation with class divides, state-formation and social history in Central and Eastern Europe remain truly remarkable proofs of an insightful and prolific anthropological spirit. His classes on economic and cultural anthropology, and his critical reading of development and globalisation studies kept generations of students at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj engaged and motivated to widen their knowledge. His PhD thesis in Sociology and Social Anthropology, "Playing to Win, Learning to Lose. Sport, Nation and State in Interwar Romania", defended in 2014 with Magna cum Laudae at the Central European University - Budapest is awaiting publication.

Where is the Southeastern Native American economy?

ABSTRACT Economics – the socially instituted ways of managing how people value, make, exchange, and consume goods – is a major part of human culture. Yet there is comparatively little study of the economies of the pre-sixteenth-century Southeast, in spite of revealing written comments by the earliest European observers and the fact that cross-culturally in societies of comparable scale, multiple, complicated economic institutions always play a central role. Because of the Southeast’s rich environment and well-preserved material record of human culture spanning over 14,000 years, archaeology here could be contributing much more data and new theory to economic anthropology generally. As examples of this potential, we draw on existing archaeological information indicating (1) that chert in the Cahokia region was most likely obtained through market mechanisms, and (2) that ever since their origins, plazas were designed consistent with facilitating and managing exchange. We sketch two models (Market Fair and Formal Market) that may be useful for studying economic evolution. We suggest additional, practicable research questions to further our understanding of Southeastern economic structures.

Bribery and the Informal Economy in Proverbs

Abstract In most cases, the Hebrew Bible unequivocally condemns the use of a bribe-gift (שחד, מתן), declaring such an economic transaction as contradictory to the ways of YHWH. But three verses in Proverbs (17:8; 18:16; 21:14) advocate for a morally positive outlook in the usage of such gifts. Commentators account for this divergent view of bribery through a variety of creative solutions, though none of these explanations align with the most straightforward reading of the text to encourage bribery. Through the lens of economic anthropology, this paper suggests that the moral endorsement of the bribe-gift is a direct result of the development of a local informal economy. The economy of Yehud centered on redistribution, creating robust informal networks. Within redistributive economies, social scientific studies suggest that the bribe can broaden access. As a result, these three verses in Proverbs challenge older understandings of bribes in light of a new economic reality.

«Экономия и право первобытного общества»: разбор эпистолярного наследия Н.И. Зибера

The article deals with the epistolary heritage of Nikolaj Ivanovich Sieber (1844–1888), who was a representative of the classical political economy and a follower of Ricardo and Marx. Since Sieberʼs personal archive has not survived, the legacy is presented in twentytwo letters, which he addressed mainly from Europe to Pyotr Lavrov, Rosalia Idelson, Pyotr Kropotkin, Pavel Axelrod, and to his closest friends and colleagues – Alexander Chuprov and Ivan Yanzhul. Collected from the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Amsterdam, Sieberʼs letters shed light on the circle of his correspondents, the nature of relations with publishers and editors, and clarify a number of issues of his theoretical legacy. In the context of the debate about the nature of Sieberʼs Marxism, the letters reinforce the position that he was a consistent theoretical Marxist and adherent of classical political economy. The details connected with the publication of the book «Essays on the Primitive Economic Culture» are extremely important. For researchers, it remained not entirely clear why Sieber never introduces the concept of «economic culture» and practically did not use it in his work. Correspondence with Yanzhul made it clear that the author proposed a different title – «Economics and Law of Primitive Society». This title clearly corresponds to the logic of the book, since it focuses primarily on the comparison of two spheres of the evolution of primitive, pre-state society strictly interconnected: economic institutions and legal relations. In general, the letters of Sieber indirectly confirmed the thesis that he was a consistent Marxist before the appearance of Marxism and an economist-anthropologist before the advent of economic anthropology.

Bitcoin and its spheres of consumption: Transactional orders of consuming money in the Czech and Slovak Bitcoin community

With the recent proliferation of modes of payment, anthropology must increasingly pay closer attention to innovative designs and uses of money in Western societies. Money has started to be perceived as a consumable service with multiple providers from which to choose. In such an environment, the question of how people consume money—instead of how they consume with money—grows in importance. This article is based on ethnographic research of Bitcoin communities in Prague and Bratislava. It examines how users variously consume Bitcoin and what consequences these diverse ways of consumption can have for the Bitcoin economy. The article identifies two discrete spheres of consumption that closely correlate with “transactional orders” or spheres of exchange as described in classical works of economic anthropology, for example, by Parry and Bloch. One of the spheres is concerned with the reproduction of social order, while the other considers the personal gain of individual consumers. The article also examines the tension between these two spheres and how it is dialectically resolved through strategies of conversion. In the final discussion, the case of Bitcoin is compared with other anthropological accounts of spheres of exchange, with special attention oriented to their dissimilarities.