Description
Book Synopsis At a time of rising global economic precarity and social inequality, the field of economic anthropology offers solutions through the study of local and contextualized economic practices. This book is made up of an exciting collection of succinct essays authored by leading scholars primarily from the field of economic anthropology, but also featuring contributions from sociology and history. The chapters engage with debates at the cutting edge of research on the topics of Eurasia, the anthropology of postsocialism and the embeddedness of economic practices.
Trade Review “The volume offers an appreciable contribution, especially for those who are new to economic anthropology since it presents key concepts and debates of contemporary anthropology and offers a privileged access point to this field…[It] keeps the promise of its title representing an accessible repertoire of reflections capable of highlighting an important segment of the recent development of economic anthropology.” • Anthropos
“This is an impressive collection of essays that spans a huge array of themes, topics, writing styles and historical periods… The volume as a whole brings up lively conversations about a variety of themes in economic anthropology, and groups of the contributions can be used for class teaching on particular themes.” • Minh Nguyen, Bielefeld University
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Introduction: Chris Hann and the Anthropological Study of Economic Life
Kirsten W. Endres and Deema Kaneff
Part I: Reconsidering (Post)Socialist Spaces
Chapter 1. Civilizations and Economies: Notes on a Neglected Theme
Johann P. Arnason
Chapter 2. From Halecki to Hann: The Historiography of Historical Regions
Stefan Troebst
Chapter 3. Out of The Frying Pan and into The Fire, or Modernization Forever? Economic Strategies in the Transformation of Peasant Societies
Mihály Sárkány
Chapter 4. Something to Be Nostalgic About? Goulash Socialist and Postsocialist Rural Society in Hungary
Nigel Swain
Chapter 5. Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone: The Indivisibility of Economic and Discursive Aspects in Neoliberal and Populist Regimes in Poland
Michał Buchowski
Chapter 6. Making a Reality of Other People’s Fictions: A Smithian Critique of Post-Marxian and Polányi-ite Accounts of Exploitation
Michael Stewart
Chapter 7. Resilience and Surveillance in Hann’s Eurasia
Steven Sampson
Part II: Economic Anthropology in a Changing World
Chapter 8. Hijra, Port and Market: Pre-Ottoman Economies in South-West Arabia's Zaydi Realm
Andre Gingrich
Chapter 9. From Social Norms to Legal Norms: Regulating Work in Post-Neoliberal Political Economies
Ruth Dukes and Wolfgang Streeck
Chapter 10. The Moral Economy of Anthropological Scholarship
Monica Heintz
Chapter 11. Some Thoughts on Embeddedness, Value and the Moral Dimension in the Work of Chris Hann
Frances Pine
Chapter 12. Property, Resources and Gauging Social Change
Deema Kaneff
Chapter 13. Birth, Property, and the Male Descendant: Some Evidence from India
Chris Gregory
Chapter 14. What Has Happened to Turkish Tea? Thoughts on a Cash Crop, the Turkish State and Society in this Millennium
Lale Yalçin-Heckmann
Part III: Economies of the Sacred and Secular
Chapter 15. Economy is a Ritual
Stephen Gudeman
Chapter 16. The Rice, the Rice Goddess and the Sickle: An Agricultural ‘Revolution’ among the Bru of Khe Sanh, 1989
Gábor Vargyas
Chapter 17. The Dharma and the Dime: Money and Buddhist Morality
Christoph Brumann
Chapter 18. Stealing Goddesses: The Political Economy of Kingship in Premodern India
Burkhard Schnepel
Chapter 19. Dalits and the Market: Liberation or Oppression?
David Gellner
Chapter 20. Polanyi Goes to Mauritius: Economy and Society in the Postcolony
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Publications by Chris Hann
Index
