Description
Book SynopsisProducing Culture and Capital is a major theoretical contribution to the anthropological literature on capitalism, as well as a rich case study of kinship and gender relations in northern Italy.
Drawing on ethnographic and archival research on thirty-eight firms in northern Italy''s silk industry, Sylvia Yanagisako illuminates the cultural processes through which sentiments, desires, and commitments motivate and shape capitalist family firms. She shows how flexible specialization is produced through the cultural dynamics of capital accumulation, management succession, firm expansion and diversification, and the reproduction and division of firms. In doing so, Yanagisako addresses two gaps in Marx''s and Weber''s theories of capitalism: the absence of an adequate cultural theory of capitalist motivation and the absence of attention to kinship and gender. By demonstrating that kinship and gender are crucial in structuring capitalist action, this study reveals these
Trade Review
"A welcome and refreshing addition to the existing literature."--Anna Centro Bull, Anthropological Quarterly "[An] engaging, provocative, and important book."--Victoria Goddard, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix Preface and Acknowledgments xi Chapter One: PRODUCING CULTURE AND CAPITAL 1 Chapter Two: THE GENERATION OF FIRMS 35 Chapter Three: PATRIARCHAL DESIRE 70 Chapter Four: BETRAYAL AS A FORCE OF PRODUCTION 110 Chapter Five: CAPITAL AND GENDERED SENTIMENTS 145 Chapter Six: CONCLUSION 174 Notes 191 References 205 Index 217
