Volume 40 of Research in Economic Anthropology explores current issues in national and international policy, cost and debt, business and capitalism, and economic theory and behavior specifically pertaining to Brazil. The underlying theme running through the collection is the steady...

This book examines the economy of sharing in a variety of social and political contexts around the world, with consideration given to the role of sharing in relation to social order and social change, political power, group formation, individual networks and concepts of personhood. Widlok...

Today we live in what Ulrich Beck has aptly characterized as a "risk society" shaped by intensifying crises outside of our control and seemingly outside of our comprehension. The master narrative that was supposed to lead us to secular salvation--economics--has proved to be a large part of the...

The Anthropology of Development and Globalization is a collection of readings that provides an unprecedented overview of this field that ranges from the field's classical origins to today's debates about the "magic" of the free market. Explores the foundations...

An Anthropology of Money: A Critical Introduction shows how our present monetary system was imposed by elites and how they benefit from it. The book poses the question: how, by looking at different forms of money, can we appreciate that they have different effects? The authors demonstrate how...

In the midst of global recession, angry citizens and media pundits often offer simplistic theories about how bad decisions lead to crises. Many economists, however, base their analyses on rational choice theory, which assumes that decisions are made by well-informed, intelligent people who weigh...

Watch the PBS program based on The Ascent of Money. Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot,...

For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things--most often money--for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at...

TodayOs growing fascination with flows of people, commodities, technology, capital, images and ideas across national and other boundaries poses fresh theoretical and methodological challenges to anthropology. Commodities offer a particularly useful window on globalization because they, unlike...

Human beings are the only species in nature to have developed an elaborate division of labor between strangers. Even something as simple as buying a shirt depends on an astonishing web of interaction and organization that spans the world. But unlike that other uniquely human attribute, language,...

The book discusses how culture simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the economy. Over the past few years, as the world has staggered from one financial crisis to another, the neat separation of economics and culture has been consistently challenged. To understand the current state of affairs,...

The expanding use of money in contemporary Vietnam has been propelled by the rise of new markets, digital telecommunications, and an ideological emphasis on money's autonomy from the state. People in Vietnam use the metaphor of "open doors" to describe their everyday experiences of market...

This volume contains 14 original chapters focusing on various aspects of economic organization and behaviour, mostly based on empirical fieldwork conducted by the authors themselves. It is a well-balanced collection of chapters on economic issues studied anthropologically, not only in its...

This book is a new introduction to the history and practice of economic anthropology by two leading authors in the field. They show that anthropologists have contributed to understanding the three great questions of modern economic history: development, socialism and one-world capitalism. In doing...

This book introduces economic anthropology to countries where it has never been taught before, including Vietnam, China, Brazil, Argentina, and Italy. It identifies the fundamental practical and theoretical problems that give economic anthropology its unique strengths and vision.

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...

Tax and taxation are conventionally understood as the embodiment of social contract. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges this truism, examining what tax might tell us about the limits of social-contract thinking. The contributors shed light on contemporary fiscal structures and...

Fiscal Disobedience represents a novel approach to the question of citizenship amid the changing global economy and the fiscal crisis of the nation-state. Focusing on economic practices in the Chad Basin of Africa, Janet Roitman combines thorough ethnographic fieldwork with sophisticated...

Looking from the 11th century to the 20th century, Kuroda explores how money was used and how currencies evolved in transactions within local communities and in broader trade networks. The discussion covers Asia, Europe and Africa and highlights an impressive global interconnectedness in the pre...

What could middle-class German supermarket shoppers buying eggs and impoverished coffee farmers in Guatemala possibly have in common? Both groups use the market in pursuit of the "good life." But what exactly is the good life? How do we define wellbeing beyond material standards of living? While...

A History of Money is exactly that--a look at how money, the indispensable unit of our economy, developed through time. Starting with the barter system, the authors describe how the basic function of exchanging goods evolved into a monetary system based on coins made of precious metals...

From Bitcoin to Apple Pay, big changes seem to be afoot in the world of money. Yet the use of coins and paper bills has persisted for 3,000 years. In How Would You Like to Pay?, leading anthropologist Bill Maurer narrates money's history, considers its role in everyday life, and...

Over the past year, we have seen banks tumble, City firms collapse and the advent of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. At the heart of these events lies the pursuit of money. But just what is this thing that seems so powerful and omnipresent and yet is physically worthless - a piece of...

The major French economist offers a new theory of money As the financial crisis reached its climax in September 2008, the most important figure on the planet was Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The whole financial system was collapsing, with little to stop it. When a senator asked...

Examines the history of money from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt to today's cashless alternatives.

By enabling the storage and transfer of purchasing power, money facilitates economic transactions and coordinates economic activity. But what is money? How is it generated? Distributed? How does money acquire value and that value change? How does money impact the economy, society? This...

Money is nothing more than what is commonly exchanged for goods or services, so why has understanding it become so complicated? In Money, renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith cuts through the confusions surrounding the subject to present a compelling and accessible account of a topic...

Since the publication of Georg Simmel's Philosophy of Money more than a century ago, social science has primarily considered money a medium of exchange. This new book treats money as a more inclusive social concept that has profoundly influenced the emergence of modern society. Money is...

Gambling in Papua New Guinea, despite being completely absent prior to the Colonial era, has come to supersede storytelling as the region's main nighttime activity. Money Games is an ethnographic monograph which reveals the contemporary importance of gambling in urban Papua New Guinea. Rich...

In this important new book, Geoffrey Ingham draws on neglected traditions in the social sciences to develop a theory of the 'social relation' of money. Genuinely multidisciplinary approach, based on a thorough knowledge of theories of money in the social sciences

A new English translation of a forgotten German text that influenced cultural understanding of money in the early twentieth century. "On this subject, I only knew the excellent little book by the late Schurtz"--Marcel Mauss, 1914, Les origines de la notion de monnaie. Heinrich...

Based on long-term medical anthropological research in northern Ghana, the author analyses issues of health and healing, of gender, and of the control and use of money in a changing rural African setting. He describes the culture of medical pluralism, so typical for neo-colonial states, and...

A reevaluation of what money is--and what it might be Questions about the nature of money have gained a new urgency in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Even as many people have less of it, there are more forms and systems of money, from local currencies and social...

The main focus of the volume - the processes of choice and decision-making in different economic systems - offers exceptional scope for the convergence of economic and anthropological perspectives. It concentrates on transactions that both express and influence social relationships and values...

Money is an evil that does good, and a good that does evil. It inspires hymns to the prosperity it enables, manifestos about the poor it leaves behind, and diatribes for its corrosion of morality. In The Wisdom of Money, one of the world's great essayists guides us through the rich...