Konstfacks bibliotek

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*008110824s1986           e     |||  ||eng||
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*020  $a0521323517
*020  $a0521323517
*035  $a(Ko)6924
*084  $aKu
*084  $aMx
*084  $aKv
*24510$aThe social life of things :$bcommodities in cultural perspective  /$cedited by Arjun Appadurai
*260  $aCambridge  :$bCambridge Univ. Press ,$c1986
*300  $a329 s.
*653  $aSaker
*653  $aFöremål
*653  $aVaror
*653  $aHandel
*653  $aHandelsvaror
*697  $cEtnografi: näringsliv och arbetsliv
*697  $cAllmän ekonomisk historia
*697  $cAllmän socialhistoria
*7001 $aAppadurai, Arjun
*7001 $4aut
*8520 $cM
^

The meaning that people attribute to things necessarily derives from human transactions and motivations, particularly from how those things are used and circulated. The contributors to this volume examine how things are sold and traded in a variety of social and cultural settings, both present and past. Focusing on culturally defined aspects of exchange and socially regulated processes of circulation, the essays illuminate the ways in which people find value in things and things give value to social relations. By looking at things as if they lead social lives, the authors provide a new way to understand how value is externalized and sought after. Containing contributions from American and British social anthropologists and historians, the volume bridges the disciplines of social history, cultural anthropology, and economics, and marks a major step in our understanding of the cultural basis of economic life and the sociology of culture. It will appeal to anthropologists, social historians, economists, archaeologists, and historians of art.

• Foreword Nancy Farriss
• Preface
• Toward an anthropology of things
• Introduction: commodities and the politics of value
• The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process
• Exchange, Consumption, and Display
• Two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands
• Newcomers to the world of goods: consumption among the
• Prestige, Commemoration, and Value
• Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric
• Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics
• Production Regimes and the Sociology of Demand
• Weavers and dealers: the authenticity of an oriental carpet
• Qat: changes in the production and consumption of a quasilegal commodity in northeast Africa
• Historical Transformations and Commodity Codes
• The structure of a cultural crisis: thinking about cloth in France before and after the Revolution
• The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930
• Index