Chris Gregory
Biographic Data
| ID | 3673501 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Gregory |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Gregory |
| SIGNATURE | GREGORY C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 208 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 39 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Exchange
The term “exchange” is used by economists to refer to the sphere of activity that mediates production and consumption, but anthropologists have given the term a radically new meaning. They severed exchange from its relation to production and consumption, gave it a life of its own, and called it “reciprocity.” The words “exchange” and “reciprocity,” along with “gift,” became synonyms. This redefinition of exchange, and the classical paradigm of wh…
Markets and Morality in Papua New Guinea
Moral Economy
Moral economy is concerned with the question of the just price and its political implications. Disputation is the essence of moral economy because the fairness of a price reflects the point of view of an interested transactor or dispassionate observer. The actual term “moral economy” was popularized by E. P. Thompson in the 1970s but disputes about theories of the just price are of great antiquity and are found in many disciplines. Thompson, the …
The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times
The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What
Trees, Knots and Outriggers
An economic theology of wealth
Wealth as happiness is the supreme good because it brings material prosperity, offspring, fame, loyal friends, and a long and healthy life. In this respect, the people of Hindu India are no different from the rest of humanity. What distinguishes the Hindu quest for the good life is the personification of wealth and poverty in the form of Lakshmi (good fortune) and Alakshmi (misfortune). A fickle goddess, Lakshmi leaves one’s house if she finds im…
History as Concealed Autobiography? Brij Lal ’s Historical Dictionary of Fiji
Brij Lal is the Pacific Islands’ most prolific historian. The book under review is his 47th by my count of which over half of them, like this one, are single-authored publications.1 Whatever way on
Brexit Referendum
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006).In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it w…
Forgive us our Debt, as we Forgive our Debtors
The recent release in 2014 of an updated and expanded version of Debt: The First 5000 Years prompts me to reflect on the enduring significance of Graeber's book for anthropology and anthropologists...
Forum Rethinking Euro-Anthropology
A remarkable fact of recent developments in Science and Technology Studies is that anthropologists have begun to study the laboratories of natural scientists but have \nnot turned the anthropological gaze onto themselves. Until ethnographic studies of the functioning of anthropology departments in France, Germany, Finland, Japan \nand other countries are done, ‘symmetrical anthropology’, as Latour (2013: 290) calls it, remains unrealised. If the …
On religiosity and commercial life
Revolutionary developments in the social organization of capitalism give birth to revolutionary developments in ideas about the economy and value. Just as the industrial revolution in England in the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of political economy and the labor theory of value, and the age of imperialism in the late nineteenth century saw the emergence of economics and the marginal utility theory of value, so the age of globalizatio…
Unequal Egalitarianism
Anthony Forge was a pioneer in the anthropology of art and established an international reputation in this field. His work on the political anthropology of egalitarianism, by contrast, has been virtually ignored because of the demise of British Social Anthropology as a method, and the rise of inequality as the problem to be investigated. Some fifty years have passed since Forge did his fieldwork in the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea; a critic…
The value question in India
The terms of the debate about anthropological approaches to the value question in India have been set by Dumont, whose theories were based on his ethnographic studies in North and South India, his knowledge of the Sanskrit literature, his synthesis of the comparative ethnography of India, and his studies on the history of European economic thought. His theory of affinity as a value, one element of this general theory, was based on a critique of L…
On money debt and morality
Peebles, in a recent review of the anthropology of debt and credit, found an ‘astonishing consistency’ in the moral valuation of credit which is everywhere given a positive evaluation relative to debt. But why is this? Does it apply to creditors as well? What are the theoretical implications of these questions for economic anthropology
Skinship
In “What kinship is” Marshall Sahlins (2011) provides a new and provocative answer to an old and much-debated question, defining it as the “mutuality in being.” For the Halbi speakers of the Bastar Plateau in East-Central India kinship is defined by touch: juniors greet seniors with tactile gestures of familial respect that are reciprocated by tactile gestures of familial love. On certain ritual occasions these salutes are adorned with colorful f…
'I Want to Produce My Own Seeds…' Bisa Dewek (We Can Do It Ourselves)
'I Want to Produce My Own Seeds ...' Bisa Dewek (We Can Do It Ourselves) Produced by Indonesian Integrated Pest Management Farmers' Alliance, Indramayu Regency in collaboration with the Undergradua...
Whatever happened to householding?
Polanyi's contribution to the history of economic thought is not so much as a theorist of value but as a conceptual tool-maker and tool-user. “The study of the shifting place occupied by the economy in society,” he noted (Polanyi 1957b: 250), is “no other than the study of the manner in which the economic process is instituted at different times and places. This requires a special tool box.” Polanyi the “tool-user” is the historian, the author of…
After Words
This collection of essays is the product of a series of workshops over a long period where the organizing themes were debated and modified and drafts of articles discussed and revised. I entered the discussion toward the end of this period in a weekend workshop held in Manchester on April 29–30, 2006, where the penultimate drafts were presented. As the essays dealt mainly with Melanesia and South Asia, and as I am one of the few anthropologists a…
Market and Society
Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, offered a radical critique of how the market system has affected society and humanity since the industrial revolution. This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in economic anthropology, sociology and political economy to consider Polanyi's theories in the light of circumstances today, when the relationship between market and society has again become a focus of intens…
Whatever happened to economic anthropology? 1
In the 1970s, economic anthropology, along with kinship and ecological anthropology, was regarded as a core discipline in the teaching of anthropology. The centrality of all these subjects was reflected in the debates of the time. For economic anthropology, understanding the articulation of modes of production was the problem; the holy trinity—tribe, peasant, capitalist—provided the key terms of the debate. These terms, and this problem, are hist…
Feature Review
(Berghahn Books, 2008) The modern discipline of neoclassical economics has the question of rational choice at its core. The conceptual and philosophical framework it has erected over the past centu
On the Ranking of Shells and People
Comments on: JOHN LIEP. A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009. Pp. 376. ISBN: 978-87-7934-446-4 This is a magnificent piece of scholarship. It has been a lifetime in the making and it shows on every page, in every paragraph and every sentence of this meticulously argued and beautifully produced ethnography. If the ethnographic studies of the Massim can be likened to ndap shells of different r…
The vernacularisation of democracy
The Oral Epics of the Women of the Dandakaranya Plateau
The aim of this paper is to fill in a small but significant gap in the growing scholarship on the oral epics of India by means of a preliminary mapping of some of the oral epics sung by the women of the Dandakaranya (DNK) plateau of southern Chhattisgarh (formerly eastern Madhya Pradesh) and western Orissa. The approximate location of the DNK plateau is marked on figure 1 as a dotted circle. The approximate distribution of the womens oral epics i…
Peter Berger, Subaltern Sovereigns
When Peter Berger began his PhD research among the Gadaba people of the Koraput Uplands in Odisha in 1999, he was struck by the proverbial wisdom of the Indigenous people of the area as expressed in the following saying: "rj dasar, jori nand, ml bli, gb go'ter."This proverb, spoken in the Desia language, consists of four doublets, each one consisting of a social group followed by a ritual that defined the group.A preliminary descriptive translati…
Gifts to Men and Gifts to God
This article examines the complex relationship between gift exchange and capital accumulation in contemporary Papua New Guinea, focusing on the Daribi and Foi peoples. Gregory argues against the traditional anthropological view that Melanesian gift exchange operates outside the realm of capitalist logic. He demonstrates how indigenous gift-giving practices, while seemingly embedded in traditional social structures and cosmological beliefs, are in…
Brexit Referendum
Brexit Referendum: first reactions from anthropologyMy immediate reaction to the results of the British Referendum on leaving or remaining in the EU was to remember Alexei Yurchak's book, Everything was forever, until it was no more (Yurchak 2006).In the book, Yurchak describes the feeling of many people in Russia when the Soviet Union broke up: it came as a complete shock because they thought it would never happen; but once it had happened, it w…
Cowries and Conquest
In the beginning of the world we had the forge and we forged things, we had weavinglooms and we wove our clothes, we had oracle huts where we consulted the oracle, and we had boats from which we caught fish. We had no guns. We had no cowrie-money (akwá). If you went to the market you took beans in order to exchange them for sweet potatoes. You exchanged something specific for something else. Then the king brought the cowrie-money. What did the ki…
On religiosity and commercial life
Revolutionary developments in the social organization of capitalism give birth to revolutionary developments in ideas about the economy and value. Just as the industrial revolution in England in the late eighteenth century saw the emergence of political economy and the labor theory of value, and the age of imperialism in the late nineteenth century saw the emergence of economics and the marginal utility theory of value, so the age of globalizatio…
The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times
The study of the quest for the good life and the morality and value it presupposes is not new. To the contrary, this is an ancient issue; its intellectual history can be traced back to Aristotle. In anthropology, the study of morality and value has always been a central concern, despite the claim of some scholars that the recent upsurge of interest in these issues is new. What
An economic theology of wealth
Wealth as happiness is the supreme good because it brings material prosperity, offspring, fame, loyal friends, and a long and healthy life. In this respect, the people of Hindu India are no different from the rest of humanity. What distinguishes the Hindu quest for the good life is the personification of wealth and poverty in the form of Lakshmi (good fortune) and Alakshmi (misfortune). A fickle goddess, Lakshmi leaves one’s house if she finds im…
The Emergence of Commodity Production in Papua New Guinea
The value question in India
The terms of the debate about anthropological approaches to the value question in India have been set by Dumont, whose theories were based on his ethnographic studies in North and South India, his knowledge of the Sanskrit literature, his synthesis of the comparative ethnography of India, and his studies on the history of European economic thought. His theory of affinity as a value, one element of this general theory, was based on a critique of L…
What Gifts Engender
Primitive and Peasant Markets
The Oral Epics of the Women of the Dandakaranya Plateau
The aim of this paper is to fill in a small but significant gap in the growing scholarship on the oral epics of India by means of a preliminary mapping of some of the oral epics sung by the women of the Dandakaranya (DNK) plateau of southern Chhattisgarh (formerly eastern Madhya Pradesh) and western Orissa. The approximate location of the DNK plateau is marked on figure 1 as a dotted circle. The approximate distribution of the womens oral epics i…
Village money lending, the World Bank and landlessness in Central India
Additional informationNotes on contributorsC.A. GregoryComments received from the participants at the Journal of Contemporary Asia Conference in Manila in December 1986 have enabled me to make a number of improvements to this paper. I am also indebted to Caroline Ifeka, Lesley Devereaux and Judith Robinson for many helpful comments. Research was conducted in India with funds provided by the UK Social Science Research Council, to which I am very g…
Forum Rethinking Euro-Anthropology
A remarkable fact of recent developments in Science and Technology Studies is that anthropologists have begun to study the laboratories of natural scientists but have \nnot turned the anthropological gaze onto themselves. Until ethnographic studies of the functioning of anthropology departments in France, Germany, Finland, Japan \nand other countries are done, ‘symmetrical anthropology’, as Latour (2013: 290) calls it, remains unrealised. If the …
Anthropology, Economics, and Political Economy
Research Article| November 01 2000 Anthropology, Economics, and Political Economy: A Critique of Pearson C. A. Gregory C. A. Gregory Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2000) 32 (4): 999-1010. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-32-4-999 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Pe…
Economies Across Cultures
Markets and Morality in Papua New Guinea
Unequal Egalitarianism
Anthony Forge was a pioneer in the anthropology of art and established an international reputation in this field. His work on the political anthropology of egalitarianism, by contrast, has been virtually ignored because of the demise of British Social Anthropology as a method, and the rise of inequality as the problem to be investigated. Some fifty years have passed since Forge did his fieldwork in the Sepik District of Papua New Guinea; a critic…
The Emergence of Commodity Production in Papua New Guinea
Gifts to Men and Gifts to God
This article examines the complex relationship between gift exchange and capital accumulation in contemporary Papua New Guinea, focusing on the Daribi and Foi peoples. Gregory argues against the traditional anthropological view that Melanesian gift exchange operates outside the realm of capitalist logic. He demonstrates how indigenous gift-giving practices, while seemingly embedded in traditional social structures and cosmological beliefs, are in…
Gifts and Commodities Economies
This article critiques the neo-Maussian dichotomy between gifts and commodities, arguing that it rests on a misinterpretation of Mauss's original work. Schwimmer and Gregory demonstrate that the distinction is not absolute but rather a matter of degree, with many transactions exhibiting characteristics of both gift exchange and commodity exchange. They propose a more nuanced framework for understanding economic transactions, emphasizing the impor…
What Gifts Engender
Village money lending, the World Bank and landlessness in Central India
Additional informationNotes on contributorsC.A. GregoryComments received from the participants at the Journal of Contemporary Asia Conference in Manila in December 1986 have enabled me to make a number of improvements to this paper. I am also indebted to Caroline Ifeka, Lesley Devereaux and Judith Robinson for many helpful comments. Research was conducted in India with funds provided by the UK Social Science Research Council, to which I am very g…
Primitive and Peasant Markets
Wage, Trade, and Exchange in Melanesia
Economies Across Cultures
Observing the Economy
1. Introduction 2. The theory/data dialectic 3. Land and Environment 4. Labour and its Organisation 5. Technology 6. Output - Surpluses and deficits 7. Distribution and exchange 8. Consumption 9. Economics, Politics, religion and ideology 10. Interpreting Economic data
Observing the Economy
The Learning From Ethnographic Film Project
Le developpement des technologies laisse envisager la possibilite d'enseigner l'anthropologie a travers les films ethnographiques. Cette pratique, qui existe a l'Universite nationale australienne, necessite un investissement personnel important de la part de l'enseignant (retranscription des textes). En plus de cet enseignement avec le film l'A. propose l'enseignement du film. Cette anthropologie visuelle serait facilitee par les magnetoscopes et…
Dialogues with the Dead
Cowries and Conquest
In the beginning of the world we had the forge and we forged things, we had weavinglooms and we wove our clothes, we had oracle huts where we consulted the oracle, and we had boats from which we caught fish. We had no guns. We had no cowrie-money (akwá). If you went to the market you took beans in order to exchange them for sweet potatoes. You exchanged something specific for something else. Then the king brought the cowrie-money. What did the ki…
Hierarchical Opposition Revisited
Anthropology, Economics, and Political Economy
Research Article| November 01 2000 Anthropology, Economics, and Political Economy: A Critique of Pearson C. A. Gregory C. A. Gregory Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google History of Political Economy (2000) 32 (4): 999-1010. https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-32-4-999 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Pe…
The Oral Epics of the Women of the Dandakaranya Plateau
The aim of this paper is to fill in a small but significant gap in the growing scholarship on the oral epics of India by means of a preliminary mapping of some of the oral epics sung by the women of the Dandakaranya (DNK) plateau of southern Chhattisgarh (formerly eastern Madhya Pradesh) and western Orissa. The approximate location of the DNK plateau is marked on figure 1 as a dotted circle. The approximate distribution of the womens oral epics i…
'I Want to Produce My Own Seeds…' Bisa Dewek (We Can Do It Ourselves)
'I Want to Produce My Own Seeds ...' Bisa Dewek (We Can Do It Ourselves) Produced by Indonesian Integrated Pest Management Farmers' Alliance, Indramayu Regency in collaboration with the Undergradua...
Whatever happened to householding?
Polanyi's contribution to the history of economic thought is not so much as a theorist of value but as a conceptual tool-maker and tool-user. “The study of the shifting place occupied by the economy in society,” he noted (Polanyi 1957b: 250), is “no other than the study of the manner in which the economic process is instituted at different times and places. This requires a special tool box.” Polanyi the “tool-user” is the historian, the author of…
After Words
This collection of essays is the product of a series of workshops over a long period where the organizing themes were debated and modified and drafts of articles discussed and revised. I entered the discussion toward the end of this period in a weekend workshop held in Manchester on April 29–30, 2006, where the penultimate drafts were presented. As the essays dealt mainly with Melanesia and South Asia, and as I am one of the few anthropologists a…
Market and Society
Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, offered a radical critique of how the market system has affected society and humanity since the industrial revolution. This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in economic anthropology, sociology and political economy to consider Polanyi's theories in the light of circumstances today, when the relationship between market and society has again become a focus of intens…
Whatever happened to economic anthropology? 1
In the 1970s, economic anthropology, along with kinship and ecological anthropology, was regarded as a core discipline in the teaching of anthropology. The centrality of all these subjects was reflected in the debates of the time. For economic anthropology, understanding the articulation of modes of production was the problem; the holy trinity—tribe, peasant, capitalist—provided the key terms of the debate. These terms, and this problem, are hist…
Feature Review
(Berghahn Books, 2008) The modern discipline of neoclassical economics has the question of rational choice at its core. The conceptual and philosophical framework it has erected over the past centu
On the Ranking of Shells and People
Comments on: JOHN LIEP. A Papuan Plutocracy: Ranked Exchange on Rossel Island. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009. Pp. 376. ISBN: 978-87-7934-446-4 This is a magnificent piece of scholarship. It has been a lifetime in the making and it shows on every page, in every paragraph and every sentence of this meticulously argued and beautifully produced ethnography. If the ethnographic studies of the Massim can be likened to ndap shells of different r…
The vernacularisation of democracy
Skinship
In “What kinship is” Marshall Sahlins (2011) provides a new and provocative answer to an old and much-debated question, defining it as the “mutuality in being.” For the Halbi speakers of the Bastar Plateau in East-Central India kinship is defined by touch: juniors greet seniors with tactile gestures of familial respect that are reciprocated by tactile gestures of familial love. On certain ritual occasions these salutes are adorned with colorful f…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (17 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (14 works) · Law (14 works) · History (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Economics (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Law (9 works)