Barter, Exchange and Value
Journal Data
| Type | SOURCE_BOOK |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (US) |
| ISBN-13 | 9780511607677 |
| Open Library | OL18842844W |
| Total publications | 5 |
| Coverage period | 1992 - 1992 |
| Language | EN |
| Cited by | 31 |
| h-index | 1 |
| i10-index | 1 |
This book concerns barter, a transaction in which objects are exchanged directly for one another without the use of money. Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, and assume that it is normal only in 'primitive' economies or marks the breakdown of more developed exchange mechanisms. For their part, anthropologists have been more interested in the social and moral complexities of the 'gift', and treat barter dismissively as mere haggling. The authors of this collection do not accept that barter occupies a residual space between monetary and gift economies. Using accounts from different parts of the world, they aim to demonstrate that it is more than a simple and self-evident economic institution. Barter may constitute a mode of exchange with its own social characteristics occupying a specific moral space. This novel treatment of barter represents an original and topical addition to the literature on economic anthropology.
Qualified value
A thing by itself cannot properly be counted (Strauss, 1962: 15, an early ethnographer of the Hagen area, quoted in Lancy and Strathern, 1981: 784) It is a curiosity that anthropological attempts to describe non-monetary transactions may well end up concentrating on their monetary aspects. This can happen in specifying how persons measure the relative worth of the things they transact. It has become conventional to admit a range of ‘social’ facto…
Inter-tribal commodity barter and reproductive gift-exchange in old Melanesia
Introduction By and large, ‘Maussian’ gift institutions have had a favourable press in anthropology, and ‘commodities’ an unfavourable one (for an extreme case cf. Baudrillard, 1975). ‘Gift–reciprocity–Good/market–exchange–Bad’ is a simple, easy-to-memorise formula. But perhaps the tide is about to turn. Parry (1986, 1987) has exposed the ‘moral ambiguity’ of the gift in an Indian context. In what follows I propose a critique of ‘gift-exchange’ t…
Yesterday's luxuries, tomorrow's necessities
Central to capitalism is a vision of man's limitless needs, needs which lead to his increasing mastery of nature and which propel him onwards and upwards in a spiral of progress. In contemporary Amazonia, and with such progress in mind, missionaries, merchants and government officials vie with each other to bring the material and moral benefits of civilisation to Amerindians. Each mission combines church with store, and even the cocaine-dealers c…
Politicised values
Barter has always been associated with social margins. It is paradigmatically the form of exchange which is expected to take place across the frontiers between non-monetised economies, between strangers rather than relatives or friends. From the perspective of a monetised economy, it is also peripheral in the sense that it belongs beyond the domain of currency transactions: it is associated with a marginal, primitive world which we define by the …
Barter, Exchange and Value
This book concerns barter, a transaction in which objects are exchanged directly for one another without the use of money. Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, and assume that it is normal only in 'primitive' economies or marks the breakdown of more developed exchange mechanisms. For their part, anthropologists have been more interested in the social and moral complexities of the 'gift', and treat barter dismi…
Barter, Exchange and Value
This book concerns barter, a transaction in which objects are exchanged directly for one another without the use of money. Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, and assume that it is normal only in 'primitive' economies or marks the breakdown of more developed exchange mechanisms. For their part, anthropologists have been more interested in the social and moral complexities of the 'gift', and treat barter dismi…
Qualified value
A thing by itself cannot properly be counted (Strauss, 1962: 15, an early ethnographer of the Hagen area, quoted in Lancy and Strathern, 1981: 784) It is a curiosity that anthropological attempts to describe non-monetary transactions may well end up concentrating on their monetary aspects. This can happen in specifying how persons measure the relative worth of the things they transact. It has become conventional to admit a range of ‘social’ facto…
Inter-tribal commodity barter and reproductive gift-exchange in old Melanesia
Introduction By and large, ‘Maussian’ gift institutions have had a favourable press in anthropology, and ‘commodities’ an unfavourable one (for an extreme case cf. Baudrillard, 1975). ‘Gift–reciprocity–Good/market–exchange–Bad’ is a simple, easy-to-memorise formula. But perhaps the tide is about to turn. Parry (1986, 1987) has exposed the ‘moral ambiguity’ of the gift in an Indian context. In what follows I propose a critique of ‘gift-exchange’ t…
Yesterday's luxuries, tomorrow's necessities
Central to capitalism is a vision of man's limitless needs, needs which lead to his increasing mastery of nature and which propel him onwards and upwards in a spiral of progress. In contemporary Amazonia, and with such progress in mind, missionaries, merchants and government officials vie with each other to bring the material and moral benefits of civilisation to Amerindians. Each mission combines church with store, and even the cocaine-dealers c…
Politicised values
Barter has always been associated with social margins. It is paradigmatically the form of exchange which is expected to take place across the frontiers between non-monetised economies, between strangers rather than relatives or friends. From the perspective of a monetised economy, it is also peripheral in the sense that it belongs beyond the domain of currency transactions: it is associated with a marginal, primitive world which we define by the …
Barter, Exchange and Value
This book concerns barter, a transaction in which objects are exchanged directly for one another without the use of money. Economists treat barter as an inefficient alternative to market exchange, and assume that it is normal only in 'primitive' economies or marks the breakdown of more developed exchange mechanisms. For their part, anthropologists have been more interested in the social and moral complexities of the 'gift', and treat barter dismi…