scholarly journals Economic Anthropology

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-187
Keyword(s):  
Economic Anthropology

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Characteristic Features

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

On Dalton's "Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology"

1970 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Gunder Frank ◽  
George Dalton
Keyword(s):  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Theoretical Issues

Marxism, Psychoanalysis and Economics: An Anthropological Remark

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iurato G ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The World

The basic economic notion of marginal utility is revised in the light of certain well-known Marxian ideas, supported by some new interpretations of psychoanalytic notions, to try to clarify which is the position of human being in the world, within the context of economic anthropology.

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