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Spheres Of Exchange
Spheres of exchange is a heuristic tool for analyzing trading restrictions within societies that are communally governed and where resources are communally available.Sillitoe, Paul (2006) "Why spheres of exchange?" ''Ethnology'' 45(1): pp. 1-23, page 1 Goods and services of specific types are relegated to distinct value categories, and moral sanctions are invoked to prevent exchange between spheres. It is a classic topic in economic anthropology. Paul Bohannan developed the concept in relation to the Tiv of Nigeria, who he argued had three spheres of exchange. He argued that only certain kinds of goods could be exchanged in each sphere; each sphere had its own different form of money. The term is also used in reference to gift economies. Similarly, Clifford Geertz's model of "dual economy" in Indonesia and James C. Scott's model of "moral economy" hypothesized different exchange spheres emerging in societies newly integrated into the market; both hypothesized a continuing cultur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heuristic
A heuristic (; ), or heuristic technique, is any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal or approximation. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Examples that employ heuristics include using trial and error, a rule of thumb or an educated guess. Heuristics are the strategies derived from previous experiences with similar problems. These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract issues. When an individual applies a heuristic in practice, it generally performs as expected. However it can alternatively cre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Anthropology
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology began with work by the Polish founder of anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski and the French Marcel Mauss on the nature of reciprocity as an alternative to market exchange. For the most part, studies in economic anthropology focus on exchange. Post-World War II, economic anthropology was highly influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a restricted number of western, industrial societies. Applying formal economic theory (Formalism) to non-industrial societies was mistaken, he argued. In non-industrial societies, exch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Bohannan
Paul James Bohannan (March 5, 1920 – July 13, 2007) was an American anthropologist known for his research on the Tiv people of Nigeria, spheres of exchange and divorce in the United States. Early life and education Bohannan was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Hillory Bohannan and Hazel Truex Bohannan. During the dust bowl his family moved to Benson, Arizona. World War II interrupted his college education, and he served in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps from 1941 to 1945 reaching the rank of captain. In 1947 he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his bachelor's degree in GermanStaff (1946) "3 Chosen for Rhodes Honor" ''Tucson Daily Citizen'' 13 December 1946, p. 18, col. 3 from the University of Arizona. He attended Queen's College, Oxford, thereafter as a Rhodes scholar,Johnson, Pamela J. (2007"Pioneering Anthropologist was Authority on the Tiv Tribe"''USC College News'', July 2007 receiving a Bachelor of Science in 1949 and his doctor of philosophy degree in 1951, both in an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiv People
Tiv (or Tiiv) are a Tivoid ethnic group. They constitute approximately 2.4% of Nigeria's total population, and number over 5 million individuals throughout Nigeria and Cameroon. The Tiv language is spoken by about 5 million people in Nigeria with a few speakers in Cameroon. Most of the language's Nigerian speakers are found in Benue, Taraba, Nasarawa, Plateau, Cross rivers, Adamawa, Kaduna, and Abuja States. The language is a branch of Benue–Congo and ultimately of the Niger–Congo phylum. In pre-colonial times, the Fulani ethnic group referred to the Tiv as "Munchi" (also sometimes written Munshi e.g. Duggan 1932 and Ako 1981), a term not accepted by Tiv people. They depend on agricultural produce for commerce and life. History The Tiv believe they emerged into their present location from the southeast. It is claimed that the Tiv wandered through southern, south-central and west-central Africa before arriving at the savannah lands of West African Sudan via the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gift Economies
A gift economy or gift culture is a system of exchange where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards. Social norms and customs govern giving a gift in a gift culture; although there is some expectation of reciprocity, gifts are not given in an explicit exchange of goods or services for money, or some other commodity or service.R. Kranton: ''Reciprocal exchange: a self-sustaining system'', American Economic Review, V. 86 (1996), Issue 4 (September), pp. 830–851 This contrasts with a barter economy or a market economy, where goods and services are primarily explicitly exchanged for value received. The nature of gift economies is the subject of a foundational debate in anthropology. Anthropological research into gift economies began with Bronisław Malinowski's description of the Kula ring in the Trobriand Islands during World War I. The Kula trade appeared to be gift-like since Trobrianders would travel great distanc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."Shweder, Richard A., and Byron Good, eds. 2005. ''Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Life and career Geertz was born in San Francisco on August 23, 1926. He served in the US Navy in World War II from 1943 to 1945. Geertz received a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Antioch College at Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1950 and a doctor of philosophy in anthropology from Harvard University in 1956. When in Harvard University, he studied at the Department of Social Relations with an interdisciplinary program led by Talcott Parsons. Geertz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rebellion And Subsistence In Southeast Asia
Rebellion, uprising, or insurrection is a refusal of obedience or order. It refers to the open resistance against the orders of an established authority. A rebellion originates from a sentiment of indignation and disapproval of a situation and then manifests itself by the refusal to submit or to obey the authority responsible for this situation. Rebellion can be individual or collective, peaceful (civil disobedience, civil resistance, and nonviolent resistance) or violent (terrorism, sabotage and guerrilla warfare). In political terms, rebellion and revolt are often distinguished by their different aims. While rebellion generally seeks to evade and/or gain concessions from an oppressive power, a revolt seeks to overthrow and destroy that power, as well as its accompanying laws. The goal of rebellion is resistance while a revolt seeks a revolution. As power shifts relative to the external adversary, or power shifts within a mixed coalition, or positions harden or soften on eithe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Bloch
Maurice Émile Félix Bloch (born 21 October 1939 in Caen, Calvados, France) is a British anthropologist. He is famous for his fieldwork on the shift of agriculturalists in Madagascar, Japan and other parts of the world, and has also contributed important neo-Marxian work on power, history, kinship, and ritual. Early life and education Maurice Bloch was born in Caen, Calvados, to Jewish parents Claudette (née Raphael), a marine biologist, and Pierre Bloch, an engineer. His grandmother was a niece of sociologist Emile Durkheim and a much younger first cousin of anthropologist Marcel Mauss. Maurice attended the Lycée Carnot in Paris. His father was killed by the Nazis while in the French Army. When Maurice was eleven, his widowed mother married British biologist John S. Kennedy, whom she had met at a conference. She and her son moved to England to join Kennedy, and Bloch became a British citizen, attending The Perse School in Cambridge. He studied as an undergraduate at the Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity Pathway Diversion
A commodity pathway diversion is the ability of an object to move in and out of the "commodity state" over the course of its use life. Diversions can occur when an object is removed from its commodity pathway for its protection and preservation, or when a previously removed object is commoditized through reentry into the commodity pathway after having gained value through its absence. Diversion is an integrated part of the commodity pathway. Commodity Flows Rather than emphasize how particular kinds of objects are either gifts or commodities to be traded in restricted spheres of exchange, Arjun Appadurai and others began to look at how objects flowed between these spheres of exchange. They refocussed attention away from the character of the human relationships formed through exchange, and placed it on "the social life of things" instead. They examined the strategies by which an object could be "singularized" (made unique, special, one-of-a-kind) and so withdrawn from the market. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laura Bohannan
Laura Bohannan (née Laura Marie Altman Smith), (1922 – March 19, 2002) pen name Elenore Smith Bowen, was an American cultural anthropologist best known for her 1966 article, "Shakespeare in the Bush." Bohannan also wrote two books during the 1960s, ''Tiv Economy'', with her husband, and ''Return to Laughter'', a novel. These works were based on her travels and work in Africa between 1949 and 1953. Early life Bohannan's undergraduate education was at the University of Arizona, where she met her husband Paul J. Bohannan. They married May 15, 1943. In 1951 Bohannan received her doctorate from Oxford University. Tiv Off and on from 1949 to 1953 Bohannan and her husband lived among the Tiv tribe of central Nigeria. They would be the subject of her major works. "Shakespeare in the Bush" is often anthologized because of its subject matter and unique perspective. Bohannan, while living in a small village in Nigeria, attempts to tell the story of Hamlet to a group of villagers. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moral Economy
Moral economy refers to economic activities viewed through a moral, not just a material, lens. The definition of moral economy is constantly revisited depending on its usage in differing social, economic, ecological, and geographic situations and times. The concept was developed in 1971 by the British Marxist social historian and political activist E. P. Thompson in his essay, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century", to describe and analyze a specific class struggle in a specific era, from the perspective of the poorest citizens—the "crowd". While Thompson had used the term moral economy in his 1963 book ''The Making of the English Working Class'', it was in the 1971 essay that he provided a thick description of the centuries-old paternalistic feudal moral economy of production and exchange that was rapidly being replaced by the classical political economy. Thompson saw the "crowd" as subjects, not objects, of history. He used the analytical tools of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subsistence Agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace." Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically not necessary for survival and may include sugar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
