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As the transition from socialism to a market economy gathered speed in the early 1990s, many people proclaimed the final success of capitalism as a practice and neoliberal economics as its accompanying science. But with the uneven achievements of the “transition”—the deepening problems of “development,” persistent unemployment, the widening of the wealth gap, and expressions of resistance—the discipline of economics is no longer seen as a mirror of reality or as a unified science. How should we understand economics and, more broadly, the organization and disorganization of material life? In this book, international scholars from anthropology and economics adopt a rhetorical perspective in order to make sense of material life and the theories about it. Re-examining central problems in the two fields and using ethnographic and historical examples, they explore the intersections between these disciplines, contrast their methods and epistemologies, and show how a rhetorical approach offers a new mode of analysis while drawing on established contributions.
“The volume features contributions from an impressive array of scholars operating at the borders between anthropology, sociology, and economics, and offers much to interest scholars from each of these disciplines.” · JRAI
Preface
Stephen Gudeman
Chapter 1. Introduction
Stephen Gudeman
Chapter 2. Simplicity in economic anthropology: Persuasion, form and substance
James G. Carrier
Chapter 3. The concept of interest as rhetoric – or as a useful social science concept?
Richard Swedberg
Chapter 4. The new social science imperialism and the problem of knowledge in contemporary economics
William Milberg
Chapter 5. The persuasions of economics
Stephen Gudeman
Chapter 6. Conversations between anthropologists and economists
Metin Cosgel
Chapter 7. “The craving for intelligibility:” Speech and silence on the economy under structural adjustment and military rule in Nigeria
Jane Guyer with LaRay Denzer
Chapter 8. Mass-gifts: On gifts in advanced capitalist markets
Nurit Bird-David and Asaf Darr
Chapter 9. The persuasive power of money
Keith Hart
Chapter 10. The money rhetoric in the United States
Ruben George Oliven
Chapter 11. The third way: A cultural economic perspective
Arjo Klamer
Bibliography
Index