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According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people’s economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising.
“The result of these six ethnographies is a compelling case for attention to the ritual aspects of the economy and the economic aspects of ritual. But this is a revelation that anthropologists are completely prepared to receive, given our basic commitment to holism and cultural integration. The chapters feature useful descriptions of ritual economics and economic rituals, as well as the invention of traditions and non-market forms of production and exchange.” · Anthropology Review Database
“This volume links two fields of anthropological inquiry that were central to the development of the discipline, but have rarely been considered together in recent decades: the study of ritual and of economic systems and rationalities . . . It is a welcome and fresh contribution that has no direct equivalents currently in print.” · Sonja Luehrmann, Simon Fraser University
“[This book] makes an innovative contribution to the way we think about economic anthropology—rituals, celebrations, feasts, and the partly constructive ways that they are indelibly tied to economic practices.” · Russell Zanca, Northeastern Illinois University
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Ritual, Economy and the Institutions of the Base
Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann
Chapter 1. Economy as Ritual: The Problems of Paying in Wine
Jennifer Cash
Chapter 2. Animals in the Kyrgyz Ritual Economy: Symbolic and Moral Dimensions of Economic Embedding
Nathan Light
Chapter 3. From Pig-Sticking to Festival: Changes in Pig-Sticking Practices in the Hungarian Countryside
Bea Vidacs
Chapter 4. Kurban: Shifting Economy and the Transformations of a Ritual
Detelina Tocheva
Chapter 5. The Trader’s Wedding: Ritual Inflation and Money Gifts in Transylvania
Monica Vasile
Chapter 6. “We don’t have work. We just grow a little tobacco”: Household Economy and Ritual Effervescence in a Macedonian Town
Miladina Monova
Appendix: The “Economy and Ritual” Project and the Field Questionnaire
Notes on Contributors
Index