Issue 4

Taking Anthropology to Economics

July 2011

Currency, 2009. Photo by Veronica Miranda.

~ Contents ~

Introduction
Ryan Anderson

Economic Anthropology
Jeffrey H. Cohen

The Economy
Toby Austin Locke

Anthropology and the Economists Without History
Jason Antrosio

Model Behaviors
Ryan Anderson

Visual Anthropology: Before the economic crash
Ryan Anderson

Introduction: Taking an anthropological perspective to economics

Coins, 2005.  Photo by Ryan Anderson.

Coins are fascinatingly innocuous and mundane.  Or that's how it seems, since they are everywhere.  They are the minutia of our everyday economic transactions; rarely do we think much about them.  They are just there, stuffed under seats, lost in the bottom of purses and backpacks, even cast aside in the middle of the street.  Coins are such a ubiquitous part of our daily lives that we don't really think about how these small things are connected to wider economic networks.  There is a kind of double meaning when it comes to economics: the economics of quotidian life (coins, credit cards, receipts, bills, etc), and the economics of economists, policymakers, academics, bankers, and Wall Street.  One is so everyday that it doesn't seem to require much attention; the other is so abstract that it seems impossible to comprehend.

What does "the economy" really mean, anyway?  Despite the confidence of the folks who write those introductory economics textbooks, I don't think it's as simple of a question as many people assume (and there are plenty of anthropologically minded folks who agree with me on this point).  In the United States, for example, when politicians start talking about the economy they often speak in vague terms about "jobs," "taxes," "the Federal debt," "social security," and "unemployment."  There are some key terms and debates that come to signify what talking about the economy entails--this is a discussion about a large, global system that involves numerous nations, corporations, and individuals.  This is "the economy" of the economists: large, powerful, daunting, and undeniably abstract.  It is a massive system that can only be understood through charts, graphs, models, and numbers.  Even the experts (as the collapse of 2008 quite clearly illustrated) don't seem to know exactly what this huge economic machine is really all about.  Ultimately, the global economy seems strangely devoid of humans--and this might, just might, be a problem.

As complex and abstract as the economy seems, it's critical to realize that it's all a human creation and the result of human meanings, values, desires, choices, politics and decisions.  Economists tend to make a lot of abstract assumptions about individuals in order to build their models about the relationship between human behavior economic systems.  But what gets lost when humanity is reduced to self-interested hypothetical assumption?  What details about real human behavior are obscured when an entire discipline is built around theoretical, idealized humans?

This is where anthropology can--and should--come into the picture.  Despite the fact that economists and anthropologists happen to cover some similar territories, there isn't much discussion between the two.  Maybe there was some conversation between the two back in the heyday of the formalist-substantivist debate...but these days?  Not so much.  And it is certainly the economists who are promulgated as the "experts" when it comes to the ways in which humans engage in buying, selling, producing, and consuming goods, ideas, and services.  The general public usually doesn't think about anthropologists when they hear the word economy--although they should.  But this is going to require some renewed work and effort on the part of anthropologists to get that message out.  Certaain folks like Gillian Tett and Karen Ho--to name just a few recent examples--are leading that charge.  Hopefully, those sorties into the territory of the economists is just the beginning. 

Why does this even matter?  What do anthropologists really have to bring to the table when it comes to discussions about the economy, human nature, consumption, and desire?  Everything.  Economics is not just a bunch of models and formulas--it's about people.  And if there's anything that anthropologists can bring to the discussion about the meanings and complexities of economics, it's a human perspective.  This is precisely the point that Chris Hann and Keith Hart make in their latest book "Economic Anthropology".  They argue--convincingly--for the need to development a way of investigating economics that explores the rich, complex details of actual human behaviors:

Whereas rational choice theorists emphasize the individual, in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe, and believe that even decisions to cooperate with others are ultimately to be explained as the outcomes of individual calculation, the emphasis in speaking of the 'human economy' is on persons, whose preferences and and choices are sometimes shaped by calculation, but usually also by the familial, social and political contexts in which humans are enmeshed or embedded (2010:9).

On that note, this issue of anthropologies is all about "taking anthropology to economics" and making a few steps toward putting humanity back into discussions about economics.  This month features posts by Jeffrey H. Cohen, Toby Austin Locke, Jason Antrosio, and yours truly.  I am also sharing a few photographs from my pre-economic crash landscape series that I took back in 2006, just before the global economy took a free market dive into the abyss.  Thanks to everyone who took time out of their summers to take part in this issue--I really appreciate your contributions!  I hope you all enjoy this issue, and don't hesitate to comment and make your opinion heard!

R.A.

References

Hann, Chris and Keith Hart
2010  Economic Anthropology.  Cambridge: Polity Press.

Model Behaviors

Near the end of her ethnography Contesting the Commons, Carolyn Lesorogol discusses some of the limitations of ethnography. She argues that while ethnographic research can obtain fine-grained and highly contextual information, “its very specificity makes it difficult to generalize, within or beyond a community” (Lesorogol 2008: 199). This shortcoming is often seen as a severe limitation for the applicability of ethnographic research to wider social problems and comparisons. How can larger theoretical conclusions be made from ethnography if there is no way to compare different sets of data? “To draw more general conclusions about behavior,” writes Lesorogol, “we require methods that enable us to control for local differences, as far as possible, in order to detect underlying patterns of behavior” (Lesorogol 2008: 199). Lesorogol’s answer to this problem: experimental economics.

In order to find a way to compare the behaviors of different groups of people, Lesorogol conducts field experiments using local participants in northern Kenya. She uses money as an incentive to gauge economic behaviors among individuals from the communities of Siambu and Mbarington (Lesorogol 2008: 198). The tests consisted of a series of “games” that were patterned after the MacArthur Foundation research that was conducted in “fifteen small-scale communities across the globe” (Lesorogol 2008: 201). The underlying assumption that Lesorogol (and the MacArthur researchers) make is that the behaviors exhibited in these experimental games are somehow transferable to other social and economic behaviors. This assumption is not clearly explained or justified.

Using similar methodologies and assumptions on another project, Henrich and McElreath (who worked on the MacArthur project and also conducted experimental economic games), write: “we think that the decisions in our model bear some resemblance—in terms of the framing of gains and losses—to the actual cropping decisions that farmers make” (Heinrich and McElreath 2002: 179). Neither Lesorogol nor Heinrich and McElreath explain why it makes sense to assume that context specific behaviors exhibited during these “games” should actually tell us anything about wider economic decision making practices. In a critical essay about Henrich’s use of experimental economics in a similar case, anthropologist Michael Chibnik writes, “The evidence that experimental play often mirrors interaction patterns in daily life is soft by the rigorous standards that the project contributors extol” (Chibnik 2005: 204). Chibnik concludes his essay by stating that the study “tells readers a lot about the reasons for cross-cultural variations” in how people engage in experimental economics games—and not much else (Chibnik 2005: 207).

Despite the fact that experimental economics was originally designed as a means for gaining a better understanding of human universals, in practice they often end up eroding and challenging the very universalist foundations upon which they are built. This was the case in Lesorogol’s research, although she argues that her use of experimental economics was intentionally designed to illustrate “how games can enhance understanding of a localized process of institutional change” (2008: 218). Considering Lesorogol’s earlier arguments about the need for cross-cultural and generalizable data, her conclusions and rationalizations about how she actually implemented the games seem like an afterthought. If she was really just looking to elicit context-specific cultural behavior, why use a generalizing method? Why not, as Chibnik argues, use classic ethnographic methods?

Regardless, Lesorogol’s data ends up illustrating the importance of both culture and context. The participants in Lesorogol’s experimental games clearly filtered their understandings of the games through particular cultural frameworks. In some of the games Lesorogol conducted, participants’ understandings of “ownership” strongly influenced their ensuing conduct in those games. As Lesorogol explains, “Even though the wording of the instructions is clear—the money is given to both players—the fact that Player One gains physical possession of the money and is given the right to decide on the split creates a situation of virtual ownership by Player One” (Lesorogol 2008: 217). This calls into question the cross-cultural value of any experimental games—whether conducted by Lesorogol or any one else. Why? Because the assumption that everyone will understand the situations and meanings of the games equally and comparably is just that—an assumption.

As Chibnik writes, “The isolation of a few variables for analytic purposes in experimental research is diametrically opposed to an entrenched tradition of holistic studies in anthropology in which attempts are made to consider the complex interactions of many variables” (2005: 202). Severe methodological and theoretical problems can arise with such economistic methods. One problem is the fact that the very assumptions of models can ultimately shape the data that they are designed to explain. By limiting research to a small set of pre-selected categories, the realities of the social group under study can become so abstracted that they lose any actual real world relevance. The danger with models is that it is all too easy to mistake them for the phenomena under study, as is illustrated by a passage from Henrich and McElreath:

From this perspective, farmers are risk-averse because of the concave shape of their utility curves. In contrast, risk neutral farmers would have straight-line utility curves and always prefer the option with higher expected income/wealth. Risk-prone farmers would have convex utility curves (accelerating upward instead of decelerating downward) and prefer options with more variation, even when the expected income from a high-variance option is less from than a low-variance option (Henrich and McElreath 2002: 172-173).

Are these farmers actually reacting according to a utility curve, or is the curve merely a way of explaining their actions? Is it accurate to describe human behavior in terms of “utility curves”? At what point do these kinds of analytical categories and modes of analysis become completely irrelevant? Should there be any concern for how well these tools actually align with the actual categories that real people use to describe their own behaviors? These questions strike at the heart of the objectivist methodological tendencies that pervade the research of many economists and other mathematically minded social scientists. Of course, the problem goes far beyond the tendency to describe human behavior in these sorts of terms. The deeper issue is when actual human tendencies are conflated with the models that social scientists construct. This is the sort of issue that crops up when economists start talking about the reality of a generalized human "rationality" that adheres to particular cultural and historical ideals.

Divorced from all cultural and historical contexts, economistic models are quite “risk-prone” to reification. The conclusion of Henrich and McElreath’s 2002 paper is a wonderful illustration of the problems and dangers of reification. After a lengthy discussion and analysis of the games they conducted, Henrich and McElreath conclude, “it could very well be that humans have some predisposition toward taking risky monetary gambles” (Heinrich and McElreath 2002: 180). In short, after conducting a series of what were little more than tests that involved gambling, the authors wrap up their paper by making assumptions about human behavior based only upon possibilities that were determined by the researchers themselves. The reasoning behind this conclusion is that since most of the non-western participants were more willing to take risks in the games, there must therefore be some deeper human predisposition toward risky gambling. This evolutionary argument about human cognition and behavior is based upon the idea that Westerners, with a long history of interaction in market systems, have “acquired, via social learning, rules and preferences for dealing with risky monetary situations” (Henrich and McElreath 2002: 180). Obviously, the authors conveniently left Las Vegas (and the housing market in California) out of their model of Western society.

By eliminating or ignoring relevant cultural and historical factors that might explain their results, Henrich and McElreath only find answers that stem from the factors they deem (for whatever reason) relevant for consideration. Like a structuralist argument that assumes binary oppositions in human cognition and results in binary-based explanations, economically oriented models conveniently often result (only) in economic conclusions. This is a problem that Pierre Bourdieu criticized when he wrote, “if one fails to recognize any form of action other than rational action or mechanical reaction, it is impossible to understand the logic of all the actions that are reasonable without being the product of a reasoned design, still less of rational calculation” (Bourdieu 1990: 50). As Wilk and Cliggett argue, for Bourdieu human behavior can only be understood empirically through the observation and analysis of real world situations (2007: 186). What does this mean? It means that cultural, historical, and social factors cannot be dismissed in favor of calculatingly efficient, yet semantically barren, economic models. Efficiency is great and all, but what use is an efficient model that has little to do with empirical reality?

Ryan Anderson

*This post was originally published here.


References

Bourdieu, Pierre.
1990  The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Chibnik, Michael
2005  “Experimental economics in anthropology: A critical assessment. American Ethnologist, Vol 32(2): 198-209.

Henrich, Joseph, and Richard McElreath
2002  “Are Peasants Risk-Averse Decision Makers?” Current Anthropology Vol. 43 (1): 172-181.

Lesorogol, Carolyn K.
2008  Contesting the Commons. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Anthropology and the Economists Without History

In titling his book Europe and the People without History, Eric Wolf was of course being ironic: Wolf’s project restored history to people Europe had cast as trapped in a timeless past. But what about people who deliberately erase, distort, and forget their own history? In this piece I argue this is what economists have been doing since the 1970s. Neo-classical economics engaged in a history-erasing project, in part to bury their previous marginalization within the discipline. By restoring history to the economists, we may be able to have “critical conversations that genuinely cut in both directions” as Charles Stafford (2011) enjoined.

1. There is no direct line from classical to neo-classical economics

For many years economists have taken a few famous snippets from Adam Smith and painted him as the essence of laissez faire market economics, the direct ancestor of economists everywhere. It is only recently that a much richer picture of Adam Smith has emerged--as economist Herbert Stein famously wrote, “Adam Smith did not wear an Adam Smith necktie” (1994).

Although The Wealth of Nations from 1776 is Smith’s most famous book, it is now clear Smith considered his first major book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), to be equally important and necessary to the kind of society he promoted. The Theory of Moral Sentiments has been republished in 2009 by Penguin Classics, and contains an important introduction by Amartya Sen. Sen’s introduction is very instructive for recapturing Smith’s richness and understanding how neoclassical economics might be considered an impoverishment rather than an elaboration of Smith.

Within this wider context, some of the snippets from Smith--such as the oft-repeated “invisible hand”--take on different meanings. In his many pages of writings, Smith only used the phrase “invisible hand” two times in reference to economic activities. For Smith, market rationality and the invisible hand only worked if there was adequate awareness of moral sentiments and a capacity for sympathy with other human beings. Some prominent economists have even argued that the “invisible hand” does not actually refer to self-regulated markets, but to the state, or the legal framework for structuring markets.

Finally, even in The Wealth of Nations, a full reading of the text makes it clear Smith provides ample room for a variety of government interventions, including not just defense and justice, but also for public works, education, health, and community welfare. Smith also endorsed a quite malleable view of human nature, with basic human capacities shaped by the conditions of life:

The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education. (Smith 1986:120; see also Peart and Levy 2005)

In short, Smith did not give birth to neo-classical economics--rather, neo-classical economics claimed Smith, attenuating his rich and wide-ranging observations for the purposes of a much narrower project.

2. Before the 1970s, neo-classical approaches were not hegemonic within economics

In reaching back to claim an attenuated Adam Smith, neo-classical economists were also seeking to erase and deny the importance of other economic approaches. It is a very little known history--even for most economists--that until the 1970s, neo-classical approaches were not hegemonic within the discipline. In fact, neo-classical economists were quite likely to feel marginalized and ignored. This is documented in a new book by Malcolm Rutherford, The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918-1947: Science and Social Control (2011). Rutherford argues that although institutionalism has been portrayed as a sideshow or fringe element, institutionalist approaches were very much part of the economic mainstream and may have even been dominant during this period.

The institutionalist economists were more like anthropologists--they were committed to empirical research and they felt economics should be based on a holistic and cross-disciplinary understanding of human complexity. Economists like Clarence E. Ayres explicitly linked the institutionalist movement to anthropology and the social basis of human nature: “Human beings are not what they are in any intelligible sense of the phrase ‘by nature.’ Human beings are social phenomena. Social patterns are not the logical consequents of individual acts; individuals, and all their actions, are the logical consequents of social patterns” (1951:49).

When a narrower model of Homo economicus re-emerged triumphant in the 1970s, the neo-classical economists sought to bury and erase any vestiges of institutionalism or heterodoxy. But this is not because neo-classical approaches were always dominant--instead, the virulent triumphalism (and missionary zeal) of neo-classical economists was rooted in prior marginalization.

Even within the mainstream neo-classical canon, there are sometimes unexpected motivations and purposes. Consider this declaration from Frank H. Knight, a founder of the Chicago School of economics:

It ought to be the highest objective in the study of economics to hasten the day when the study and the practice of economy will recede into the background of men’s thoughts, when food and shelter, and all provision for physical needs, can be taken for granted without serious thought, when “production” and “consumption” and “distribution” shall cease from troubling and pass below the threshold of consciousness and the effort and planning of the mass of mankind may be mainly devoted to problems of beauty, truth, right human relations and cultural growth. (Knight 1933)

It may indeed be important to reacquaint economists with this highest objective.

3. Contemporary economists still like Keynes

The neo-classical zeal to eradicate other ways of doing economics was quite effective. However, as a recent survey of academic economists revealed “the top-rated 20th century economist was Keynes, followed closely by Milton Friedman” (Wight 2011). Some other surprises from the graphs: Karl Marx rates at #5 for a favorite pre-twentieth century economist, and Paul Krugman is by far #1 for top-rated economists under age 60. There may be more existing heterogeneity within the academic profession of economics than might be readily apparent.

Many anthropologists receive a caricature of economics. This caricature has been promoted by neo-classical economists, who sought dominance and the erasure of heterogeneous approaches. Restoring a fuller history can help to promote a rapprochement between anthropology and economics.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, “Teaching the History of Political Economy” (Duke University, 2010) for much of this material. I particularly drew on seminar participants Jack Weinstein for new approaches to Adam Smith (see Weinstein 2001) and Craufurd Goodwin for introducing the insitutionalist movement.

Although the Summer Institute emphasized historical and heterogeneous approaches to economics, I also learned most economists are not ready for the kinds of meta-critique or reflexivity common in anthropology. As historian of economics Roy Weintraub writes, “economists appear to believe that there is a tangible object of study called ‘the economy’, and that facts and evidence and data derived from that economic reality can be used by economists to construct theories, while those theories themselves can be confronted by the data” (1999:149). Attempts to challenge such beliefs, or to show how a sphere like “the economy” has a constructed history, can be met with derision.

Jason Antrosio
Living Anthropologically

Sources

Ayres, Clarence E. 1951. The Co-Ordinates of Institutionalism. American Economic Review 41 (2):47-55.

Knight, Frank H. 1933. The Economic Organization.

Peart, Sandra J., and David M. Levy. 2005. The "Vanity of the Philosopher": From Equality to Hierarchy in Postclassical Economics. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rutherford, Malcolm. 2011. The Institutionalist Movement in American Economics, 1918-1947: Science and Social Control. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Adam. 1986. The Wealth of Nations: Books 1-3. London: Penguin Books.

------. 2009. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. New York: Penguin Books.

Stafford, Charles. 2011. Living with the Economists. Anthropology of this Century, Issue 1, http://aotcpress.com/articles/living-with-economists/.

Stein, Herbert. 1994. Adam Smith Did Not Wear an Adam Smith Necktie. Wall Street Journal, April 6.

Weinstein, Jack Russell. 2001. On Adam Smith: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Weintraub, E. Roy. 1999. How Should We Write the History of Twentieth Century Economics? Oxford Review of Political Economy 15 (4):139-152.

Wight, Jonathan B. 2011. Economics Professors' Favorite Economic Thinkers. May 14. http://www.economicsandethics.org/2011/05/economics-professors-favorite-economic-thinkers.html.

Wolf, Eric R. 1982. Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Economic Anthropology

People are typically surprised when I describe myself as an “economic anthropologist.” Once we move past the silliness of, “yes, I really don’t study dinosaurs or chase Nazis through Egypt” I usually have enough time to describe my special corner of the field. In a nutshell, economic anthropology takes the best of economics and anthropology and creates a hybrid that allows for the investigation of economic behavior as it is lived and practiced.

When I think about my history as an economic anthropologist I recall a conversation with Roger Janelli (a folklorist who specializes in Korea). Roger reminded me “there is no economy without people.” I start my course in Economic Anthropology with that truism, yet it never fails to surprises me when students believe that there is an economy to be discovered and that it has little or nothing to do with social or cultural life.

Melville Herskovits described economic life as “essentially based on the broader organization of society” (1965 [1940]:7), and it is from that position that most contemporary economic anthropologists begin. We realize the importance of cultural beliefs and social practices and understand that beliefs and practices are balanced against decision making and maximizing. We see individuals as “economic actors” who are involved in making choices; the best choices they can. Balancing needs, wants, beliefs, social practices and the various realms (home and the market or the private and the public) we inhabit, decisions may seem odd to the outsider but the economic anthropologist asks the questions necessary to interpret and translate what is going on.

Economic anthropologists focus a good deal of our work around three areas: production, exchange, and consumption and it might seem fairly simple to ask:

How does a social group produce what it wants, needs, and desires?

How are those goods exchanged?

How are those goods consumed?

In fact, these are difficult questions. Whether we study farmers or foragers, industrial capitalists or the indigenous of a place, the utilitarian and immediate meaning and role of goods (whether produced, exchanged, or consumed) is only a small part of what we want to know. What makes economic anthropology exciting is the energy we bring to looking beyond utilitarian models (see Wilk 2002: 243) as we rethink and focus on the complex nature of production, exchange, and consumption, and the link between consumption and culture, symbolism and the individual.

Economic anthropologists continue to focus their efforts on new issues and bring new perspectives to debates. Economic anthropologists are critical players as we focus on economic relationships that are not male, public, and seemingly rational. We are engaged with discussions of globalization, transnationalism, development, and economic institutions including the stock markets, multinational corporations, and health care. Ecology, landscape, and environment also influence and guide our studies as we define the complex ways in which our lives are intertwined with the world we live in.

Our interests and methods have shifted from categorizing economic behavior to looking at outcomes and processes that define economic space for individuals, communities, businesses, and social groups. We’ve also started to apply the tools of economic anthropology, tools forged in the analysis of rural, tribal peoples (those anthropological populations) to new and heretofore understudied settings--board rooms, stock markets, and the like. To understand the economy doesn’t just mean we should study it; rather, we are in the unique and enviable position to “anthropologize” it (see Eric Wolf 1997). In other words, to look at the social and cultural basis of economic behavior.

Jeffrey H. Cohen

The Ohio State University

References

Herskovits, Melville J.

1965 [1940] Economic Anthropology: The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Wilk, Richard R.

2002 When Good Theories Go Bad: Theory in Economic Anthropology and Consumer Research. In Theory in Economic Anthropology. J. Ensminger, ed. Pp. 239-250, Vol. 18. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.

Wolf, Eric R.

1997 Europe and the People Without History. Berkeley: University of California Press.

The Economy

Taking anthropology to economics is always a difficult task; the two disciplines appear to have immense difficulty in communicating, understanding and empathizing with one another. That being said, this may well be due to the fact that, to my mind at least, there is something inherently and majorly wrong with the very idea of economic anthropology: the very fact that this academic subsection exists in the first place.

It seems to me that one of the first findings of ethnographic and anthropological endeavour was that 'The Economy' does not exist; or rather, it is merely a collective form of subjectivity, an expression of social relations. Malinowski, Durkhiem and Mauss, to provide three traditional examples, all express how 'The Economy' is nothing more than a superficial expression of deeper underlying human activity. Marx certainly pulls no punches in showing how 'The Economy' is nothing more than the persona of human sociability. And yet, anthropologists insist in setting it aside from the rest of their work, giving us the economic anthropology of this and that place or group; constructing a 'third sector', 'plural economy' or 'informal economy' — in essence reaffirming the existence of an entity to be named 'The Economy', working within its frame work rather than expanding and exploring the spaces in-between.

Further, it produces a separatistic polycentrism, similar to that of the historical uses of the culture concept, the collective or the ethnographic present. The idea of one or multiple economies seeks to delimit human action; assign it to a specific spatio-temporal location or conceptual territory. For a man such as Foucault, this would certainly be seen as an act of individualisation and normalisation. 'The Economy', as a concept and term, has become a means of producing a taxonomy of human action; a taxonomy which is enforced upon reality rather than being empirically derivative.

Such a notion equally implies a collective unity of the Hobbesian variety, a general will or covenant of mankind; it suggests that all those who act within the economy do so according to some overarching and unifying totality which controls, or rather affects, their actions. The recent work conducted by many of the Autonomists has shown us the dangers of such a notion of unity and its potential implications. This issue returns to the Hobbes verses Spinoza, collective verses multitude, dilemma; the idea of a group of individuals unified by one common goal against the idea of a multitude of singularities, affective, intertwined and never to be in total unity. 'The Economy' works on the assumption of a unity of individuals, a collective, a general will. To my mind such a unity is already problematic and any concept which makes use of it as its foundation requires readressal.

There is certainly something quite specific about human interactions which involve exchange. However, I feel the anthropological view of human exchange has become tainted by the green tinted glasses of western capitalism. I feel it is time to try our hardest to remove these frames, smash them, and look deeper for another perspective-- one which has potentially already been provided by some of the earliest ethnographers and social theorists.

There are few historians that make anthropologists weak at the knees quite like Karl Polanyi and E.P Thompson; and admittedly both of these individuals would be defined as economic historians. However in their works — as with those of the early anthropologists and ethnographers — one of the central messages is that what 'The Economy' appears to be doing is not in isolation and is in fact simply part of a wider series of affective and causal relations. Both their works demonstrate how in order to understand modes of societal individuation and collective action one cannot exclusively consider a conceptually delimited area such as 'The Economy', for it is not an entity in its own right.

Of course anthropology is a holistic discipline and as such must examine all areas of human existence, but as a holistic discipline should it not examine all at once rather than performing an academic division of labour which produces 'economic anthropologists of Africa' and 'political anthropologists of Europe'? To my mind, through this sub-division of labour anthropology is producing an exaggerated economic, cultural, political polycentrism — a engendering of ethnocentrism — an arborescent system in which each point is only definable in relational reciprocity to another or to its unifying pure totality.

There is a danger in the notion of 'The Economy', and the utilitarian rational action theory which goes with it, that it may become a reified objective totality; predicative of reality rather than derivative. It is devoid of any falsifiability and may act as a referential axis to explain all human action, a totality enforced upon case studies in order than they fit preordained conceptual models. It is this inherent attribute of economic action which allows Derrida to de-construct the notion of gift giving. 'The Economy' may become to social theory what Oedipus became to psycho-analysis.

If recent events have taught us anything, it's that the so-called 'Economy' relies upon a paradox of performativity — even the stock traders, investment bankers and centralised banking institutions don't really know how it works, what it is or in what manner to go about controlling it. Surely, if it wasn't clear before, it is even clearer now that this idea of 'The Economy' is nothing more than an expression of collective modes of subjectivity and subjectification which remain under-studied and not fully understood.

Of course I am not suggesting that anthropology should simply ignore those human relations which involve exchange or money; as a holistic discipline it cannot make such massive oversights. Rather, what I am trying to suggest is some form of new approach, one which would expel both the term economy from the anthropological lexicon and the idea from its conceptual framework. Such an approach, I envision, would perceive action which currently becomes tagged as 'economic' as an extension of larger, more interwoven and affective modes of collective subjectivity rather than somehow separated into an alternate academic, ethnographic domain. I don't see the development of such an approach as easy, or even achievable by one person, but it is certainly not impossible and maybe, just maybe, it could produce fruitful results; results which go beyond the taxonomy of exaggerated polycentrism.

Toby Austin Locke

Before the economic crash

Economic ideas and philosophies may seem abstract, but they can also lead to some undeniably concrete material changes on social and geographic landscapes.  Back in 2006, I was working in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) archaeology in Southern California.  This was right about the time when the housing market peaked--and development projects were everywhere.  This included golf courses, roads, power lines, hotels, and of course housing projects.  In one sense, CRM is all about archaeology, history, and preservation.  In another sense, however, it is merely one small bureaucratic link in a larger developmentalist machine--I suppose it all depends on where you stand.  

Between 2004 and 2006 I worked on several projects throughout San Diego County, and would often take photographs of some of the development projects and changing landscapes that were all around the project sites.  One of the strongest memories I have from those years is seeing the sheer scale of some of the housing developments and wondering how they were even feasible.  There were tract home development projects out in Eastern San Diego that were massive--and I am talking about the size (and price) of the individual houses.  Some of them (see the third image below for an example) were listed as high as $800,000 to one million dollars if my memory serves me right--and these were tract homes!  I wondered then who could afford to put of the capital investment for such developments, and, more importantly, who had the money to buy such a house.  

Well, the meltdown of the global economy and the collapse of the real estate market in places like Southern California answered some of my questions: nobody, really, had that kind of money.  So, while I was technically out doing archaeological survey work, I was also witness to some of the material evidence of a massive financial bubble.  Here are a just a few photographs from the days when I was walking on the edges of investment, development, growth, and economic disaster.

Suburban neighborhood not far from Del Mar, CA.  2006.

Housing development project slicing into the side of foothills, eastern San Diego County.  2006.

New Housing development east of Poway, CA.  2006.

Golf course development, North San Diego County.  2006.

New housing development on top of former landfill.  Eastern Oceanside, CA.  2006.

Golf course development #2, North San Diego County.  2006.

Housing pads awaiting future homes.  East of Poway, CA.  2006.