ENGLISH

Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams

By David Graeber

Book information

Publisher
Palgrave
Year
2001
ISBN
0312240449, 9780312299064, 9780312240448, 0312240457, 9780312240455
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1153926 bytes)
Pages
352\352
Scanned
yes
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

Description

This innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of quandaries in current social theory that have become critical at a time of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, who represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical process, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making that far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.

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