Introduction

Stephen Gudeman

In this book, we have approached these issues by asking a new question. Why is economics persuasive? How does it convince us? Or, what persuades us to participate in everyday economic life? We are not asking about the persuasions given by market incentives or about individuals balancing rewards and costs in their decisions, as in the language of economists, but about the persuasions of economy that stimulate, focus, cajole, and invite us to act in certain ways. This rhetoric is public and private, as well as spoken, written, and acted. Such persuasions oft en lie hidden in the gap between economics and anthropology.

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Simplicity in Economic Anthropology

Persuasion, Form, and Substance

James G. Carrier

Taking such a view separates rhetorical form from communicative substance. This separation of form and substance is familiar in Western academic thought, but, on closer inspection, it is not always so clear. This chapter presents a case where that separation dissolves. It does so by considering simplicity in intellectual debate. On its face, simplicity is a matter of form rather than sub stance, and it is potent rhetoric: simple arguments and pithy aphorisms appeal, it seems, in and of themselves. However, simplicity is not only formal, for it is associated with some substantive positions.

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When Rhetoric Becomes Mass Persuasion

The Case of the Concept of Interest

Richard Swedberg

This story has a macro dimension as well as a micro dimension; and in this article, I will focus on the latter. I am more concerned with the confusion caused by ideology intruding on other disciplines than with the evolution of neoliberalism and why there exists a certain affinity between its ideas and those in the economics profession. By taking a close look at one key concept in economics, interest, I propose to work out my argument about the spillover of economic ideas into political ideology.1 I will first show how economists appropriated and transformed the concept of interest for their own use, which they did very successfully; however, the product of their efforts was a singularly nonsocial concept of interest, which is not suitable for use in the other social sciences — even if the rhetoric has been persuasive.

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The New Social Science Imperialism and the Problem of Knowledge in Contemporary Economics

William Milberg

After describing these recent developments in economics, I will focus on some of the problems with the new empiricism as it has unfolded in contemporary research. I conclude with a discussion of the nature of the new intellectual imperialism of economics and of the particular conception of institutions that is emerging as central to the future of social inquiry.

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The Persuasions of Economics

Stephen Gudeman

Anthropologists, facing an invasion by other fields seeking to use its methodology, have increasingly turned to historical and literary perspectives. But each discipline remains persuasive; if anthropologists stay rooted to the idea of ethnography, or of what people say and do, much of economics offers the lure of simplicity, closure, and abstract models. These are different modes of persuasion. I want to explore these different rhetorical styles and epistemologies by focusing on the concept of property and some of the ways the two disciplines approach it. If I am not fully satisfied with the rhetoric of economics, it has much to do with the way I see economy itself.

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Conversations Between Anthropologists and Economists

Metin M. Cosgel

One of the recent productive approaches within the rhetorical tradition has been to view the economy and culture as consisting of conversations (Cosgel 1992, 1994, 1997; Cosgel and Klamer 1990; Cosgel and Minkler 2004; Gudeman and Rivera 1990; McCloskey and Klamer 1995; Strecker 1988). Adopting such an approach, this chapter will take not the firms, households, or tribes as the principal objective of analysis in both disciplines, but instead will focus on the conversations between these units. I view conversation as a purposeful activity, aimed at solving a problem. Dividing conversations into two groups based on the type of problems they aim to solve, I examine how economists and anthropologists differ systematically in their preferences and capabilities in studying these conversations and what consequences this difference has had for their own conversations across disciplines.

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"The Craving for Intelligibility"

Speech and Silence on the Economy under Structural Adjustment and Military Rule in Nigeria

Jane I. Guyer with LaRay Denzer

This chapter focuses on what Friedrich von Hayek considered the grave dangers of "the craving for intelligibility" (1944: 204) with respect to economic life. Hayek published The Road to Serfdom toward the end of a war that he saw as having profoundly entrenched centralized economic management in the state and in the hands of ideologues, with disastrous results for Germany and for the world. He argued not only against National Socialism, but also against the Keynesian formula for selective state intervention, and was in favor of a return to markets as soon as the war was over. To "submit" to markets was by far the lesser of evils, as "the refusal to submit to anything we cannot understand must lead to the destruction of our civilization" (Hayek 1944: 204).

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Mass-gifts

On Market Giving in Advanced Capitalist Societies

Nurit Bird-David and Asaf Darr

In this chapter, we focus on the rhetorical dimension of the classic anthropological distinction between "gifts" and "commodities" that goes back to Marcel Mauss' canonical essay "The Gift." Anthropologists previously discussed "gifts" and "commodities" as two substantial types of exchange, each involving a different setup of relations between the two sides to the transaction and between them and the object being exchanged. Our concern here, however, is with rhetoric in its classic sense as the art of persuasion, drawing on emotions, shared understanding, etc. Having noted the rhetorical distinction between gift and commodity, we chose to focus specifically on the usage of the notion of "gift " to persuade buyers in the Israeli and US market economies to buy various commodities.

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The Persuasive Power of Money

Keith Hart

In this chapter, I will try to account for money's power to influence our minds and social relations. It would be easy, but misleading, to argue that money's ability to persuade is a universal characteristic. The way money persuades is historically relative — very different for Adam Smith than for Maynard Keynes and even more for us who live in the digital revolution and the expansion of virtual society it entails. Moreover, the fetishism that grants money a quasiindependent role in human affairs needs to be exposed for what it is. People make and use money, not the other way round; but sometimes it feels like we are more acted upon than acting. Money conveys meanings at the same time as it negates them; it has — or is thought to have — both structure and agency at once.

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The Money Rhetoric in the United States

Ruben George Oliven

The United States is frequently depicted as a country where monetization — the increase in the proportion of all goods and services bought and sold by means of money — has taken place. Money has become a central value, and commoditization has fully extended to all spheres of life. In this sense, it vindicates Marx's idea of the Vergeldlichung (monetization) of society. In reality, this process is much more complex, as Zelizer (1994) has shown when she argues that there are different sort of monies such as gift certificates, Christmas savings accounts, and food stamps.

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The Third Way

A Cultural Economic Perspective

Arjo Klamer

Yet, there is another alternative. Of course, there is. The alternative of which I am thinking pictures society large — the entity that according to Margaret Thatcher, the former conservative British prime minister, does not exist. Call it a third way, if you wish — as long you do not associate the third way with Tony Blair, the labor prime minister, and his advisor, Anthony Giddens, which is about collaborations between the market and the state sectors. No, this third way is really a third way as it points at a most undervalued domain of value creation.

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