Series
Volume 3
Studies in Rhetoric and Culture
See Related
Anthropology JournalsEmail Newsletters
Sign up for our email newsletters to get customized updates on new Berghahn publications.
Economic Persuasions
Edited by Stephen Gudeman
238 pages, 3 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-84545-436-4 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (June 2009)
ISBN 978-0-85745-663-2 $34.95/£27.95 / Pb / Published (June 2012)
eISBN 978-1-84545-926-0 eBook
Reviews
“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
Description
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.
Stephen Gudeman received his PhD in Anthropology from Cambridge University and his MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and has carried out fieldwork in Panama, Colombia, Guatemala, and Cuba. He works at the intersection of anthropology and economics. His books include The Anthropology of Economy (Blackwell), Conversations in Colombia, with Alberto Rivera (Cambridge University Press), Economics as Culture (Routledge), The Demise of a Rural Economy (Routledge), and Economy’s Tension (Berghahn).
Subject: Theory and MethodologyPolitical and Economic Anthropology
An interview of the economic anthropologist Stephen Gudeman, talking about his life and work. Filmed on 14th May 2010 by Alan Macfarlane and summary by Sarah Harrison. Generously supported by the Leverhulme Trust.