Gifts and Commodities PDF Download

Author: Chris A. Gregory
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Author: James G. Carrier
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134816650
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Three hundred years ago people made most of what they used, or got it in trade from their neighbours. Now, no one seems to make anything, and we buy what we need from shops. Gifts and Commodities describes the cultural and historical process of these changes and looks at the rise of consumer society in Britain and the United States. It investigates the ways that people think about and relate to objects in twentieth-century culture, at how those relationships have developed, and the social meanings they have for relations with others. Using aspects of anthropology and sociology to describe the importance of shopping and gift-giving in our lives and in western economies, Gifts and Commodities: * traces the development of shopping and retailing practices, and the emergence of modern notions of objects and the self * brings together a wealth of information on the history of the retail trade * examines the reality of the distinctions we draw between the impersonal economic sphere and personal social sphere * offers a fully interdisciplinary study of the links we forge between ourselves, our social groups and the commodities we buy and give.

Author: C.A. Gregory
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1135299412
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This volume is not simply another general theory of world system. It is a theoretically and ethnographically informed collection of essays which opens up new questions through an examination of concrete cases, covering global and local questions of political economy.

Author: Robert Epstein
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786831708
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the most celebrated literary work of medieval England, portrays the culture of the late Middle Ages as a deeply commercial environment, replete with commodities and dominated by market relationships. However, the market is not the only mode of exchange in Chaucer’s world or in his poem. Chaucer’s Gifts reveals the gift economy at work in the tales. Applying important recent advances in anthropological gift theory, it illuminates and explains this network of exchanges and obligations. Chaucer’s Gifts argues that the world of the Canterbury Tales harbours deep commitments to reciprocity and obligation which are at odds with a purely commercial culture, and demonstrates how the market and commercial relations are not natural, eternal, or inevitable – an essential lesson if we are to understand Chaucer’s world or our own.

Author: Yunxiang Yan
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780804726955
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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In this study, the author examines the gift-giving and related social activities that pervade daily life in China, focusing on routine activities.

Author: Katherine Rupp
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804747040
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Gift-giving is extremely important in Japanese society, not only at personal and household levels, but at the national and macroeconomic levels as well. This book is the first in English to document the extraordinary scale, complexity, and variation of giving in contemporary Japan. Gift-Giving in Japan is based on eighteen months' fieldwork in the Tokyo metropolitan area, as well as short-term research in other parts of Japan. The core of the study is the experience of family representatives of different ages, classes, genders, occupations, neighborhoods, and religions. The author also interviewed experts, including the author of gift-giving etiquette books, Buddhist and Shinto priests, department store and funeral home employees, and workers at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market. She participated in neighborhood festivals, election rallies, house-building rites, and other ceremonies of which gift-giving was an integral part. Recent anthropological interest in drawing a strong contrast between commodities and gifts both reflects and reinforces the conception of the gift as part of the giver and the related distinction between the realm of the gift and the realm of the marketplace. The author argues that Japanese practices of giving and receiving challenge assumptions related to this idea of the gift.

Author: Caroline Bain
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118420748
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
A gold mine of information, insights and powerful tools to help you win big in today's commodities markets The recent fortunes made by investors in rare earth metals and gold are just two shining examples of what an extremely profitable investment class commodities can be. But with radical swings in price volatility (think oil) and the vagaries of global geopolitics, commodities also can be one of the trickiest arenas in which to play. Written by the Senior Commodities Editor for The Economist Intelligence Unit, this book provides you with a comprehensive, highly practical look at the commodities markets. In addition to covering major trends and key changes in the markets, both past and present, it supplies you with proven tools for analyzing and taking full advantage of this ever-changing asset class. Focuses specifically on natural commodities classes, such as natural resources and raw materials, both mineral and agricultural Explores trends in the consumption and production of the commodities in question as well as the changing markets for those goods Describes how commodities prices have changed historically and in recent years and how they are likely to change in future Arms investors with an array valuable tools for analyzing market movements, timing trades and tracking and predicting price volatility

Author: Kieran Healy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226322386
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
More than any other altruistic gesture, blood and organ donation exemplifies the true spirit of self-sacrifice. Donors literally give of themselves for no reward so that the life of an individual—often anonymous—may be spared. But as the demand for blood and organs has grown, the value of a system that depends solely on gifts has been called into question, and the possibility has surfaced that donors might be supplemented or replaced by paid suppliers. Last Best Gifts offers a fresh perspective on this ethical dilemma by examining the social organization of blood and organ donation in Europe and the United States. Gifts of blood and organs are not given everywhere in the same way or to the same extent—contrasts that allow Kieran Healy to uncover the pivotal role that institutions play in fashioning the contexts for donations. Procurement organizations, he shows, sustain altruism by providing opportunities to give and by producing public accounts of what giving means. In the end, Healy suggests, successful systems rest on the fairness of the exchange, rather than the purity of a donor’s altruism or the size of a financial incentive.

Author: Susan Leigh Foster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019093400X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Because dance materializes through and for people, because we learn to dance from others and often present dance to others, the moment of its transmission is one of dance's central and defining features. Valuing Dance looks at the occasion when dancing passes from one person to another as an act of exchange, one that is redolent with symbolic meanings, including those associated with its history and all the labor that has gone into its making. It examines two ways that dance can be exchanged, as commodity and as gift, reflecting on how each establishes dance's relative worth and merit differently. When and why do we give dance? Where and to whom do we sell it? How are such acts of exchange rationalized and justified? Valuing Dance poses these questions in order to contribute to a conversation around what dance is, what it does, and why it matters.

Author: Lewis Hyde
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307279502
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Examines the concept of gifts in anthropological terms and uses this approach to analyze the situation of creative artists and their gifts to society.