Some notes towards a human economy approach

Historical Social Research, 2018

This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, the focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2006

Economic geographies involve the struggle to consume, exchange and produce value through the social construction of material circuits of value capable of being sustained across space and time. They are performed and practised through a constant tension between certain material imperatives of societal reproduction, the potentially infinite, day-today variability of economic practice, social relations and conceptions of value, and the regulatory and calculable frame of 'the economy'. Thus economic geographies are subject to more-or less-politically reflexive modes of evaluation and regulation involving multiple, simultaneously-practised forms and relations of value. They are, therefore, part and parcel of everyday social life, always hybrid and always in a state of becoming. Three vignettes illustrate economic geographies as complex social practices with a constant tendency to incoherence. They demonstrate, thereby, the ordinariness of economies.

Suomen Antropologi, 2011

The author has always been sceptical about the use of value theory in anthropology. Here he considers its scope in relation to a project linked to the publication of The Human Economy: A Citizen's Guide in 2010. This international project, which aims to develop an alternative to free market economics, is outlined briefly. The main source for the present lecture is Marx's theory of the commodity as value-form. This leads to an examination of the concept of commoditization which is defined as a quasi-historical sequence, the progressive abstraction of social labour. The approaches of Marx and Mauss must be reconciled if we are to bring Marx's value theory up-to-date. Four main points are identified as showing how the human economy project might benefit from the previous discussion of value. The lecture concludes with some remarks on the significance of value theory for anthropologists.

Configurações, 2020

The aim of this course is threefold: First, to introduce a wide array of topics related to economic practices in capitalism and other social/economic systems. The aim is to show students of social sciences and humanities that 'the economy' is not something abstract, distant and complex but rather something that we experience in our everyday interactions and that is tightly intertwined with local social and cultural practices even in a globalised world. By the end of the course, you will not be saying, "I know nothing about the economy". You will also be looking at your everyday interactions around working, buying, selling and relating to other humans in a new way. You will be able to look at existing social structures and norms critically and be inspired by ethnographic examples, utopian thinking and alternative political practices to think of novel social solutions.

Sustainability

Ecological economics has relied too much on priorities and institutional conventions defined by the high energy/throughput era of social democracy. Future research should focus on the political economy of a survival unit (Elias) based upon Livelihood as counterbalance to both State and Market. Drawing on the work of Polanyi, Elias, Gellner and Ong, capitalist modernization is analyzed in terms of the emergence of a society of individuals and the replacement of the survival units of place-bound bound family and community by one in which the State acts in concert with the Market. The operation of welfare systems is shown to depend upon ongoing economic growth and a continual flow of fiscal resources. The politics of this survival unit depends upon high levels of mutual identification and an affective-cognitive ‘we imaginary’. Increasing diversity, a political rejection of nationalism as a basis for politics and limits to economic growth, are likely to present an existential threat to ...

A discussion of what is a "human economy", what are "social currencies", comparing and contrasting theories of non-market economies.

Counterfutures

This commentary was invited by the special editors of this issue and is partly based on the Community Economies session that the four authors organised at the Social Movements Conference III: Resistance and Social Change in Wellington, 2016. In the Community Economies session we reviewed the diverse-economies framework and showed how it translates into a politics grounded in economic difference, specifically non-capitalist economic practices. We gave various examples of how people enrol different practices into the formation of community economies that prioritise ethical interdependence among people and with the planet. In what follows we briefly outline some key theoretical underpinnings of Community Economies scholarship, and then provide some reflections on the questions asked during the 2016 conference session.

History of the Human Sciences, 2013

The article expounds the ordo-liberal tradition that emerged as a distinct neo-liberal conceptualization of free economy as a political practice. According to this tradition there are things more important than GDP in as much as free economy depends on the formation of the moral and the social preconditions of market freedom. The social facilitation and moral embedding of free economy are fundamental to the ordo-liberal conception of a human economy, which entails a social policy of Vitalpolitik – a politics of life. Particularly at a time of manifest economic crisis and austerity, the social and moral veracity of economic liberty depends thus on the exercise of strong state authority.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2006

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Vibrant: Virtual Brazilian Anthropology, 2014

In Latin languages, the words economy and economics are one and the same, as in the Portuguese economia. The composite economy/ics reflects an approach that takes economic practices, institutions and social spaces (the economy) and theoretical ideas about the economy (economics) to be interrelated and mutually constitutive spheres, rather than discrete epistemo-

Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift, 2011

In the artcle's first part, the global economic crisis that began with the banking collapse of 2008 is attributed to the end of the system of money that dominated the twentieth century, «national capitalism». This entails the break-up on «all-purpose money» or national monopoly currency and its replacement by a distributed global network of financial agencies issuing specialized monetary instruments in multiple forms. The political challenge is to devise forms of government adequate to controlling money in this new form. But the old ideas persist to the detriment of finding effective solutions. The artcle's second part takes off from the recent publication of The Human Economy: A Citizen's Guide, an international collaboration that grew out of the «alter-globalization» movement. A human economy gives priority to what people really do and has the interests of humanity as a whole in mind. A programme for building a human economy in the current historical context is outlined; and the prospects for economic anthropology after the financial crisis considered briefly in conclusion.