Gifts and Commodities

Gifts and Commodities

Author: James G. Carrier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-25

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1134816650

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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.


Last Best Gifts

Last Best Gifts

Author: Kieran Healy

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-08-15

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0226322386

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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.


Savage Money

Savage Money

Author: C.A. Gregory

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2005-08-02

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 1135299412

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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.


The Flow of Gifts

The Flow of Gifts

Author: Yunxiang Yan

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9780804726955

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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.


The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications

The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications

Author: Janet Wasko

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-03-21

Total Pages: 642

ISBN-13: 1444395394

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Over the last decade, political economy has grown rapidly as a specialist area of research and teaching within communications and media studies and is now established as a core element in university programmes around the world. The Handbook of Political Economy of Communications offers students and scholars a comprehensive, authoritative, up-to-date and accessible overview of key areas and debates. Combines overviews of core ideas with new case study materials and the best of contemporary theorization and research Written many of the best known authors in the field Includes an international line-up of contributors, drawn from the key markets of North and Latin America, Europe, Australasia, and the Far East


Price Wars

Price Wars

Author: Rupert Russell

Publisher: Doubleday

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 038554586X

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A fascinating, groundbreaking exposé of how commodity traders in New York and London have destabilized societies all over the world, leaving the most vulnerable at the mercy of hunger, chaos, and war. • With a new Afterword for the ebook. For Rupert Russell, the Brexit vote was only the latest shock in a decade full of them: the unstoppable war in Syria, huge migrant flows into Europe, beheadings in Iraq, children placed in cages on the U.S. border. In Price Wars, he sets out on a worldwide journey to investigate what caused the wave of chaos that consumed the world in the 2010s. Russell travels to Tunisia, Iraq, Venezuela, Ukraine, East Africa, and Central America and discovers that unrest in all these places was triggered by dramatic and mysterious swings in the price of essential commodities. Deregulation of the commodities markets means that food prices can shoot up even in years of abundant harvests, causing hunger and protest. Oil prices and real-estate values can surge even when supplies are normal, enriching and emboldening dictators. It is this instability--fueled by banks and hedge funds in faraway New York and London--that has toppled regimes and unsettled the West. Price Wars is a fascinating, original, and groundbreaking exposé of the power of the commodities markets to disrupt the world.


Gifts of Cooperation, Mauss and Pragmatism

Gifts of Cooperation, Mauss and Pragmatism

Author: Frank Adloff

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-10

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1317434943

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This book focuses on the contribution of Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) to social theory and a theory of cooperation. It shows that Mauss’s essay "The Gift" (1925) can be seen as a classic of a pragmatist, interactionist and anti-utilitarian sociology. It critiques the dichotomy of self-interest and normatively orientated action that forms the basis of sociology. This conceptual dichotomization has caused forms of social interaction (that cannot be localized either on the side of self-interest or on that of morality) to be overlooked or taken little notice of. The book argues that it is the logic of the gift and its reciprocity that accompany and structure all forms of interaction, from the social micro to the macro-level. It demonstrates that in modern societies agonistic and non-agonistic gifts form their own orders of interaction. This book uniquely establishes the paradigm of the gift as the basis for a theory of interaction. It will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates in social theory, cultural theory, political sociology and global cooperation, anthropology, philosophy and politics.


Gifts Cooks Love

Gifts Cooks Love

Author: Diane Morgan

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing

Published: 2010-09-28

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 0740793500

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In this beautifully presented book, Sur La Table and Diane Morgan offer something for every level of cook, providing 40 accessible recipes delivered with helpful kitchen tips and ingredient notes, as well as guidance for artfully wrapping and presenting these edible gifts.