The Social life of things : commodities in cultural perspective / edited by Arjun Appadurai. - Cambridge [Cambridgeshire] ; New York : Cambridge University Press, c1986. - xiv, 329 p. ; 24 cm.

Three of the papers were presented to the Ethnohistory Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania during 1983-84; the others were presented at a Symposium on the Relationship between Commodities and Culture, held May 23-25, 1984, in Philadelphia.

Part I. Toward an anthropology of things: 1. Introduction: commodities and the politics of value Arjun Appadurai
2. The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process Igor Kopytoff
Part II. Exchange, Consumption, and Display: 3. Two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands William H. Davenport
4. Newcomers to the world of goods: consumption among the Muria Gonds Alfred Gell
Part III. Prestige, Commemoration, and Value: 5. Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric Europe Colin Renfrew
6. Sacred commodities: the circulation of medieval relics Patrick Geary
Part IV. Production Regimes and the Sociology of Demand: 7. Weavers and dealers: the authenticity of an oriental carpet Brian Spooner
8. Qat: changes in the production and consumption of a quasilegal commodity in northeast Africa Lee V. Cassanelli
Part V. Historical Transformations and Commodity Codes: 9. The structure of a cultural crisis: thinking about cloth in France before and after the Revolution William M. Reddy
10. The origins of swadeshi (home industry): cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930 C. A. Bayly

0521323517


Commerce--Social aspects.
Economic anthropology.
Commerce--History.

306.3 / APP/S