Gifts and Commodities - Softcover

Gregory, C. A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0990505014 ISBN 13: 9780990505013

Publisher: HAU, 2015

Synopsis

Christopher A. Gregory’s Gifts and Commodities is one of the undisputed classics of economic anthropology. On its publication in 1982, it spurred intense, ongoing debates about gifts and gifting, value, exchange, and the place of political economy in anthropology.

Gifts and Commodities is, at once, a critique of neoclassical economics and development theory, a critical history of colonial Papua New Guinea, and a comparative ethnography of exchange in Melanesian societies. This new edition includes a foreword by anthropologist Marilyn Strathern and a new preface by the author that discusses the ongoing response to the book and the debates it has engendered, debates that have become more salient in our evermore neoliberal and globalized era.

About this title

About the Author

C. A. Gregory teaches anthropology at the Australian National University and the University of Manchester. He is the author of Observing the Economy, Savage Money: The Anthropology and Politics of Commodity Exchange, and Lachmi Jagar: Gurumai Sukdai’s Story of the Bastar Rice Goddess.

Review

“Gregory’s work constitutes probably the single most important body of economic anthropology produced in the last half century. Gifts and Commodities was foundational; with one or two incisive and brilliant interventions, it managed to completely transform the field. It is still seen as a classic, but at the same time, in many quarters, its overall argument remains systematically misrepresented as essentializing or totalizing—in ways that should have been self-evidently false to anyone who had actually taken the time to read the book. This new edition should undo an historical injustice in this regard as a new generation of young scholars will be able to encounter what surely will be remembered as an enduring classic for a very long time to come.” (David Graeber, London School of Economics, author of Debt: The first 5,000 years)

"Gifts and Commodities was a major intervention in studies of Melanesian exchange systems, fundamentally changing our understanding of the transactions themselves, their historical transformations, and the variations in meanings people attached to them.... Long out of print, this beautiful new edition allows this classic text to be a touchstone for a new generation of thinkers in and beyond anthropology." (Martha Macintyre, University of Melbourne, editor (with Mary Patterson) of Managing modernity in the Western Pacific)

Edition details

• Publisher: HAU
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0990505014
• ISBN 13: 9780990505013
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 336