From the ASA blog, by Keith Hart: For Marcel Mauss, the years 1920-25 were packed and fruitful. His political party and the Left in general had a real shot at winning power in France and did so in 1924. Two-thirds of his occasional political pieces (Écrits politiques) were written in this period. He was able… Read More »
The first in a series of posts on the financial crisis by economic anthrologist Keith Hart, at the ASA Globalog. The series will engage: long-run historical questions like what this crisis is, with the news as it unfolds in real time and with issues that matter practically to people who don’t have to be reminded… Read More »
NYTimes A Balanced Global Diet: Global imbalances — roughly defined, the different emphasis the world’s leading economies place on savings, spending and debt — is a phrase much used and little acted upon. Well before the current financial crisis began, world leaders pledged to address this disconnect. At an International Monetary Fund meeting in 2007,… Read More »
If you are in London: The Dis/Order of Things: Predisciplinarity After Foucault An Interdisciplinary Workshop. The afternoon will end with a keynote by Professor Simon During (Johns Hopkins): ‘Lost Objects: Magic and Mystery in the English Enlightenment’ Saturday 24 October 2009 Birkbeck College, University of London This interdisciplinary research workshop brings together postgraduates, academics from… Read More »
on the American Anthropological Association (AAA) website. From the AAA blog: The economic crisis issue includes: Gillian Tett: Icebergs and Ideologies: How Information Flows Fuelled the Financial Crisis Aaron Pitluck: Ethnography Meets Econometrics: Exploring Daily Work Practices that Lead to Financial Crises Tara Schwegler: The Global Crisis of Economic Meaning Edward F Fischer: Capitalism in… Read More »
From the website of the School for Advanced Research on the Human Experience: One six-month fellowship is available for a female social scientist from a developing nation, either pre- or post-doctoral, whose work addresses women’s economic and social empowerment in that nation. The goal of the program is twofold: to advance the scholarly careers of women… Read More »
Throughout its 5000 year history, debt has always involved institutions – whether Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law – that place controls on debt’s potentially catastrophic social consequences. It is only in the current era, writes anthropologist David Graeber, that we have begun to see the creation of the first effective planetary… Read More »
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column that borrowed a bit from Hernando de Soto. Today, I read this from Peter Schaefer at the Foreign Policy website. The concluding paragraph: Yunus and de Soto offer us real insights into how the poor can, finally, work themselves out of poverty: Yunus shows they need… Read More »
Someone should know that something is really wrong when a Cato Institute blogger quotes Naomi Klein, well sarcasm is not yet dead is what. What do you need to solve America’s curent economic woes? Give two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans visas to the US and watch what they do. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Managing Director of… Read More »
President Obama granted his very first one-on-one interview as a president to a media house that broadcasts out of Dubai. The White House Blog titles the post that announces the interview ‘President to Muslim World: “Americans are not your enemy”‘, which clearly shows that the interview was meant as an interview, or an address, if… Read More »