Legacies, Logics, Logistics
Essays in the Anthropology of the Platform Economy
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Legacies, Logics, Logistics
Essays in the Anthropology of the Platform Economy
Legacies, Logics, Logistics brings together a set of essays, written both before and after the financial crisis of 2007–08, by eminent Africanist and economic anthropologist Jane I. Guyer. Each was written initially for a conference on a defined theme. When they are brought together and interpreted as a whole by Guyer, these varied essays show how an anthropological and socio-historical approach to economic practices—both in the West and elsewhere—can illuminate deep facets of economic life that the big theories and models may fail to capture.
Focusing on economic actors—whether ordinary consumers or financial experts—Guyer traces how people and institutions hold together past experiences (legacies), imagined scenarios and models (logics), and situational challenges (logistics) in a way that makes the performance of economic life (on platforms made of these legacies, logics, and logistics) work in practice. Individual essays explore a number of topics—including time frames and the future, the use of percentages in observations and judgments, the explanation of prices, the coexistence of different world currencies, the reapplication of longtime economic theories in new settings, and, crucially, how we talk about the economy, how we use stable terms to describe a turbulent system. Valuable as standalone pieces, the essays build into a cogent method of economic anthropology.
Focusing on economic actors—whether ordinary consumers or financial experts—Guyer traces how people and institutions hold together past experiences (legacies), imagined scenarios and models (logics), and situational challenges (logistics) in a way that makes the performance of economic life (on platforms made of these legacies, logics, and logistics) work in practice. Individual essays explore a number of topics—including time frames and the future, the use of percentages in observations and judgments, the explanation of prices, the coexistence of different world currencies, the reapplication of longtime economic theories in new settings, and, crucially, how we talk about the economy, how we use stable terms to describe a turbulent system. Valuable as standalone pieces, the essays build into a cogent method of economic anthropology.
320 pages | 3 halftones, 1 line drawing | 6 x 9 | © 2016
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Economics and Business: Economics--General Theory and Principles
Reviews
Table of Contents
Preface
Part 1: Foundations
Chapter 1 The Themes of Legacies, Logics, Logistics
Chapter 2 “Toiling Ingenuity”: Food Regulation in Britain and Nigeria
Part 2: Public Economic Cultures
Chapter 3 “The Craving for Intelligibility”: Speech and Silence on the Economy under Structural Adjustment and Military Rule in Nigeria (with LaRay Denzer)
Chapter 4 Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time
Chapter 5 From Market to Platform: Shifting Analytics for the Study of Current Capitalism
Part 3: Cultures of Calculation
Chapter 6 The Eruption of Tradition? On Ordinality and Calculation
Chapter 7 Percentages and Perchance: Archaic Forms in the Twenty-First Century
Part 4: Platforms
Chapter 8 Intricacy and Impasse: Dilemmas of Value in Soft-Currency Economies
Chapter 9 Indexing People to Money: The Fate of “Shelter”
Part 5: Toward Ethnography and the People’s Economies
Chapter 10 Composites, Fictions, and Risk: Toward an Ethnography of Price
Chapter 11 Soft Currencies, Cash Economies, New Monies: Past and Present
Chapter 12 Is the “Real Economy” Disaggregating, Disappearing, or Deviating?
Notes
References
Index
Part 1: Foundations
Chapter 1 The Themes of Legacies, Logics, Logistics
Chapter 2 “Toiling Ingenuity”: Food Regulation in Britain and Nigeria
Part 2: Public Economic Cultures
Chapter 3 “The Craving for Intelligibility”: Speech and Silence on the Economy under Structural Adjustment and Military Rule in Nigeria (with LaRay Denzer)
Chapter 4 Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time
Chapter 5 From Market to Platform: Shifting Analytics for the Study of Current Capitalism
Part 3: Cultures of Calculation
Chapter 6 The Eruption of Tradition? On Ordinality and Calculation
Chapter 7 Percentages and Perchance: Archaic Forms in the Twenty-First Century
Part 4: Platforms
Chapter 8 Intricacy and Impasse: Dilemmas of Value in Soft-Currency Economies
Chapter 9 Indexing People to Money: The Fate of “Shelter”
Part 5: Toward Ethnography and the People’s Economies
Chapter 10 Composites, Fictions, and Risk: Toward an Ethnography of Price
Chapter 11 Soft Currencies, Cash Economies, New Monies: Past and Present
Chapter 12 Is the “Real Economy” Disaggregating, Disappearing, or Deviating?
Notes
References
Index
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