Economies Two Ways to Study Them

Work, Life, and Value: Economic Anthropology ANTH 2301 Economies: Two Ways to Study Them Perhaps you studied economics in school or read a book written by an economist. There are many of excellent ones. The French economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is a favourite book of this chapter's author, Jennifer Hasty. It is an uncommon book to come from a modern economist. It's almost anthropological, in fact. The majority of economics studies lack ethnographic depth. Remember anthropology's three core values: environmentalism, diversity, and holism. Anthropologists advocate searching for an insider's perspective and cultural relativism in all four of their professions. An anthropologist takes these convictions and ideals into account while examining how cultures, communities, and individuals earn a living. Here are some highlights from the January 2021 edition of Economic Anthropology: • "Small Businesses and Religious Networks in Senegal" • "In the Narratives of Ukrainian Sex Workers: Entanglements of Gifts, Money, and Affection: Honesty and Economy on a Highway" • "Gendering the Development of Human Capital in Western Alaska." • "'No trabajaré pa' ellos': Havana, Cuba, Entrepreneurship as a Form of State Resistance" Take note of the variety of cultural settings (the island nation of Cuba in Central America, the state of Alaska in North America, the country of Senegal in West Africa, and the republic of Ukraine in Eastern Europe). The economic problems in Kentucky, Spain, Italy, China, and Colombia are the subject of other pieces in this same issue. The titles also show a concern in relating other facets of society, like gender, religion, and political opposition, to means of subsistence. All of them are founded on extensive fieldwork that aims to comprehend the various viewpoints of local peoples and groups. Take note of additional terminology that reflect an anthropological interest in social groupings and power dynamics, such as gendering and resistance. Most notably, these papers do not attempt to assess how well or poorly economic activities compare to an ideal. Instead, cultural and historical factors that influence economic activities in various cultural contexts are examined by economic anthropologists. about environmentalism, this issue also includes a conversation between five anthropologists about the ways in which economic anthropology advances our knowledge of climate change. Every essential component of anthropology is present in this one issue. What distinguishes this strategy from the one used by the economics discipline? A prestigious economics publication, the American Economic Review (AER), is compared to Economic Anthropology. AER's January 2021 edition includes the following articles: The article "The Effects of Negative Nominal Interest Rates: Going Negative at the Zero Lower Bound" • "The Distributional Effects of Choice in Public Schools" "Politically Viable Adjustments to Nonlinear Tax Structures" • "Limited Delegation and Selection: Organisational Dynamics in Developing Nations" • "Positive Views of Job Seekers and Employment Opportunities: Variability, Duration Dependency, and Prejudice" The absence of any cultural background in this list is the first thing you could notice, with the exception of the ambiguous reference to "developing countries." Where is the school of choice? whose tax structures? Which job searchers? Even though the background is included in the article text of some of these pieces, the context isn't thought to be a significant enough aspect of the analysis to merit mention in the title. This implies that traditional economic research makes the assumption that historical and cultural factors have little bearing on economic matters like school choice, taxation, and employment opportunities. Universalism, the belief that economic processes function much the same everywhere in the globe, is a tendency among economists. Actually, one of the main goals of economics is to identify the universal laws that underpin economies worldwide. The assumption that the majority of societal domains function like markets and are subject to the universal laws of supply and demand is implicit in most economic analyses. Furthermore, economists see humans as rational, self-interested players operating in the many market-driven spheres of society. Instead of doing fieldwork, economists assess these market-driven activities using data, and they occasionally look for the appropriate policies to promote economic development or deter inequality. The majority of the papers in the AER's January 2021 edition are strictly focused on the economic domain, exploring the connections between elements inside it as opposed to anthropologists' usual practice of looking outside it. Lastly, there is no mention of environmental difficulties in the AER's January 2021 edition. The purpose of this comparison is to highlight how anthropology approaches economic issues differently, not to disparage the field of economics. When it comes to economic matters, anthropologists use a human-centered perspective, explaining how individuals earn a livelihood, what they believe and do, and how these behaviours evolve over time. Economists use a market-centered perspective, explaining how many aspects of human existence are shaped by market mechanisms and how those processes evolve over time.