Economic Anthropology最新文献

The articles that compose this special issue of Economic Anthropology represent a sample of the work presented and discussed at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Economic Anthropology on the topic of well-being and the common good. I trace the roots of this conference theme in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and its connections to the literature on the “anthropologies of the good.” I then unpack three themes that emerge across the articles in this special issue: the value of tacking between objective measures and subjective meanings, the productive tension produced by investigating across scales, and patterned variation from which we can build an anthropological theory of the good.

On one hand, Islamic banking and finance is an aspiration to radically transform banks and the financial system to conform with interpretations of Islamic ethics and morals. On the other hand, such high aspirations patently conflict with the existing global, US$3.6 trillion market dominated by profit-oriented private banks. These aspirations also potentially conflict with the technical details of how financial products are constructed to be “Shariah compliant.” How do Islamic financial practitioners reconcile their vision of the Islamic good society with the products and processes observed at work? One such theological tool and cultural concept is to interpret Islamic financial products as relying on hiyal, a legal stratagem used to provide remedies and alleviate predicaments, to provide an escape from the unlawful to the lawful. This essay summarizes how thinkers in Malaysia are developing the concept of hiyal either to critique or to promote Islamic finance. As a contribution to anthropological and postcolonial theorizing, the essay concludes by exploring how the concept of hiyal can help us understand contrivances, conspiracies, cons, and stratagems. This theoretical tool kit can assist social scientists in exploring the gap between people's economic behaviors and their aspirations for what a good economy should look like.

In this article, we examine what local well-being means in the contexts of collaborative heritage management and national development in Mexico. Driven by the request of Lacandon Mayas (including the second author) who live in Puerto Bello Metzabok, Chiapas, Mexico, in 2018, we engaged in archeological consolidation and heritage management to promote local tourism and sustainable economic development. This collaboration raised a series of ethical and practical questions of how to engage with the Eurocentric project of development. Addressing these issues has become critical, as the Mexican president's signature infrastructure project, Tren Maya (Maya Train), is designed to promote nationwide development via increased cultural heritage tourism in Chiapas and southern Mexico. Through critical reflection on experiences with Metzabok community members, we address Eurocentrism and colonialism by enacting a Lacandon (i.e., Hach Winik) buen vivir. This form of well-being is relational and communal and creates a common good that includes more-than-humans. Via this critical perspective, we argue that a decolonial project can use the tools of development as an initial step in creating Indigenous well-being.

Does wage labor contribute to well-being beyond providing an income? Well-being can be understood in eudaimonic terms as the happiness derived from a socially valued life or in hedonic terms as the experience of pleasure. The eudaimonic–hedonic divide is replicated in competing progressive visions of the place of work in a good life. Laborist theories stress the centrality of paid work for a meaningful life. By contrast, for post-work theories, pleasure is important for well-being, and work is generally not expected to be pleasurable. Surprisingly, many of the participants in my study of diverse US job seekers described one or more of the jobs they had held as “fun.” Fun connotes enjoyment without deeper meaning, a hedonic rather than eudaimonic account of nonfinancial work rewards. What made a job fun were small work pleasures: enjoyment of the tasks and feeling competent at them, enjoyment of the physical work environment, or enjoyment of social relations on the job. These small pleasures could be found in both standard and nonstandard, precarious jobs. This study indicates the need for a labor politics that improves hedonic well-being on the job. It also expands an “anthropology of the good” to include ordinary enjoyment.

This article explores grogue, a sugarcane-based distilled spirit of Cabo Verde, and its multifaceted and contested valuations in culture, livelihoods, and well-being. Despite Cabo Verde's challenging climate, sugarcane agriculture remains significant primarily due to the importance placed on the local production of grogue. The study described in this article investigates how grogue is perceived and valued among Cabo Verdeans, questioning why it promotes connectivity, sustainable livelihoods, and identity as a cultural asset and how it is entangled in a complicated colonial legacy, harmful health and negative societal outcomes, and neoliberal designs to modernize and industrialize as a cultural liability. The researchers conducted a thematic analysis of news stories and their associated comments from A Semana, the premiere daily online Cabo Verdean newspaper, to explore grogue's production, distribution, consumption, regulation, and valuation. The findings demonstrate various value registers, including identity, place, economic development, health, and social well-being, all of which help shape Cabo Verdeans' perspectives on grogue. This article is a crucial starting point for future research aimed at developing a comprehensive understanding of artisanal spirits' proliferation and contested values. By investigating multivocal interests behind competing ideas of valuation or devaluation of grogue, the study contributes to understanding its impacts on Cabo Verdean society.

Despite efforts to improve outcomes, resettlement projects that aim to improve livelihoods and living standards of the displaced often do not achieve their goals. Could greater attention to the well-being of the affected improve resettlement outcomes? This article considers standards of living and well-being among one resettled group, the Bahingkolu of Manantali, Mali, relocated in the mid-1980s by construction of the Manantali Dam. Anthropological approaches to well-being that include a greater understanding of people's own conceptions of well-being and consider well-being in relationship to their social and physical worlds help elucidate why the Bahinkolu are unsatisfied with their well-being despite higher standards of living. Because they can no longer grow enough for food self-sufficiency, they must encourage family members to work elsewhere, thereby risking the sustainability of the family as a single economic unit. In this context, household heads feel constant anxiety about their ability to maintain a cohesive household. The Bahingkolu publicly maintain that they are “victims of the resettlement” as a strategy to gain more resources for the community. To improve the generally negative consequences of involuntary resettlement, planning should expend more effort to appreciate the conceptions of well-being among the affected.