Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value : The False
Coin of Our Own Dreams
by David Graeber
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This innovative book is the first
comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories
of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological
thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out
of quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at
the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of
Neoliberalism.
Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects
of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary
projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx
and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme,
but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a
project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic
anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks
the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the
Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and
recasts value as a model of human
meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist
paradigms .
About the Author
David Graeber teaches anthropology at Yale
University. He is currently writing an ethnography of direct action
as well as
working with the Direct Action Network,
People's Global Action, and Ya Basta!.
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