The Economics of Symbolic Exchange

2008-10-06 Business & Economics

Author : Alexander Dolgin
Release : 2008-10-06
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 82X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Economics of Symbolic Exchange by : Alexander Dolgin

Download or read book The Economics of Symbolic Exchange written by Alexander Dolgin. This book was released on 2008-10-06. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexander Dolgin’s Economics of Symbolic Exchange is in reality not one but three books, and although these semantic layers are interlinked, the reader will need to choose between the different vectors and modalities. One clearly evident dimension is research. Certain authors introduce quite new intellectual approaches into scienti?c debate. This requires a special frame of mind and a searching curiosity about social reality. Carl Gustav Jung identi?ed a p- nomenon which he called systematic blindness: when a science reaches a stage of maturity and equilibrium, it categorically refuses, from a sense of self-preservation, to note certain facts and phenomena which it ?nds inconvenient. In Alexander D- gin’s book whole complexes of such “non-canonical” material are to be found. Here are just a few examples: ?le exchange networks, through which digital works of art are spread through the Internet; bargain sales of fashionable clothing; the paradox of equal pricing of cultural goods of varying quality; and a discussion of whether - tronage or business has the more productive in?uence on creativity. Obviously, not all the issues Volginraises are totally new, but brought togetherand examinedwithin an elegant logical framework of informational economics, they pose a challenge to scienti?c thinking. Such challenges are by no means immediately or, in some cases, ever acclaimed bythescienti?cestablishment. J. K. Galbraith,forexample,agreatAmericaneco- mist, whose works are read throughout the world, who introduced a whole range of crucially important concepts, the director of John F.

Symbolic Economies

1990 Business & Economics

Author : Jean-Joseph Goux
Release : 1990
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 127/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Symbolic Economies by : Jean-Joseph Goux

Download or read book Symbolic Economies written by Jean-Joseph Goux. This book was released on 1990. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major participant in the influential Tel Quel group in France, Jean-Joseph Goux here offers a bold reevaluation of both the Marxist economic model and the Freudian concept of the unconscious. Symbolic Economies makes available for the first time in English generous selections from Goux's Freud, Marx: Economie et symbolique (1973) and Les iconoclastes (1978). Goux brings the theories of historical materialism and of psychoanalysis into play to illuminate and enrich each other, and undertakes a compelling integration of the contributions of structuralism and post-structuralism. Looking closely at the work of such major figures as Lacan, Derrida, and Nietzsche, Goux extends the implications of Marxism and Freudianism to an interdisciplinary semiotics of value and proposes a radical concept of exchange. Literary theorists, philosophers, social scientists, cultural historians, and feminist critics alike will welcome this important and provocative work.

Money and the Morality of Exchange

1989-11-09 Business & Economics

Author : Jonathan P. Parry
Release : 1989-11-09
Genre : Business & Economics
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 745/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Money and the Morality of Exchange by : Jonathan P. Parry

Download or read book Money and the Morality of Exchange written by Jonathan P. Parry. This book was released on 1989-11-09. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume deals with the way in which money is symbolically represented in a range of different cultures, from South and South-east Asia, Africa and South America. It is also concerned with the moral evaluation of monetary and commercial exchanges as against exchanges of other kinds. The essays cast radical doubt on many Western assumptions about money: that it is the acid which corrodes community, depersonalises human relationships, and reduces differences of quality to those of mere quantity; that it is the instrument of man's freedom, and so on. Rather than supporting the proposition that money produces easily specifiable changes in world view, the emphasis here is on the way in which existing world views and economic systems give rise to particular ways of representing money. But this highly relativistic conclusion is qualified once we shift the focus from money to the system of exchange as a whole. One rather general pattern that then begins to emerge is of two separate but related transactional orders, the majority of systems making some ideological space for relatively impersonal, competitive and individual acquisitive activity. This implies that even in a non-monetary economy these features are likely to exist within a certain sphere of activity, and that it is therefore misleading to attribute them to money. By so doing, a contrast within cultures is turned into a contrast between cultures, thereby reinforcing the notion that money itself has the power to transform the nature of social relationships.

Savage Exchange

2020-10-26 History

Author : Tamara T. Chin
Release : 2020-10-26
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 788/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Savage Exchange by : Tamara T. Chin

Download or read book Savage Exchange written by Tamara T. Chin. This book was released on 2020-10-26. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Savage Exchange explores the politics of representation during the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) at a pivotal moment when China was asserting imperialist power on the Eurasian continent and expanding its local and long-distance (“Silk Road”) markets. Tamara T. Chin explains why rival political groups introduced new literary forms with which to represent these expanded markets. To promote a radically quantitative approach to the market, some thinkers developed innovative forms of fiction and genre. In opposition, traditionalists reasserted the authority of classical texts and advocated a return to the historical, ethics-centered, marriage-based, agricultural economy that these texts described. The discussion of frontiers and markets thus became part of a larger debate over the relationship between the world and the written word. These Han debates helped to shape the ways in which we now define and appreciate early Chinese literature and produced the foundational texts of Chinese economic thought. Each chapter in the book examines a key genre or symbolic practice (philosophy, fu-rhapsody, historiography, money, kinship) through which different groups sought to reshape the political economy. By juxtaposing well-known texts with recently excavated literary and visual materials, Chin elaborates a new literary and cultural approach to Chinese economic thought. Co-Winner, 2016 Harry Levin Prize, American Comparative Literature Association; Honorable Mention, 2016 Joseph Levenson Book Prize, Pre-1900 Category, China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies

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