Theory in Economic Anthropology

Jean Ensminger is Professor of Anthropology at the California Institute of Technology, who carries out research in the new institutional economics, rational choice theory, experimental economics, and economic development.

This outstanding book demonstrates the theoretical and empirical importance of economic anthropology for the twenty-first century. Ensminger and her colleagues combine the solid empirical work that anthropology is known for with innovative theoretical trends in economics. The work on institutions and social capital and on experimental economics is most notable to me. The book foreshadows a scientific contribution in these areas that will be very significant in the next decade. It is a pleasure to read the more empirical contributions, by established as well as junior scholars, which demonstate that economic anthropology remains solidly rooted in the tradition of careful, theoretically informed ethnography. This remarkable book should be read by a wide range of scholars and students interested in knowing how economic anthropology can advance social science in the twenty-first century.

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Theory in Economic Anthropology at the Turn of the CenturyPart 2 Part I: The New InstitutionalismChapter 3 Chapter 1: Property Rights and Incentives for Agricultural Growth: Women Farmer's Crop Control and their Use of Agricultural InputsChapter 4 Chapter 2: Transaction Cost Economics: Accomplishments, Problems and PossibilitiesChapter 5 Chapter 3: Experimental Economics: A Powerful New Method for Theory Testing in AnthropologyPart 6 Part II: Rethinking Wealth, Exchange, and the Evolution of Social InstitutionsChapter 7 Chapter 4: Commodity Flows and the Evolution of Complex SocietiesChapter 8 Chapter 5: Economic Transfers and Exchanges: Concepts for Describing AllocationsChapter 9 Chapter 6: Polanyi and the Definition of CapitalismPart 10 Part III: Small Producers Interacting with the Wider WorldChapter 10 Chapter 7: Chayanov and Theory in Economic AnthropologyChapter 11 Chapter 8: Space, Place, and Economic Anthropology: Locating Potters in a Sri Lankan LandscapeChapter 12 Chapter 9: Indians, Markets, and Transnational Studies in Mesoamerican Anthropology: Predicaments and OpportunitiesChapter 14 Part IV: Commodity Chains and the Formal/Informal Sector DistinctionChapter 15 Chapter 10: Transcending the Formal/Informal Distinction: Commercial Relations in Africa and Russia in the Post-1989 WorldChapter 16 Chapter 11: Commodity Chains and the International Secondhand Clothing Trade: Salaula and the Work of Consumption in ZambiaPart 18 Part V: The Role for Big Theory in Economic AnthropologyChapter 19 Chapter 12: When Good Theories Go Bad: Theory in Economic Anthropology and Consumer ResearchChapter 19 Chapter 13: Decision-Making, Cultural Transmission and Adaptation in Economic Anthropology