Donald C. Wood - Böcker

This 25th volume in the "Research in Economic Anthropology" series contains 12 original papers, nine empirical ethnographic studies and three theoretical essays - all linked by a common concern with economic choice in various social and cultural situations, and authored by researchers in anthropology, economics, and sociology. The ethnographic studies present data collected in Mexico, Paraguay, Columbia, Greece, Morocco, Egypt, Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan. Part I of the volume focuses on work migration, a theme that has received much attention of late. Papers in Part II are concerned with various manifestations of markets and market forces in everyday life, and associated individual, group, or corporate action. Part III consists of studies on economic development, market expansion, and community-wide impacts in Latin America. Finally, papers in Part IV share a common concern with the works of noted economic historian Karl Polanyi, which have influenced researchers in economic anthropology, economics, and sociology in many different ways. The research is global in scope and includes European, Asian, African, and American countries. Special attention is given to Latin American countries and the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi.

This 26th volume in the "Research in Economic Anthropology" series differs in two main ways from all those that have come before. For one, it is the first "REA" volume to focus exclusively on the issue of health. In addition, it is not as concerned overall with economic or social theory, or with economic reasoning and action, as other volumes have been. Rather, it concentrates on the identification and analysis of important economic factors in the production of health and wellness. This volume consists of ten original anthropological papers that explore the general theme of the economics of health and wellness in a variety of ways. Some of these papers are more strongly ethnographic in nature, relying wholly on qualitative data derived from participant-observer methods at which ethnographers excel. Other papers successfully blend such information with quantitative data drawn from surveys, questionnaires, and even from biological samples.All papers, however, are grounded in empirical methods and based on data drawn from the personal investigations of the authors. Subjects and geographic areas represented in the volume are: Lakota residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA; rural people of Bangladesh; mental health care facilities and systems in Texas, USA; unsuccessful rural-urban migrants in Botswana, Southern Africa; loggers in British Columbia, Canada; municipal bus drivers in San Francisco, California; poor residents of Puebla, Mexico; slum dwellers of Lima, Peru; female victims of domestic abuse in Northern Vietnam; and, followers of Tibetan Buddhism in France. It features original articles written by experts in their fields. It is international in its scope.

On March 13, 1935, in a small village on the craggy Oga Peninsula in northeastern Japan, an industrious vegetable farmer named Yoshida Saburō began writing a one-year chronicle of his life and community, having received the assignment from Tokyo financier Shibusawa Keizō, a passionate folklore enthusiast and ethnological research supporter. In his diary, Yoshida reports meticulous discussions of farming and village life, providing thorough documentation of his family’s meals, daily itemized tallies of income and expenditures, plus crop and household financial data going back seven years. His coverage of folkways, customs, and superstitions give insight into traditions and faith, while illuminating his progressivism that is further highlighted by critiques of other farmers’ methods. Yoshida reveals a microcosm populated by unsympathetic landlords, destitute tenant farmers, disenfranchised young men, vulnerable young women, and increasingly covetous villagers amidst poverty, all within a contracting economy and a growing imperialist state. Yet it is not an isolated world; the village is strongly connected to the outside at the local and regional levels, and to the state. Yoshida’s chronicle is representative of the living conditions of at least sixty percent of Japan’s population in the 1930s, shedding light on an important period in the country’s modern history—an era that was the culmination of seven decades of political and economic development, with rising rural poverty exacerbated by a clash between feudalism and capitalism. In the historical record, Yoshida himself is a rare and valuable link between the farmer of the early modern period and that of the early postwar era. His diary was published in 1938 by the Attic Museum (which was founded by Shibusawa), complete with 160 illustrations, including photographs taken by the author, before slipping into semilegendary status. This annotated and amended English version, containing more than twenty new photographs, allows the world to vicariously experience a tiny farming village in prewar Japan through Yoshida’s precise documentation.For his translation of the diary, Donald C. Wood received the 2022–2023 Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize, awarded by the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University in New York.

This volume contains 14 original chapters focusing on various aspects of economic organization and behaviour, mostly based on empirical fieldwork conducted by the authors themselves. It is a well-balanced collection of chapters on economic issues studied anthropologically, not only in its geographical and theoretical focus but also in showcasing work by established and emerging researchers. "Chapters on Africa" take a close look at urban food provisioning in Cameroon and an investigation into entrepreneurial activities in the rapidly-changing economy of Cairo. Other chapters examine places and cultures in Central Asia - property rights and state power in Kazakhstan, and animal markets in Kashgar, Western China. The buying and selling activities of ethnic groups within larger societies such as Latin Americans in the USA and Gabor Roma in Romania are highlighted. Concerning North America are chapters on the trans-Atlantic (and global) art market, and on oil drilling in Canada, while in Latin America, income disparities and inequalities in Brazil, development in Colombia, and kin-like compadrazgo networks in Mexico are analyzed. Historical Western Europe and pre-historical Ecuador are also covered.

Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan’s rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village’s purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and the goal of creating an egalitarian farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism took root and as the settlers became divided into political factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores the process of Ogatamura’s development from the planning stages to the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village’s economic transformations while addressing the implications of national policy at the municipal and regional levels.

"The Economics of Religion" explores the new paradigms of "religious economics" and "economies of religion" under the scope of transdisciplinary and international perspectives. It examines and appraises some of the recent theoretical developments and methodological innovations in religious and social sciences. This volume offers the chance to extend the analysis of religious behaviours by means of conceptual and methodological models of economics. It goes far beyond the classical "economy and religion" debate, and suggests not only theoretical but also epistemological changes in the study of religion: individual rationality and rational choice, market theory, demand and supply theory, branding and commodification of religion, believers' "consumer" habits, churches' competitive strategies, for example. Of course, these are not exempt from criticism, which this volume also addresses. These detailed and localized case-studies range from experimental to ethnographic methods, psychological to cultural aspects of believing and practising cults in the scope of economics of religion. Geographical areas covered include Nigeria, Bolivia, Italy, Mexico, France, Korea, Nepal and Tonga.

Volume 32 of REA continues the series' on-going presentation of new and highly engaging anthropological research. Chapters contained herein reflect the diverse range of broad based and localized topics economic anthropologists currently explore from various critical perspectives. Spanning deep history and present day economic processes, the contributions to this volume are subdivided into three major thematic sections. Part I addresses questions of how the political economy is articulated at the macro- and micro-level through processes of consumption, production, gift-giving, and evolution. The essays of Part II assume a more critical stance as outcomes of neoliberalism are considered from both a gendered and institutional perspective. Finally, the papers of Part III shift focus to the prehistoric economies of Latin America.

This thirty fourth volume in the REA series contains fourteen chapters by a variety of researchers touching on a wide range of topics in economic anthropology and covering a vast geographical area. The chapters are divided into four sections: one focusing on commodities and their social meanings and values, one organized around the anthropological investigation of business systems and practices, one concentrating on the economic importance of productive land in culture and society, and finally one that showcases a variety of new research on the economic anthropology of Latin America. Geographic areas featured in the volume include Africa (Kenya and Mauritius), Europe (Britain, Germany, and Romania), North America (Mexico and Guatemala), South America (Brazil), East Asia (Japan), and Western Asia (Jordan). Standing apart from these four sections is a special feature essay by noted anthropologist Sidney Greenfield that calls for a reevaluation of the global capitalist system as it stands today.

Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan’s rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village’s purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and the goal of creating an egalitarian farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism took root and as the settlers became divided into political factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores the process of Ogatamura’s development from the planning stages to the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village’s economic transformations while addressing the implications of national policy at the municipal and regional levels.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to deny that human activity is a factor in global climate change. This special volume of REA facilitates readers to better understand the ways in which people around the world have adapted (or failed to adapt) culturally to changing economic conditions caused by climate change. It focuses on specific situations in particular locations, showcasing (and confirming) the strength and value of intensive ethnographic or archaeological "investigation. The authors discuss: 1) How has climate change affected production, distribution, or consumption at the local level? 2) Are environmental conservation and economic development mutually exclusive? 3) What roles can public and private institutions play in successful adaptation? 4) What kinds of parallels can be drawn between current social situations and those in the past with regards to climate change?

This volume consists of three sections connected by the elucidation of differences in perspective between people and polities. The first, concentrating on ecology, serves in part to further explore the theme of climate change. It looks into aquifer usage and ecology in the Midwestern United States, farming and climate shifts in Costa Rica and in Burkina Faso, and goat herding and conservation issues in the Himalayas. The second section focuses on exchange transactions and relations in a variety of situations and settings: among Nigerian immigrant business owners in New York City, along the path of the famous Koh-i-noor Diamond from India to the Tower of London, and between dealers and buyers in illegal narcotics markets in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Pacific Northwestern USA. Finally, papers in the third section share a concern with individual and group adaptations to certain conditions of life. Offered are investigations into relations between stock brokers and professional investors in Malaysia, attempts to foster innovation in Western Japan, women’s farming strategies and autonomy in Western Kenya, and alternative healing decisions and practices in Brazil.

Volume 37 of REA features eleven original articles organized in four different sections, each focusing on a specific, popular and significant theme in economic anthropology: production, exchange, vending, and tourism. The first section investigates the brewing (and selling) of homemade beer among Maragoli women in western Kenya, continuity and change in small-scale family farming in a rural part of Costa Rica, and theoretical models of the transitions to farming that marked the Neolithic Revolution. The second section, on exchange, opens with another archaeological examination—of relationships between long-distance exchange and the centralization of political power in Pre-Columbian America. This section also explores adaptations of the Ten Thousand Villages fair trade organization following the recent global recession, exchanges and “productive leisure” at North Market in Columbus, Ohio, and social values in flux over problems relating to exchange amidst conditions of scarcity in the Solomon Islands. The third section investigates the plight and adaptations of vendors in a southern Chinese city and on a Mexican beach, drawing attention to the effects of both national government policies and international trade agreements on their lives. The volume closes with a section that considers important and timely issues in tourism—the role of debt in commission-based relationships between showroom owners and tour guides in Agra, India, and risk, resilience, health, and government policy in Jamaica’s sex tourism industry.

This volume of Research in Economic Anthropology, which presents ten peer-reviewed anthropological papers, celebrates the 40th anniversary of the series by taking a close look at human vulnerability: the ways in which people attempt to cope with it and barriers to successfully overcoming it. The two leading articles both take up the issue of microfinance; Daniel Murphy examines the influences of this in the lives of pastoralists in Mongolia, and Megan Hinrichsen explores related processes among vendors in Quito, Ecuador. Next, Elena Sischarenco looks at ways of dealing with vulnerability in the northern Italian construction industry. Sarah Lyon investigates smallholders’ experiences with, and adaptations to, the coffee rust disaster in Oaxaca, Mexico, as well as the functions of fair trade organizations. Rounding out the first half of the volume is Raja Swamy’s analysis of post-tsunami reconstruction in Tamil Nadu, India. The second half starts with Janneke Verheijen’s investigation of women’s survival strategies in rural Malawi, southeast Africa, and Lai Wo’s study of intimate relationships and transactions between Western men and Southeast Asian women in Hong Kong. Courtney Lewis explores political and economic sovereignty among the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina, USA. Finally, the volume turns to the past with Kari Henquinet’s examination of the evolution of American faith-based overseas development aid projects in the 20th century, and with Serge Svizzero’s and Clement Tisdell’s analysis of Early Bronze Age desert kite use for trapping gazelles in parts of Southwest Asia. Ultimately, it is hoped that this and other scholarly investigations into human vulnerability will lead to better preventive and curative measures, for an imperfect world.

Volume 41 of Research in Economic Anthropology explores a wide range of topics of interest to economic anthropology. The opening paper presents a novel approach to anthropological-economic infrastructural research in England, specifically London’s Thames Tideway Tunnel. The volume’s first section consists of four papers that are tied together by two common threads: the roles of money in social ties between people, and moral concerns regarding these and other roles and uses of money in society. The section covers commercial surrogate mothers in Russia, social welfare provision in Pakistan, the management of a communal fund within a school alumni association in South Korea, and a credit scheme’s impact on women in Nigeria.  Part two focuses on two basic necessities of human life—food and clothing - examining a New Zealand food security initiative that rescues “waste” food, modern transformations of a pre-owned clothing market in Hamburg, Germany, and Muslim fashion retail business in the same country’s capital city, Berlin.Finally, the volume closes with a third section that fixes an anthropological lens on contemporary developments in Latin America, analyzing the larger fair trade movement and its particular manifestations and implications in Oaxaca, Mexico, the cost-effectiveness of the reintegration of ex-combatants in Colombia, and patron-client relations in Brazil and how these have been politically perceived and presented by domestic and foreign intellectuals and academics, respectively.

Volume 43 of Research in Economic Anthropology covers an extensive range of important topics with an equally wide geographic perspective. Grounded in fieldwork undertaken in West Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, articles are broadly concerned with money, commerce, and wealth, with special concentrations on health, work, and uncertainty. Featured topics include:Connections between psychosocial health and anguish over educational expenses in Ghana’s Upper West RegionThe upsurge of cryptocurrency trading in Istanbul, Turkey, in the face of uncertainty and where concern for the future translates into action in the presentPersonal transactions embedded in social relations from the perspective of a small-scale informal lender in Bangkok, ThailandThe activities of finance elites in Luxembourg, now a major Western European center of commerceWork strategies of people who identify as self-employed in North Carolina and upstate New York during the COVID-19 pandemicRecent transformations in the lives of the Xambioá people in Brazil, including a reminder of how the sociocultural meaning of money can often take precedence over its intrinsic value or utilityA novel proposal for eradicating poverty on a global scaleExploring the interconnectedness and uncertainty of today’s economic world, this volume thoughtfully considers core themes, current trends, and possibilities for the future.

Volume 40 of Research in Economic Anthropology explores current issues in national and international policy, cost and debt, business and capitalism, and economic theory and behavior specifically pertaining to Brazil. The underlying theme running through the collection is the steady encroachment of neoliberalism into economic policy and practice, and the impact this has had on everyday ways of life. In Part I, Raja Swamy explores post-disaster relocation and livelihood issues in Nagapattinam, Tamil Nadu, India, Anthony Rausch and Junichiro Koji investigate Japan’s Hometown Tax Donation Program, and Emma Gilberthorpe argues for development plans that incorporate indigenous people’s needs and worldviews. In Part II, Vassily Pigounides empirically analyzes a revenue management system originating in France, Irene Sabaté Muriel looks at the moral economy of mortgage lending and economic reasoning during the housing bubble that rocked Spain when it burst in 2007, and Mathias Krabbe explores debt among US college students. In Part III, Ieva Snikersproge examines a French worker cooperative ice cream venture, Andres Gramajo quantitively measures the strength of capitalist thought among business owners in Latin America, and Michal Stein and John Vertovec explore individual action in the transitional economy in Havana’s tourist-oriented dance instruction world. In Part IV, Sidney Greenfield theorizes on two coexisting but disjunct patterns of behavior in Brazil, which give rise to tension, corruption allegations, and public scandals, and Guilherme Falleiros analyzes the structural shifts between global capitalism and indigenous ways of life in the same country.