Edward LiPuma - Böcker

An engaging, beautifully written account by an ethnographer who lived in the mountains of Papua New Guinea, Encompassing Others is at once a history of the encounter of two cultures and an attempt to challenge theoretically the main concepts that have informed the study of modernity. Going beyond accounts that grasp modernity solely in terms of domination, imperialism, and local resistance, it explores how capitalism, Christianity, and mass commercial culture enchant the senses, create a carnival of new goods, and open up new possibilities for thought and action.Focusing on the Maring people of Highland New Guinea and on the Westerners who interacted with them, Edward LiPuma presents issues from the perspectives of both sides. We hear the voice of the Anglican priest from San Francisco as well as the most powerful Maring shamans. Further, the book seeks to develop a theory of generations that helps explain how change accelerates and societies take on new directions across generations.Theoretical, descriptive, but almost entirely free of jargon, this book is intended for all those who are interested in how the West's encompassment of other peoples influences how these others conceive of their past, imagine their future, and experience the present. It will have wide appeal for anthropologists and others concerned with colonialism, globalization, and the fo rmation of the nation-state.Edward LiPuma is Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Miami.

Although the societies of the New Guinea Highlands have been extensively studied by anthropologists since the Second World War, it is generally acknowledged that a comprehensive explanation of their social structure is yet to emerge. In this book, Edward LiPuma presents an ethnography of Maring social organization in order to develop a generative theory of Highland societies that takes account of both social structure and its reproduction in practice. Arguing for the inseparability of the symbolic and the material, norm and action, and structure and practice, the study has three objectives. The first is to demonstrate how cultural categories fashion generative schemes for practice, and how practice in turn reproduces social groups and the concepts they embody. The second is to develop through ethnography an analysis of the relationship between structure and practice, while the third is to identify some of the ways in which the situation of the ethnographer informs the production of ethnography and the making of theory.

This volume presents the best critical appraisal of Bourdieu's work currently available. It raises a variety of crucial theoretical questions that are important to understanding Bourdieu and includes an essay by Bourdieu in reply to his critics.

The market for financial derivatives is far and away the largest and most powerful market in the world, and it is growing exponentially. In 1970 the yearly valuation of financial derivatives was only a few million dollars. By 1980 the sum had swollen to nearly one hundred million dollars. By 1990 it had climbed to almost one hundred billion dollars, and in 2000 it approached one hundred trillion. Created and sustained by a small number of European and American banks, corporations, and hedge funds, the derivatives market has an enormous impact on the economies of nations-particularly poorer nations-because it controls the price of money. Derivatives bought and sold by means of computer keystrokes in London and New York affect the price of food, clothing, and housing in Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, and Buenos Aires. Arguing that social theorists concerned with globalization must familiarize themselves with the mechanisms of a world economy based on the rapid circulation of capital, Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee offer a concise introduction to financial derivatives.LiPuma and Lee explain how derivatives are essentially wagers-often on the fluctuations of national currencies-based on models that aggregate and price risk. They describe how these financial instruments are changing the face of capitalism, undermining the power of nations and perpetrating a new and less visible form of domination on postcolonial societies. As they ask: How does one know about, let alone demonstrate against, an unlisted, virtual, offshore corporation that operates in an unregulated electronic space using a secret proprietary trading strategy to buy and sell arcane financial instruments? LiPuma and Lee provide a necessary look at the obscure but consequential role of financial derivatives in the global economy.

In The Social Life of Financial Derivatives Edward LiPuma theorizes the profound social dimensions of derivatives markets and the processes, rituals, and belief systems that drive them. In response to the 2008 financial crisis and drawing on his experience trading derivatives, LiPuma outlines how they function as complex devices that organize speculative capital as well as the ways derivative-driven capitalism not only produces the conditions for its own existence, but also penetrates the fabric of everyday life. Framing finance as a form of social life and highlighting the intrinsically social character of financial derivatives, LiPuma deepens our understanding of derivatives so that we may someday use them to serve the public well-being.