Research in Economic Anthropology - Böcker

Explores research in economic anthropology. This title examines topics such as rethinking the informal economy; specialization, exchange and power in small-scale societies and chiefdoms; and, approaches to prehistoric economies.

This is the 19th volume in a series of research in economic anthropology. It covers: studies of Otavalo, Ecuador; commoditization; women as consumers and producers; subsistence and market production - Siberia, Mexico, Sierra Leone; and, complex prehistoric economies - Louisiana and Illinois.

This volume contains 11 papers covering: Women as Artisans from Colombia and the Phillippines; Money and Witchcraft from Niger and Tanzania; Resistance to Economic Development for Canada, Mexico and the US; Changing Rural Economies from Guatemala and Kenya; and Ethnoarchaeological Studies with the topics of ceramics in Peru and state origins on Bali.

The general theme of "Social Dimensions in the Economic Process" is an old one in economic anthropology. On the abstract end it involves, first, the degree of social content of individual transactions and, second, how economic processes relate to social structure. More specifically, the theme relates to matters such as the need for trust resulting in personalized systems of economic transactions, and how institutions shape economic arrangements. In five parts, the first two parts deal with the social content and consequences of economic relations. Parts III and IV address particular institutions, the household and agrarian relations. The volume ends in Part V with chapters linked to globalization.

The collection of original contributions in this volume of "Research in Economic Anthropology" addresses two recurrent themes in economic anthropology. These are the process of economic development and the basis on which economic integration takes place. The development theme is divided between papers that are concerned with the social and demographic impact of development, and those that examine the recent post-socialist transition. The integration theme is represented by articles that examine the symbolic foundations of economic integration, and by contributions that focus on the moral basis of integration and continuity. With respect to both themes theoretical issues are discussed, and detailed ethnographic cases are drawn from Asia, Europe, Russia, Latin America, and the U.S.

As a field, anthropology brings an explicit evolutionary approach to the study of human behavior. Each of anthropology's four main subfields - sociocultural, biological, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology - acknowledges that Homo sapiens has a long evolutionary history that must be acknowledged if one is to know what it means to be a human being (What is Anthropology?). The papers in this volume embody the view of anthropology explicit in the above statement. Behavioral ecology explains human behavior through the application of evolutionary theory in ecological context. It focuses on how behavior is influenced by the constraints of reproduction and resources acquisition. As a result, its purview is a wide swath of anthropology, especially economic anthropology. Human behavior varies through the life course, and humans make choices or exhibit behavioral variation depending on the costs, benefits, and constraints of local socioeconomic contexts. Pan-human conscious and unconscious processes generate these decisions, because over evolutionary time scales they produced, on average, behavior that increased the relative reproductive success of their bearers. Behavioral ecology examines these adaptive behavioral responses to local conditions. The volumes papers demonstrate behavioral ecology's maturation as a subfield of anthropology. They demonstrate the breadth of problems that can be gainfully addressed within the paradigm and the richness of specific hypotheses and data that this perspective can generate. The papers also show how behavioral ecology conceptually integrates the core of biological anthropology with the other subdisciplines by providing a common framework for investigating and understanding basic economic questions.

The general theme of Volume 24 is the impact of, and reaction to, the spread of market systems and market liberalization by local communities. Part I examines cases in which migration has opened new market and entrepreneurial opportunities to local populations. Part II contains cases that describe ethnographically the impacts the oil industry market has had on towns of Louisiana's Gulf coast. The essays of Part III concern themselves with community repercussions that recent neoliberal market policies have had, while Part IV contains papers that analyse the process in which values of products and services are defined economically, culturally and politically in the context of developing markets and commoditization. This book focuses on market systems and market liberalization in local communities. Specific topics addressed include the oil industry and the gulf coast, negotiating values in the market, and many more. The international case examples provide a global perspective.

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.

Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors. Conversely, the economic underpinnings of ritual practice are under-theorized and therefore not accessible to economists working on synthetic theories of human choice. This book addresses the problem by bringing together anthropologists with diverse backgrounds in the study of religion and economy to forge an analytical vocabulary that constitutes the building blocks of a theory of ritual economythe process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meanings and shaping interpretations. The chapters in Part I explore how values and beliefs structure the dual processes of provisioning and consuming. Contributions to Part II consider how ritual and economic processes interlink to materialize and substantiate worldview. Chapters in Part III examine how people and institutions craft and assert worldview through ritual and economic action to manage meaning and shape interpretation. In Part IV, Jeremy Sabloff outlines the road ahead for developing the theory of ritual economy. By focusing on the intersection of cosmology and material transfers, the contributors push economic theory towards a more socially informed perspective.

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.

"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.

Increasingly, economists have acknowledged that a major limitation to economic theory has been its failure to incorporate human values and beliefs as motivational factors. Conversely, the economic underpinnings of ritual practice are under-theorized and therefore not accessible to economists working on synthetic theories of human choice. This book addresses the problem by bringing together anthropologists with diverse backgrounds in the study of religion and economy to forge an analytical vocabulary that constitutes the building blocks of a theory of ritual economythe process of provisioning and consuming that materializes and substantiates worldview for managing meanings and shaping interpretations. The chapters in Part I explore how values and beliefs structure the dual processes of provisioning and consuming. Contributions to Part II consider how ritual and economic processes interlink to materialize and substantiate worldview. Chapters in Part III examine how people and institutions craft and assert worldview through ritual and economic action to manage meaning and shape interpretation. In Part IV, Jeremy Sabloff outlines the road ahead for developing the theory of ritual economy. By focusing on the intersection of cosmology and material transfers, the contributors push economic theory towards a more socially informed perspective.

In much of the world's economy, production, exchange and consumption are regulated by the Market, which is widely believed to be based on economic rationality and driven by a desire to consume. But there are different views of how the Market operates, or ought to operate. This collection of essays discusses a series of alternative perspectives - manifested in ethical movements, alternative consumer behaviour, and social corporate responsibility initiatives - that seek to reveal the 'hidden hands' of power, inequality and morality that shape Market exchange. Against the impersonality of the Market, we find initiatives, such as local food movements, that seek to re-embed commodity exchange in social relationships. Against the idea of the open economy, we find initiatives that seek to counter the ever-widening gap between producers and consumers. Against increased extraction from less powerful economic actors, we find ethical movements, such as Fair Trade, that work to return a fair share of the price to producers and workers. And, against the unfettered Market, we encounter a move to re-regulate trade and protect those located in the most vulnerable market positions. The volume engages with a range of alternative ethical perspectives and the initiatives to which they give rise. Twelve essays - all based on first-hand ethnographic studies of alternative trade movements, corporate social initiatives and consumer behaviour - provide the groundwork for wide-ranging theoretical engagement and comparative analysis. The case studies cover a range of places, commodities and initiatives, including Fair Trade and organic production activism in Hungary, CSR discourses in South Africa and Europe, Fair Trade coffee in Costa Rica and handicrafts made in Indonesia. The essays contribute to a series of current debates within the social sciences about what drives alternative Market engagements, how they are understood and represented by different actors, and what makes their outcomes often ambivalent or contradictory. They address disjunctions between discourses and practices, and internal inconsistencies within ethical movements and corporate initiatives. The volume as a whole engages with questions about morality and the economy, the creation and circulation of value, and, ultimately, the possibility of making alternatives work. In doing so, the contributors reveal the many fields of power at work within the Market as well as within the movements advocating more ethical economic relationships. The volume will be of particular interest to social scientists, business and management studies scholars, and a range of practitioners.

For several decades people have been grappling with how to retain the material safety and cultural richness of indigenous non-capitalist societies and economies, but also gain the health, wealth, education and life opportunities the modern capitalist world offers. This book brings together examples of attempts to forge locally appropriate versions of modernity; development that suits the aspirations and circumstances of particular groups of people. Authors question how the market economy has been variously negotiated by groups who also have other systems through which they organize their social and economic life. What has worked for these people, what has not, and why? The volume addresses how, as a social and economic system, capitalism has been very effective in generating wealth and technological innovation, but has also been associated with great social inequity and environmental damage. Its inherent flaws have been highlighted by the escalation of ecological problems arising from growth-oriented capitalism and various economic crises, the latest being the Global Financial Crisis and its ongoing fallout.

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.

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?

For several decades people have been grappling with how to retain the material safety and cultural richness of indigenous non-capitalist societies and economies, but also gain the health, wealth, education and life opportunities the modern capitalist world offers. This book brings together examples of attempts to forge locally appropriate versions of modernity; development that suits the aspirations and circumstances of particular groups of people. Authors question how the market economy has been variously negotiated by groups who also have other systems through which they organize their social and economic life. What has worked for these people, what has not, and why? The volume addresses how, as a social and economic system, capitalism has been very effective in generating wealth and technological innovation, but has also been associated with great social inequity and environmental damage. Its inherent flaws have been highlighted by the escalation of ecological problems arising from growth-oriented capitalism and various economic crises, the latest being the Global Financial Crisis and its ongoing fallout.

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.

Prices permeate contemporary life. From the cost of basic foodstuffs in developing countries to the pay of CEOs in rich ones, the question of the politics and ethics of pricing everything through the market dominates public life. At the same time, we know that dilemmas about how to value fairly, but also efficiently, goods and services have been with us for more than two thousand years, since the times of Aristotle in Ancient Greece. Through the course of the centuries, important thinkers like Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith and Karl Marx all devoted considerable effort to try to understand how prices could reflect the intrinsic worth of the objects workers produce and exchange with other people. This is the question of the "just price." This volume represents the first systematic attempt to address this ancient debate through the use of qualitative empirical research, particularly ethnography.  The volume comprises a substantial introduction that sets out the terms of the debate, proposing four different approaches to the just price, plus eight case studies based on fieldwork carried out in four different continents (Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America), ranging from topics such as fair trade, human rights and recycling, to organic agriculture, the rose oil industry, rural and urban marketplaces.  Bringing together the most recent scholarship in economic anthropology and associated fields to investigate the social, political and ethical consequences of market prices on ordinary people, this book is of interest to researchers in anthropology, sociology, history and geography.

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 42 of Research in Economic Anthropology focuses on systemic coverage, critical rethinking, and scientific analysis of the current problems facing the world economy and international trade aiming to provide a scientific basis for learning from the COVID-19 pandemic for the global economy and international trade.Current Problems of the World Economy and International Trade begins by reflecting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing crisis for the global economy and international trade. The volume then reveals the prospects for the post-pandemic recovery of the world economy and the crisis management of international trade. Throughout, there are case studies from various countries, in particular the experience of China, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Germany, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, India, and the OECD. Current Problems of the World Economy and International Trade reveals the determinants of competitiveness and drivers of economic growth of individual countries provides useful applied advice on post-crisis recovery and the development of the world economy and international trade in the post-pandemic period.

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.

In much of the world's economy, production, exchange and consumption are regulated by the Market, which is widely believed to be based on economic rationality and driven by a desire to consume. But there are different views of how the Market operates, or ought to operate. This collection of essays discusses a series of alternative perspectives - manifested in ethical movements, alternative consumer behaviour, and social corporate responsibility initiatives - that seek to reveal the 'hidden hands' of power, inequality and morality that shape Market exchange. Against the impersonality of the Market, we find initiatives, such as local food movements, that seek to re-embed commodity exchange in social relationships. Against the idea of the open economy, we find initiatives that seek to counter the ever-widening gap between producers and consumers. Against increased extraction from less powerful economic actors, we find ethical movements, such as Fair Trade, that work to return a fair share of the price to producers and workers. And, against the unfettered Market, we encounter a move to re-regulate trade and protect those located in the most vulnerable market positions. The volume engages with a range of alternative ethical perspectives and the initiatives to which they give rise. Twelve essays - all based on first-hand ethnographic studies of alternative trade movements, corporate social initiatives and consumer behaviour - provide the groundwork for wide-ranging theoretical engagement and comparative analysis. The case studies cover a range of places, commodities and initiatives, including Fair Trade and organic production activism in Hungary, CSR discourses in South Africa and Europe, Fair Trade coffee in Costa Rica and handicrafts made in Indonesia. The essays contribute to a series of current debates within the social sciences about what drives alternative Market engagements, how they are understood and represented by different actors, and what makes their outcomes often ambivalent or contradictory. They address disjunctions between discourses and practices, and internal inconsistencies within ethical movements and corporate initiatives. The volume as a whole engages with questions about morality and the economy, the creation and circulation of value, and, ultimately, the possibility of making alternatives work. In doing so, the contributors reveal the many fields of power at work within the Market as well as within the movements advocating more ethical economic relationships. The volume will be of particular interest to social scientists, business and management studies scholars, and a range of practitioners.