Review: Appadurai, Arjun. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In Arjun Appadurai (Eds.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (pp. 3–63). PDF

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Chapter Review/1 Chapter Review Economy and Society in India Kriti Sharma Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University Chapter Review/2 Appadurai, Arjun. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In Arjun Appadurai (Eds.), The Social...

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Review: Appadurai, Arjun. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In Arjun Appadurai (Eds.)... Kriti Sharma

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Chapter Review/1

Chapter Review Economy and Society in India Kriti Sharma Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University

Chapter Review/2 Appadurai, Arjun. (1986). Introduction: commodities and the politics of value. In Arjun Appadurai (Eds.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (pp. 3–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xiv + 329 pp. $26.50 (paperback).

At the outset, there are three reasons why Arjun Appadurai’s edited collection The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) marks a critical turning point in the field of economic anthropology. First, it brings the cultural analysis of economic life back to the foreground, emphasizing that economy and culture are intimately intertwined. Ferguson (1988) notes that while this understanding guided the foundational works of the discipline in the classical epoch (see Malinowski, 1922; Bohannan, 1959; Douglas, 1963; Mauss, 1976), in the course of its evolution, economic anthropology moved away from the cultural perspective. He explains that this shift mirrored the retreat of functionalist paradigms when challenged by Marxist critiques on one hand, and theories of human agency and economic decision-making on the other hand. However, by arguing for a culturally and politically informed examination of the circulation of commodities, Appadurai’s book makes a strong case for recognizing that the economy is not an isolated sector, but an integrated part of a social and cultural totality (Eriksen, 2001). Second, common to Appadurai’s chief arguments is a reflexivity that seeks to question the legitimacy of certain dualisms about economies and exchange that frequently feature in anthropological literature. Some of these include the contrast between commodity and gift exchange, rationality and irrationality, the spirit of calculation and the spirit of reciprocity, and industrial and preindustrial society—the basis for all being the most grievous binary: the false distinction between economic logic and cultural design. Conversely, Appadurai’s stance suggests

Chapter Review/3 that theoretical models of conventional economics cannot be accepted as self-evident truths about human nature, because their validity requires elaboration within local and particular contexts (Carrier, 2005). For instance, he reasons that economic activity, like consumption, is not driven by desire and need alone, but is further qualified by specific social, cultural, and political reasons. Through a comparative lens—for example, juxtaposing modern and traditional society to show how fashion functions like sumptuary laws (p. 32)—Appadurai asserts that substantive explanations to economic phenomena cannot ignore the cultural dimension. Third, the book is a pioneering effort in the field of interdisciplinary studies. Interdisciplinarity is more than an encounter between disciplines; rather, it requires a new vocabulary for the articulation of findings about new objects (Barthes, 1977). By bringing the voice of five anthropologists, four social historians, and one archaeologist into a year-long conversation1, the enterprise that drives the book facilitates deeper exchange and engagement across academic borders. Thus, notwithstanding a seasoned subject matter at its heart, in its feat of orchestrating a collaboration among academicians who “rarely talk to one another”, the book endeavours to provide a “revitalized anthropology of things” (p. xiii). Situated in this intellectual milieu, The Social Life of Things carries its principal proposition in its title. Things, like persons, have social lives which can be traced in their trajectory as they flow through different contexts, changing form and acquiring new uses in the process of movement. In this course, things attain meaning from their context. For example, when things like bed linens, furniture, and crockery are given away in dowry, they connote a conjugal fund for setting up a marital household, whereas the same things when purchased by a

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This initiative was undertaken under the aegis of the Ethnohistory Program at the University of Pennsylvania. The program began a decade before the papers were delivered at workshops and symposiums held in 1983 and 1984.

Chapter Review/4 retailer from a wholesaler connote commerce. But Appadurai argues that things also give meaning to their context—a concept he calls “methodological fetishism” (p. 5). For example, from the methodological point of view, the exchange of dowry leads to status and reputation gained or lost by the bride’s family, and dowry itself symbolizes pressures of caste, class, and gender relations (Dube, 1996). The elaboration of this conceit is the main aim of Appadurai’s essay “Introduction: commodities and the politics of value”. Upon the assumption of things-in-motion, the author argues that all things have a commodity potential. A commodity is not a certain kind of thing, but a certain kind of situation—“the commodity situation”—in which the exchangeability of a thing becomes its socially relevant feature (p. 13). This implies that a thing can move in and out of “the commodity phase” during its social life, as determined by cultural, political, and cognitive processes called “the commodity candidacy” (p. 13). The social environment that marks the temporal and symbolic states of the commodity situation, i.e. the exchange itself, refers to “the commodity context” (p. 13). For example, take the case of wheat. Its social life might play out as follows: Wheat grown for subsistence is a thing with commodity potential, realized when a part of it is set aside for cultivation under a corporate contract with, say, Britannia. The corporate contract establishes the commodity candidacy of wheat. Now, wheat has entered into the commodity phase, where it is ground into flour in Britannia’s commercial processing plant, manufactured into bread, and then sold in the market (commodity context) to a housewife. This process of commoditization marks only one state in the social life of wheat. When the housewife makes different dishes out of the bread (e.g. pizzas, sandwiches, pudding), each dish becomes increasingly “individualized”, and in this process of “singularization” or “decommoditization” (Chap. 2, p.

Chapter Review/5 65) bread leaves its commodity phase. Nevertheless, it retains its commodity potential. At this stage, the bread can follow different paths, each of which terminates at the point of consumption: (1) the bread as pizza is eaten by the family at dinner; (2) the son barters the sandwich in his tiffin with a chocolate offered by his school friend; and (3) the family gifts the pudding to the hosts of a community dinner party. Mapping out the “cultural biography” (p. 34) of a thing in this way, Appadurai’s framework radically argues that commodities are found in all types of societies—to the degree that some things are frequently commoditized during their social lives, and notwithstanding the observation that modern industrial capitalism is “the most intensely commoditized type of society” (p. 16). Further, this perspective avoids the rigid distinction between commodity exchange and other forms of exchange—like barter and gift exchange—which emerges from a positivistic perspective that views the commodity as a particular thing in a particular society. Ingenious though it may seem, this framework draws on classical themes, particularly the ideas of Marx and Simmel. In Capital (1971), Marx states that products of labour, which are things with use-value and value (embodied abstract human labour), become commodities when use-values are produced for others, i.e. social use-values. He crucially adds, “To become a commodity, a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use-value, by means of an exchange” (Marx, 1971, p.48). Simmel converges with Marx on the importance of exchange when he asserts that exchange is the source of value (Simmel, 1987). Drawing on these claims, Appadurai makes exchange central in his analysis. However, Appadurai’s point of departure is his postulation that the determination of value in exchange is a political process. He introduces the concept of “regimes of value” (p. 4), which refer to different systems of exchange embedded in larger cultural and historical milieus

Chapter Review/6 of a specific space and time. These regimes are political in nature because they consist of relations, assumptions, and struggles related to meaning and power. For instance, in a specific exchange system, or regime, parties inevitably have different interests, and wield differential levels of privilege and social control. However, to enter into an exchange, the interested parties must come to some minimal agreement about sacrifices. Appadurai suggests that implicit in this resolution of discrepancy and mutual discernment of exchangeability is a power dynamic rooted in specific sociocultural contexts. The politics of a regime of value is inherent in the journey of a commodity: the culturally and legally approved “paths” for the circulation of commodities, as well as its “diversions” (p. 17). Paths and diversions involve questions about “what objects may be exchanged for what, by whom, when, and under what conditions” (Ferguson, 1988, p. 493). For example, a mother’s wedding jewellery, culturally categorized as heirloom, might stray from its path and get commoditized when it is offered for sale in the face of financial scarcity. Further, the exchange itself can be seen as a political battle of price negotiation between the valuation perceived by the seller (based on affective criteria) and the buyer (based on objective criteria). Interestingly, Appadurai argues that demand is also politicized, by showing that consumption is “eminently social, relational, and active”, underpinned by the logic of politics (p. 31). The idea that needs and wants are not the only determinants of consumption is not new. Veblen’s (1899) concept of “conspicuous consumption” shows that the leisure class displays their status through material goods, many of which are useless and nonfunctional items. Appadurai, however, takes this idea further and suggests that consumption is doubly politicized, in its sending and receiving aspects (Ferguson, 1988). In the Indian context, for example, the middle-class under constant social scrutiny consumes certain commodities—like an apartment

Chapter Review/7 with upholstered furniture, at least one car, fashionable clothing, and electronic devices with latest technology—in order to perform their status (Dickey, 2011). In this symbolic act of consumption, they send a message about their socioeconomic status, but also receive a message about the instability of being in the middle, and the anxiety and pleasure that comes with it. Finally, cultural politics influences the distribution of knowledge at various points in the career of a commodity. Knowledge at the production locus is technical and standardized, although in some cases, it is exclusive to certain social groups (e.g. caste and class2). In the market, criteria like authenticity and exclusivity are manipulated and mediated by traders. Knowledge about how to consume is determined by access to economic, social, and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984). The more discontinuous that these processes are, the greater is the chance for sociocultural myths to emerge and distort reality at these levels. One of the shortcomings of Appadurai’s analysis is its claim to track a commodity’s “total trajectory from production, through exchange/distribution, to consumption” (p. 13), but to thereafter focus mainly on exchange and consumption. Perhaps this neglect can be justified by assuming, as the author does, that the relationship between politics and production has been sufficiently treated by those in the Marxist tradition. Yet, incorporating the stage of production into the life history of a thing while tracing its social life is a fertile ground for some interesting insights (see Lind & Barham, 2004). Whether Appadurai’s clever conceit provides a “revitalized anthropology of things” (p. xiii) is open to debate. But that it certainly revitalizes an interest in the anthropology of things is the conclusion of this review3.

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For example, Roy (1999) notes that certain artisanal groups protected skills and knowledge related to their craft within tightly knit guilds with socially regulated membership. 3 Word count (excluding References): 1829 words.

Chapter Review/8 KRITI SHARMA

Centre for the Study of Social Systems School of Social Sciences Jawaharlal Nehru University

References Barthes, R. (1977). From Work to Text. In R. Barthes, Image-Music-Text (pp. 155-164). London: Fontana. Bohannan, P. (1959). The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy. Journal of Economic History, 491-503. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. (R. Nice, Trans.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Carrier, J. G. (2005). Introduction. In J. G. Carrier, & J. G. Carrier (Ed.), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology (pp. 1-9). Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Dickey, S. (2011). The Pleasures and Anxieties of Being in the Middle: Emerging Middle-Class Identities in Urban South India. Modern Asian Studies, 559-599. Douglas, M. (1963). The Lele of the Kasai. London: International African Institute. Dube, L. (1996). Caste and Women. In M. Srinivas, Caste: Its Twentieth Century Avatar (pp. 117). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Eriksen, T. H. (2001). Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Pluto Press.

Chapter Review/9 Ferguson, J. (1988). Review: Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities. Cultural Anthropology, 488-513. Kopytoff, I. (1986). The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. In A. Appadurai, & A. Appadurai (Ed.), The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective (pp. 64-91). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lind, D., & Barham, E. (2004). The social life of the tortilla: Food, cultural politics, and contested commodification. Agriculture and Human Values, 47-60. Malinowski, B. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge. Marx, K. (1971 ). Capital: Vol. I. A Critical analysis of capitalist production. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mauss, M. (1976). The Gift. New York : Norton. Roy, T. (1999). Traditional Industry in the Economy of Colonial India. Cambridge: University of Cambridge. Simmel, G. (1987). The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge. Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Macmillan....