Economic Persuasions / / ed. by Stephen Gudeman.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Berghahn Books Complete eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Bird-David, Nurit,; Carrier, James G.,; Cosgel, Metin M.,; Darr, Asaf,; Denzer, LaRay,; Gudeman, Stephen,; Guyer, Jane I.,; Hart, Keith,; Klamer, Arjo,; Milberg, William,; Oliven, Ruben George,; Swedberg, Richard,
• HerausgeberIn: Gudeman, Stephen,
• Place / Publishing House: New York; , Oxford : : Berghahn Books, , [2009]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Series: Studies in Rhetoric and Culture ; 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (238 p.)

As the transition from socialism to a market economy gathered speed in the early 1990s, many people proclaimed the final success of capitalism as a practice and neoliberal economics as its accompanying science. But with the uneven achievements of the “transition”—the deepening problems of “development,” persistent unemployment, the widening of the wealth gap, and expressions of resistance—the discipline of economics is no longer seen as a mirror of reality or as a unified science. How should we understand economics and, more broadly, the organization and disorganization of material life? In this book, international scholars from anthropology and economics adopt a rhetorical perspective in order to make sense of material life and the theories about it. Re-examining central problems in the two fields and using ethnographic and historical examples, they explore the intersections between these disciplines, contrast their methods and epistemologies, and show how a rhetorical approach offers a new mode of analysis while drawing on established contributions.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Preface -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Simplicity in Economic Anthropology: Persuasion, Form, and Substance -- 3. When Rhetoric Becomes Mass Persuasion: The Case of the Concept of Interest -- 4. The New Social Science Imperialism and the Problem of Knowledge in Contemporary Economics -- 5. The Persuasions of Economics -- 6. Conversations Between Anthropologists and Economists -- 7. “The Craving for Intelligibility:” Speech and Silence on the Economy under Structural Adjustment and Military Rule in Nigeria -- 8. Mass-gifts: On Market Giving in Advanced Capitalist Societies -- 9. The Persuasive Power of Money -- 10. The Money Rhetoric in the United States -- 11. The Third Way: A Cultural Economic Perspective -- Contributors -- References -- Index