Legacies, logics, logistics : essays in the anthropology of the platform economy / Jane I. Guyer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guyer, Jane I., author.

Contributor:

Jane I., Guyer, Contributor.

LaRay, Denzer, Contributor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economic anthropology.

Economics--History--21st century.

Economics.

Economic anthropology--Africa.

Africa--Economic conditions--1960-.

Africa.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (325 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago, [Illinois] ; London, [England] : The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Legacies, Logics, Logistics brings together a set of essays, written both before and after the financial crisis of 2007–08, by eminent Africanist and economic anthropologist Jane I. Guyer. Each was written initially for a conference on a defined theme. When they are brought together and interpreted as a whole by Guyer, these varied essays show how an anthropological and socio-historical approach to economic practices—both in the West and elsewhere—can illuminate deep facets of economic life that the big theories and models may fail to capture. Focusing on economic actors—whether ordinary consumers or financial experts—Guyer traces how people and institutions hold together past experiences (legacies), imagined scenarios and models (logics), and situational challenges (logistics) in a way that makes the performance of economic life (on platforms made of these legacies, logics, and logistics) work in practice. Individual essays explore a number of topics—including time frames and the future, the use of percentages in observations and judgments, the explanation of prices, the coexistence of different world currencies, the reapplication of longtime economic theories in new settings, and, crucially, how we talk about the economy, how we use stable terms to describe a turbulent system. Valuable as standalone pieces, the essays build into a cogent method of economic anthropology.

Contents:

Contents ; Preface; Part I: Foundations ; One / The Themes of Legacies, Logics, Logistics ; Two / "Toiling Ingenuity": Food Regulation in Britain and Nigeria ; Part II: Public Economic Cultures ; Three / "The Craving for Intelligibility": Speech and Silence on the Economy under Structural Adjustment and Military Rule in Nigeria (with LaRay Denzer) ; Four / Prophecy and the Near Future: Thoughts on Macroeconomic, Evangelical, and Punctuated Time ; Five / From Market to Platform: Shifting Analytics for the Study of Current Capitalism ; Part III: Cultures of Calculation

Six / The Eruption of Tradition? On Ordinality and Calculation Seven / Percentages and Perchance: Archaic Forms in the Twenty-First Century ; Part IV: Platforms ; Eight / Intricacy and Impasse: Dilemmas of Value in Soft-Currency Economies ; Nine / Indexing People to Money: The Fate of "Shelter" ; Part V: Toward Ethnography and the People's Economies ; Ten / Composites, Fictions, and Risk: Toward an Ethnography of Price ; Eleven / Soft Currencies, Cash Economies, New Monies: Past and Present ; Twelve / Is the "Real Economy" Disaggregating, Disappearing, or Deviating? ; Notes; References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780226326900

022632690X

OCLC:

948690760