Economy and Ritual: Studies of Postsocialist Transformations - Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.; According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Publisher Marketing: "This volume links two fields of anthropological inquiry that were central to the development of the discipline, but have rarely been considered together in recent decades: the study of ritual and of economic systems and rationalities . . . It is a welcome and fresh contribution that has no direct equivalents currently in print." . Sonja Luehrmann, Simon Fraser University "[This book] makes an innovative contribution to the way we think about economic anthropology-rituals, celebrations, feasts, and the partly constructive ways that they are indelibly tied to economic practices." . Russell Zanca, Northeastern Illinois University According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people's economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising. Stephen Gudeman, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota, has undertaken fieldwork in several countries of Latin America. During 2008-2012 he was co-director of the Economy and Ritual project at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Gudeman has published extensively in journals and written or edited eight books, the most recent of which are "Economy's Tension" (2008) and "Economic Persuasions" (2009). Chris Hann is a Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology at Halle. He formerly taught anthropology at the Universities of Cambridge and Kent (Canterbury). Hann is co-author of "Economic Anthropology: History, Ethnography, Critique" (2011) and co-editor of "Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today" (2009).

Contributor Bio:  Gudeman, Stephen Stephen Gudeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota. Author of numerous books and articles, including "The Demise of A Rural Economy" (1978), "Economics as Culture "(1986), and "Conversations in Colombia: The Domestic Economy in Life and Text" (with Alberto Rivera, 1990), he also edited "Economic Anthropology" (International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, 1999). Contributor Bio:  Hann, Chris Chris Hann is a founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. Hermann Goltz holds the chair for theology and culture of the Eastern Orthodox Churches at the Theological Faculty of the Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg, Germany.