Notes:
Three of the papers were presented to the Ethnohistory Workshop at the University of Pennsylvania during 1983-84; the others were presented at a Symposium on the Relationship between Commodities and Culture, held May 23-25, 1984, in Philadelphia.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Commodities and the politics of value / Arjun Appadurai --
The cultural biography of things : commoditization as process / Igor Kopytoff --
Two kinds of value in the Eastern Solomon Islands / William H. Davenport --
Newcomers to the world of goods : consumption among the Muria Gonds / Alfred Gell --
Varna and the emergence of wealth in prehistoric Europe / Colin Renfrew --
Sacred commodities : the circulation of medieval relics / Patrick Geary --
Weavers and dealers : the authenticity of an oriental carpet / Brian Spooner --
Qat : changes in the production and consumption of a quasilegal commodity in northeast Africa / Lee V. Cassanelli --
The structure of a cultural crisis : thinking about cloth in France before and after the Revolution / William M. Reddy --
The origins of swadeshi (home industry) : cloth and Indian society, 1700-1930 / C.A. Bayly.
