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ISBN: PB: 9780990505013

University of Chicago Press, HAU

March 2015

250 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

68 line drawings, 3 maps, 58 tables

PB:
£26,50
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Gifts and Commodities

Christopher A. Gregory's "Gifts and Commodities" is one of the undisputed classics of economic anthropology. On its publication in 1982, it spurred intense, ongoing debates about gifts and gifting, value, exchange, and the place of political economy in anthropology.

"Gifts and Commodities" is, at once, a critique of neoclassical economics and development theory, a critical history of colonial Papua New Guinea, and a comparative ethnography of exchange in Melanesian societies. This new edition includes a new foreword by anthropologist Marilyn Strathern that discusses the ongoing response to the book and the debates it has engendered, debates that have only become more salient in our ever-more-neoliberal and ever-more-globalized era.

About the Author

C. A. Gregory teaches anthropology at the Australian National University and the University of Manchester. He is the author of "Observing the Economy", "Savage Money: The Anthropology and Politics of Commodity Exchange", and "Lachmi Jagar: Gurumai Sukdai's Story of the Bastar Rice Goddess".

Reviews

"Gregory's work constitutes probably the single most important body of economic anthropology produced in the last half century. 'Gifts and Commodities' was foundational; with one or two incisive and brilliant interventions, it managed to completely transform the field. It is still seen as a classic, but at the same time, in many quarters, its overall argument remains systematically misrepresented as essentializing or totalizing – in ways that should have been self-evidently false to anyone who had actually taken the time to read the book. This new edition should undo an historical injustice in this regard as a new generation of young scholars will be able to encounter what surely will be remembered as an enduring classic for a very long time to come" – David Graeber, London School of Economics, author of "Debt: The First 5,000 Years"