Economy's Tension

As well as containing stimulating arguments interspersed with engaging ethnographic examples, this book is admirably lucid in style - Few other anthropologists have such a grasp of [economic] theory, and in the present work he illuminates not only the tension between community and market, but also that between anthropology and economics.A" * JRAI "A clear and compelling account of the symbiotic relationship between the market and the baseA" of mutual relationships that normally empower as well as constrain the market, the tension of the title. Stephen Gudeman convincingly argues the necessity of this tension, not only for economic sanity but for economic progressA" as it is conventionally defined. This book is must reading for social scientists, particularly for economists." * Stephen Marglin, Harvard University, and author of The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community The work represents a significant contribution by a distinguished economic anthropologist who has done much to shape the subdiscipline in recent decades - The author's command of economic theory and issues is impressive, perhaps greater than that of any anthropologist working in the area today.A" * Mark Moberg, University of South Alabama This book is a breath of fresh air in the arid field of economics. It articulates a humane perspective on the economy with notions that matter for how we read the economic lives we are living. The book is a must for anyone who needs or wants to open the eyes for the full range of values that constitute economic processes. I learned a lot from the studying it.A" * Arjo Klamer, Erasmus University Economy's Tension is a call for a cultural shift in the way we think about the economy. Gudeman focuses on the conflict between mutualityA" and markets,A" that is between the meaning humans seek in community and that embodied in the price fetishismA" that underpins market rationality. But Gudeman's highly readable and intellectually broad account is much more than a post-Marxist cultural critique - He goes beyond the oft-heard critique of global neoliberalism to propose a deeper shift in economic thought. This book is an important cultural reading of twenty-first-century capitalism that will be of much interest to social scientists of all disciplines.A" * William Milberg, New School for Social Research