Description

In Economics and Morality, the authors seek to illuminate the multiple kinds of analyses relating morality and economic behavior in particular kinds of economic systems. The chapters explore economic systems from a variety of diverse indigenous and capitalist societies, focusing on moral challenges in non-Western economic systems undergoing profound change, grassroots movements and moral claims in the context of capitalism, and morality-based movements taking place within corporate and state institutions. The anthropological insights of each chapter provide the value of firsthand fieldwork and ethnographic investigation, as well as the tradition of critically studying non-Western and Western societies. Because the moral challenges in a given capitalist society can no longer be effectively addressed without considering the interaction and influences of different societies in the global system, the international ethnographic research in this book can help document and make sense of the changes sweeping our planet.

Table of Contents

Economics and Morality: Introduction

Part I. The Stakes of Morality, Reciprocity, and Change
Chapter 1. Rethinking Gifts and Commodities: Reciprocity, Recognition, and the Morality of Exchange
Chapter 2. The Grift: Getting Burned in the Northern Malagasy Sapphire Trade
Chapter 3. Maya Daykeepers: New Spiritual Clients and the Morality of Making Money

Part II. Moral Agency Inside Market Logic
Chapter 4. Extreme Gifting: The Moral Economy of a Community School
Chapter 5. "Thiefing a Chance:" Moral Meanings of Theft in a Trinidadian Garment Factory
Chapter 6. Patriotism, Profits, and Waste: The Moral Dimensions of Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal in Texas
Chapter 7. Virtue at the Checkout Till: Salvation Economics in Kenyan Flower Fields

Part III. Frontiers of Social Responsibility
Chapter 8. Beyond CSR: Dilemmas and Paradoxes of Ethical Conduct in Transnational Organizations
Chapter 9. "I am the Conscience of the Company:" Responsibility and the Gift in a Transnational Mining Corporation
Chapter 10. Moral Behavior in Stock Markets: Islamic Finance and Socially Responsible Investment

Afterword: Moral Economies, Economic Moralities: Consider the Possibilities!

Product details

Published 16 Sep 2009
Format Paperback
Edition 1st
Extent 292
ISBN 9780759112025
Imprint AltaMira Press
Dimensions 234 x 155 mm
Series Society for Economic Anthropology Monograph Series
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Anthology Editor

Katherine E. Browne

Anthology Editor

B. Lynne Milgram

Contributor

Tor Hernes

Contributor

Bill Maurer

Contributor

Dinah Rajak

Contributor

Joel Robbins

Contributor

Andrew Walsh

Contributor

Cynthia Werner

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Environment: Staging