Economic Action in Theory and Practice: Anthropological Investigations

This 30th volume of REA contains 13 original chapters focusing on various aspects of human economic organization and behavior in different places and cultures, and both in the present and in the past. Most of the chapters are based on empirical fieldwork conducted by the respective authors themselves. Two chapters focus on Africa, with a close look at urban food provisioning in Cameroon and an investigation into entrepreneurial activities in the rapidly changing economy of Cairo. These chapters illustrate two different kinds of flows of goods and money - domestic/local and international/global. Here, two chapters are concerned with places and cultures in the vast region of Central Asia; property rights and state power in Kazakhstan and animal markets in Kashgar, in western China, are the topics of consideration. Both deal with economic development and change in relation to Marxist ideology - market formalization under post-socialism and market liberalization under socialism, respectively. Two other chapters focus on the buying and selling activities of ethnic groups within larger societies - Latin Americans in the USA and Gabor Roma in Romania. Exchanges of items and money are linked to ethnic identity. Also concerning North America are chapters on kin-like compadrazgo networks among Mexican immigrants, on the trans-Atlantic (and global) art market, and on oil drilling in Canada. In addition, regarding Latin America, income disparities and inequalities in Brazil, and economic development in Colombia, are questioned. Finally, two chapters examine the past for clues to patterns of economic behavior and organization by considering the symbolic function of market crosses in historical England and Scotland, and domestic shell craft production in pre-conquest Ecuador.