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Wealth in People, Wealth in Things – Introduction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jane I. Guyer
Jane I. Guyer
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Extract

One of the guiding lodestones for social theorists and social historians across the entire theoretical spectrum has been ‘wealth’: the things people imbue with value, the caches they collect up by every means from prestation to predation, the performative displays they orchestrate, the treasures they store and eventually leave behind, and all the complex cultural constructions whereby such things are counted, praised and imagined as sources and instruments of power. Perhaps no other topic excites comparably and recurrently fresh interest, from the Marxian framework of capital to Veblen's ‘conspicuous consumption’, Schama's ‘embarrassment of riches’, Appadurai's ‘tournaments of value’ and Weiner's ‘dense objects’.

Type
Wealth in People, Wealth in Things
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 83 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

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