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Based on an international conference held at
Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 1999, and constituting one of
the results of the WOTRO (Netherlands Foundation for
Tropical Research) wide-ranging programme on
'Globalization and the construction of communal
identities', the book Commodification: Things, Agency
and Identities (Wim van Binsbergen & Peter
Geschiere, eds., 400 pp; Berlin/Muenster/Vienna/London:
LIT) was published in December 2005blurb on back
cover:
Twenty years ago, Arjun Appadurai’s edited
collection The Social Life of Things:
Commodities in Cultural Perspective
(Cambridge, 1986) brought about a major change in
our perspective on material things in
circulation. A domain hitherto reserved for
economics was accessed by anthropologists
concentrating on commodities and wielding new
conceptual tools such as ‘tournament of
value’, ‘cultural biography of things’, and
‘politics of consumption’. In the present
book, some of the original contributors of 1986
(Arjun Appadurai himself, and leading British
archaeologist Colin Renfrew) meet with today’s
prominent names in the field (Jean & John
Comaroff, Paul & Jennifer Alexander, Roy
Dilley, Mike Rowlands, and Herskovits
award-winning Nancy Rose Hunt) and with brilliant
scholars of the next generation: Brad Weiss, Rijk
van Dijk, Janet Roitman, James Leach, and Irene
Stengs. Together with the editors, Wim van
Binsbergenand Peter Geschiere, this exceptional
team explores the dynamics of Commodification:
Things, agency and identities. Since the
mid-1980s, the setting has changed enormously, as
a result of the end of the Cold War,
globalisation, the triumph of ‘The Market’,
and terrorism. The present book’s emphasis is
on Africa rather than on Asia and Europe, and on
the process through which commodities come into
being. The empirically rich and analytically
provocative contributions, and Wim van
Binsbergen’s extensive Introduction (which
also reflects his recent work in philosophy and
long-range historical comparison), show
commodification to be a powerful tool towards
understanding the modern world, especially South
economies and South-North interactions today.
Commodification does not exhaust the ontological
dimension of things, agency, and identities; but
it greatly illuminates these three central
concepts, and thus is conducive to the
much-needed dialogue between anthropology and
economics.
Wim M.J. van Binsbergen (1947) is Senior
Researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden,
and Professor of the Foundations of Intercultural
Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the
Netherlands. He taught at the Universities of
Zambia, Leiden, Manchester, Berlin, Amsterdam
(VU), and Durban. His recent publications deal
with globalisation, interculturality, truth and
reconciliation, and Valentin Mudimbe.
Peter L. Geschiere (1941) is professor of
African anthropology at the University of
Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He taught
anthropology at Leiden, New York, and
Witwatersrand; and history at Rotterdam and
Kisangani. His recent publications deal with
globalization and identity; capitalism and
autochthony; and nationhood.
Leading figures in international African
Studies, Peter Geschiere and Wim van Binsbergen
have worked closely together since the 1960s. In
1985 they published Old Modes of Production and
Capitalist Encroachment. In 1992 they initiated
the Netherlands Foundation for Tropical
Research’s (WOTRO) Programme on Globalization
and the Construction of Communal Identities. This
programme has engaged dozens of researchers, in
the Netherlands and internationally, in the study
of cultural dimensions of globalization. One of
the programme’s outcomes is the present book |
click here for the
book's Table of Contents
click here for the
book's full cover
click
here for a preview of Wim van Binsbergen's introduction
('Commodification: Things, agency, and identities:
Introduction', pp. 9-51)
which however also requires access to the book's 'Cumulative
Bibliography' (pp. 351-378, click here for a preview)
the book also contains the final version of Wim van
Binsbergen's paper ‘
‘‘We are in this for the money'': Commodification and
the sangoma cult of Southern Africa' (pp. 319-348)
This book appears in the series: Ethnologie:
Forschung und Wissenschaft
Bd. 8, 2005, 400 S., 34.90 EUR, br., ISBN 3-8258-8804-5
copies may be ordered directly from the publisher, LIT Verlag
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