Week 7- Commoditisation and commodity circulation

In continuation with themes set out in Entangled Objects, this week’s readings introduce us to a major transformation in anthropology as a discipline- the focus on material culture, which essentially examines how the things we make and circulate reflect our beliefs about the world.

All five readings are based on concepts highlighted or laid out by Appadurai in his essay on the Social life of things.  This essay is therefore presented as an anchor for discussion this week. 

The crux of Appadurai's argument is that commodities have social lives. By following things in motion, we can understand the human and social contexts within which they circulate and subsequently how value is generated or attributed by societies.However, Appadurai also makes clear that there are different regimes of value- recognition of which is of primary importance to the material culture approach. 

Appadurai argues that there is a need to follow things, “for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories”. Thus, what he seeks to offer  is a  minimum level of “methodological fetishism”as a corrective to over sociologized understandings of human transactions.

Simmel's notion of value is the entry point for Appadurai's analysis. While for Simmel, generation of value lay in the process of exchange, Appadurai argues for a focus on objects in the process of exchange. He also works with a criticism of the typical Marxian understanding of value generation which tends to dichotomise gift and commodity societies, and understands commodities as existing specifically in capitalist societies. (though such a dichotomy is not necessarily true of Marx’s writings). Appadurai challenges this view. He breaks with the production dominant model of value generation to a trajectory approach of commodities and consumption.

This approach offers us an understanding of the social genesis of value, which for Appadurai lies in politics that  links values and exchange.

Some of the themes that could be discussed with respect to his essay include

•   the idea of regimes of value as against cultural context

•  tournaments of value

• movement of goods on destined paths and their diversions

•  generation of demand and desire

•  types of knowledge with regard to commodities and their life histories and the commoditisation of  knowledge itself in complex societies

• knowledge and advertising in capitalist societies

• politics of value

As with Appadurai, Kopytoff argues for understanding commoditisation as a phase in the social life of things. He however identifies a critical difference between complex and small scale societies in terms of the homogeneity of the criteria used for  valuation of object. In simple societies, the level of homogeneity is much higher than in complex societies. The peculiarity of complex societies is that their publicly recognized commoditisation operates side by side with innumerable schemes of valuation and singularisation devised by individuals, social categories and groups, and these schemes stand in 'irresolvable' conflict with public commoditisation as well as with one another. 

The interesting point that Kopytoff makes is the over emphasis in the west against the commoditisation of the human sphere. Do his arguments make a case for the existence of a moral economy/morality in capitalism?

Anna Tsing in keeping with Appadurai's framework looks at the trajectory of an object from production to consumption. Two insights from the piece seem interesting: 1.Commodities are not always created by  conventional  factors of production, but tap into non-capitalist social relations as exemplified by the supply chain model (which is free from alienation and the need to discipline the work force), 2.Subsequently this could be the way out of theoretical orthodoxy  wherein capitalism is understood to be a monolith marked by relations of violence, inequality and injustice. She breaks the  monolith of capitalism by empirically examining the trajectory of matsutake mushrooms, to show how gifts become commodities through the act of assessment, and how the commodity eventually transforms back into the gift at the stage of consumption. 

As a result she highlights the sophisticated nuances of the Capitalist system and  the fluid career that objects have. 

Miller’s article summarises the direction which material culture as a thread of anthropological inquiry has taken. He reiterates many of Appadurai’s arguments, particularly breaking of the gift-commodity dichotomy. He also seeks to overcome the good-evil dichotomy this traditional dualism embodies.Miller's contention is that  the study of kinship which has been the staple diet of anthropology will be replaced by the study of consumption, He argues that the construction of social relations is increasingly carried out  through the process of consumption with goods replacing persons as the key medium of objectification for projects of value. Further, consumption is sought to be understood as detached from a critique of capitalism; the focus is only to ascertain the actual significance of cultural productions and norms on the lives of persons and communities. 

The final article by Michel Callon et al, makes a case for the proliferation of actors involved in the organisation of markets; this includes not only experts of various kinds but also economic agents themselves. Markets are therefore understood to be reflexive spaces. In keeping with some themes highlighted by Appadurai, an important point that emerges in the examination of the 'economy of qualities' is the significance of knowledge in the construction/ reconstruction of a commodity. In particular, Callon highlights the role of consumers in ''qualifying and re qualifying'' commodities and how  it is necessary for producers and market strategists to account for consumers' evaluations. 

All five articles emphasize looking at objects and how they circulate as opposed to types of exchange. It appears that  Appadurai's approach is basically a  reworking of old ideas of economic anthropology, to help us move away from questions of where the source of value lies( structure vs.agency).  Instead, we examine how value plays out processually in different regimes as part of political and social contexts. 

-Keya and Savitha