WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:00:01.799 --> 00:00:08.500 hello everybody and welcome back to the final part of the lecture and as I mentioned at the end of 00:00:08.500 --> 00:00:13.500 the previous part we're going to move the discussion on from things such as 00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:18.800 distinction between Commodities and gifts and the idea of different kinds of values in economic 00:00:18.800 --> 00:00:23.300 exchange to looking at the idea of economy more generally as this is something that comes up in a 00:00:23.300 --> 00:00:29.000 number of texts on the reading for this week and in particular we would do this from looking at the 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:32.500 work of Karl Polanyi. Why Polanyi? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:00:32.500 --> 00:00:38.800 He is one of the most influential figures in the history of economic anthropology he 00:00:38.800 --> 00:00:43.600 himself was actually a political Economist but drew very largely on the work we've been talking 00:00:43.600 --> 00:00:49.000 about earlier he was very influenced by people such as Mauss and Malinowski and has had a huge 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:54.500 influence on economic anthropology ever since, and you'll see this in the in the papers from this 00:00:54.500 --> 00:01:00.900 week I think the name Polanyi and certainly ideas from Polanyi come up a lot in the text by 00:01:00.900 --> 00:01:02.450 Thomas Eriksen and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:01:02.450 --> 00:01:06.500 the text by Stephen Gudeman as well so if you want to understand these texts properly if you read 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:12.400 them in many regards the best thing to do is to start by understanding the ideas that stand behind 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:19.800 them in the work of Karl Polanyi so what is Polanyi's key idea or set of ideas become so influential 00:01:19.800 --> 00:01:26.500 in economic anthropology the key argument really is that Polanyi argues that economists from the 00:01:26.500 --> 00:01:32.500 eighteen hundreds onwards as he describes it have naturalised the conceptual or NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:01:32.500 --> 00:01:38.700 the ideal separation of the economy from other kinds of social relations. What does he mean 00:01:38.700 --> 00:01:40.400 by this? well NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:01:41.400 --> 00:01:47.400 we often think about there being a thing called the economy don't we and the way that is talked 00:01:47.400 --> 00:01:53.200 about in the media or the news often reinforces this idea the economy is stable the economy is 00:01:53.200 --> 00:02:00.300 picking up and similar things with the market the markets are uneasy the markets responded badly to 00:02:00.300 --> 00:02:06.600 the government's plans to increase spending on welfare whatever it might be and this reflects almost 00:02:06.600 --> 00:02:11.700 a kind of naturalised idea but there is a separate set of social relations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:02:11.700 --> 00:02:18.900 Called the economy with their own separate set of social rules. Polanyi argues that in most of 00:02:18.900 --> 00:02:24.600 human history people didn't think about societies being divided up in that way or social relations 00:02:24.600 --> 00:02:29.100 being divided up and that way they might have divided social relations up and all sorts of other 00:02:29.100 --> 00:02:34.200 ways but the idea there was this thing called the economy with its own set of separate functions and 00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:40.400 rules is a comparatively recent distinction trobriand Islanders might have distinguished between 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:41.649 Kula and Gimwali NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:02:41.649 --> 00:02:45.450 but they didn't think there was something called the economy out there that was separate from 00:02:45.450 --> 00:02:51.200 something called kinship or something called family this was all part of a general process family, 00:02:51.200 --> 00:03:01.100 kinship, gift exchange, the kula of how social relationships in general was circulated and reproduced 00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:05.900 themselves and this of course ties in really very much with the idea of the gift and the gift being 00:03:05.900 --> 00:03:11.650 the predominant form of exchange in certain social contexts the idea as we mentioned earlier the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:03:11.650 --> 00:03:18.400 is a total Central fact in which economics and social morality and religion and law and morality are 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:25.050 all tied together. Polanyi argues that with the rise of commodity Society in the eighteen hundreds 00:03:25.050 --> 00:03:31.200 you also have the separation of economy as an idea from other kinds of social relationships he 00:03:31.200 --> 00:03:36.800 argues that previous economic systems were not based on the Primacy of the market on the market 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:41.649 economy so two things happen according to Polanyi. Number number one the market economy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:03:41.649 --> 00:03:48.400 becomes separated out from the rest of society and then number two then that market economy is then 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:54.500 seen as being the dominating principle around which the rest of society should be organized, so you 00:03:54.500 --> 00:04:00.300 only pay for extra welfare or extra child care if the economy can support it rather than the other 00:04:00.300 --> 00:04:01.600 way around. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:08.100 He argues that in previous societies as we've seen before that the market had if it existed at 00:04:08.100 --> 00:04:13.500 all had a quite marginal position and the other economic systems throughout most of human 00:04:13.500 --> 00:04:19.600 history have been based upon rather than market principles combinations of other principles such as 00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:25.600 reciprocity redistribution householding reciprocity will be familiar with this is the logic of the 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:30.650 gift which was a central organizing principle in many cultural contexts. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:04:30.650 --> 00:04:36.900 Redistribution he broadly means by redistributions systems in which a centralised state or centralized 00:04:36.900 --> 00:04:42.700 political authority gathers in most of the resources and then organizes their distribution we 00:04:42.700 --> 00:04:48.500 might think of the old Soviet system or the old socialist States in Eastern Europe as an attempt to 00:04:48.500 --> 00:04:54.400 create this kind of system, other kinds of examples might be some of the empires or kingdoms that 00:04:54.400 --> 00:05:00.049 were found in the Americas previous to the Spanish or Portuguese conquest in the fifteen hundreds 00:05:00.049 --> 00:05:01.000 Society NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:07.700 such as the Inka or the Aztec for example, and finally house holding a system where most individual 00:05:07.700 --> 00:05:13.100 needs to make not by individual people but within individual households in which most 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:18.000 households are relatively self-sufficient in terms of food and other necessities of life and they 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:23.950 might engage with forms of exchange with other households or other people on the edges of that 00:05:23.950 --> 00:05:29.300 whether that's gift exchange or market exchange or a combination of both but households were largely 00:05:29.300 --> 00:05:30.950 self-sufficient and that these NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:05:30.950 --> 00:05:37.400 principles he argues were central to most societies throughout human history, and we can contrast 00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:43.000 that for example with ourselves where most of our livelihood does rely upon the market I 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:48.600 Rely first and foremost upon selling my labor on the market in order to then gain money and then I 00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:54.900 gained my house I bought on the market my food I buy at the supermarket my electricity I buy on the 00:05:54.900 --> 00:05:59.850 electricity market so on and so forth so the market has become a centralizing organizing principle 00:05:59.850 --> 00:06:00.950 for the production NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:06:00.950 --> 00:06:07.400 And reproduction of human existence, but this is not a universal thing in fact it's predominance is a 00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:14.400 comparatively historically recent phenomena. Therefore he argues that the idea of the market as the 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:19.900 fundamental basis of society that you find in economics textbooks that you find in Adam Smith the 00:06:19.900 --> 00:06:25.300 idea is some emanation of human nature is actually based upon the myth of what he calls again using 00:06:25.300 --> 00:06:30.900 the language of the time the bartering savage a similar argument to that made by Malinowski the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 71% (MEDIUM) 00:06:30.900 --> 00:06:36.000 Idea that you saw people exchanging shells on the beach you'd imagine they were doing a market 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:40.100 exchange you'd imagine they were bartering with each other but actually they're engaged in a 00:06:40.100 --> 00:06:44.049 different kind of exchange with different kind of cultural logic NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:06:44.049 --> 00:06:51.850 again to reiterate the point. Polanyi is not saying that there were no markets prior to capitalism 00:06:51.850 --> 00:06:57.600 markets existed but they were comparatively insignificant and as we will see they were Bound in by 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:04.500 certain kinds of rules and regulations we therefore he argues cannot see the past as our present 00:07:04.500 --> 00:07:10.000 we cannot see what happened in history is simply a smaller version of what we have now leading up to 00:07:10.000 --> 00:07:13.950 what we have now instead he argues there's a fundamental break in how NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:07:13.950 --> 00:07:20.200 how we conceptualize Human Society these caused by the great transformation, when the economy becomes 00:07:20.200 --> 00:07:30.200 seen as being separated out from the rest of social relationships. So Polanyi therefore argues in many 00:07:30.200 --> 00:07:36.100 societies people's main concern is to maximise social relationships not money or objects again an 00:07:36.100 --> 00:07:41.000 argument we should be familiar with some of the previous sections of this lecture it's worth making 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:43.950 the point that this is not necessarily some romantic NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:07:43.950 --> 00:07:50.200 Altruistic noble idea of you know pre-capitalist people living in harmony with each other and 00:07:50.200 --> 00:07:57.100 Living in harmony with nature it's a way of being that can on occasion be just as hierarchical just 00:07:57.100 --> 00:08:04.800 as oppressive and just as self-interested as capitalism it's just a self-interest that operates 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:09.900 according to a different kind of cultural logic I might want to become the big man I might want to 00:08:09.900 --> 00:08:13.950 Have power and authority over the young people by using the kind NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:08:13.950 --> 00:08:18.800 gift exchange networks I described earlier, and maybe I want to use those because I want to become 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:24.700 important and I want to boss other people around and it was to build up my own prestige but it's a 00:08:24.700 --> 00:08:30.000 different logic of self-interest Polanyi or other people like Chris Gregory might argue from the 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:35.500 capitalist banker who also is self-interested but wants to build up his stocks of money. This 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:40.400 self-interest is based upon building up stocks of wealth in order to give them a way to build up 00:08:40.400 --> 00:08:44.000 one's influence over social relationships. Therefore, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:50.300 Polanyi argues and this is one of his key arguments we need to understand the economic 00:08:50.300 --> 00:08:56.800 motives as he puts it spring from the context of social life that we are motivated to succeed within 00:08:56.800 --> 00:09:02.700 the context we find ourselves into a large extent rather than the economic motivation to acquire 00:09:02.700 --> 00:09:08.099 lots of money being a natural part of human nature NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:09:08.099 --> 00:09:15.200 instead what we are motivated to acquire what we are motivated to do economically depends upon the 00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:17.450 context of social media NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:09:17.450 --> 00:09:23.500 and as mentioned in other societies principle such as reciprocity on house holding are more central 00:09:23.500 --> 00:09:29.000 than market principles and also important to note as well Polanyi makes the argument these exchange 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:33.300 systems can be just as complex in their own way as the free market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 76% (HØY) 00:09:33.300 --> 00:09:39.600 but with other kinds of values so for example the Inca or the Aztec empires of pre-conquest 00:09:39.600 --> 00:09:46.900 America's were very highly complex and complicated social systems this is not simply just a 00:09:46.900 --> 00:09:52.200 situation of small-scale village societies the Soviet Union while it collapsed in there was an 00:09:52.200 --> 00:09:56.900 incredibly complex social system the Incas and Aztecs were incredibly complex systems that were 00:09:56.900 --> 00:10:02.600 thriving and doing very well until the Europeans arrived they can be very complex social systems but 00:10:02.600 --> 00:10:03.800 they're simply complex NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:10:03.800 --> 00:10:09.000 systems organized according to other kinds of political and economic factors NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:10:09.500 --> 00:10:16.400 so what happens well Polanyi says look in medieval Europe much of the traditional organization of 00:10:16.400 --> 00:10:21.300 markets was designed to make sure that market principles did not spread far from it being assumed 00:10:21.300 --> 00:10:26.500 that the market should and was the natural organizing principle for the whole of society and the 00:10:26.500 --> 00:10:31.800 whole the economy there was a very conscious attempt to make sure that markets were delimited that 00:10:31.800 --> 00:10:36.600 they were embedded in particular kinds of social regulations so only certain kinds of people 00:10:36.600 --> 00:10:40.050 portrayed in the market for example if you were born as a peasant NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:10:40.050 --> 00:10:46.600 on a feudal estate in medieval England and France you wouldn't be allowed to leave your estate and 00:10:46.600 --> 00:10:51.000 say no one side of being a peasant I'm going to go and see if I can make some money on the market in 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:56.600 the nearby Town only certain kinds of people were allowed to trademark it wasn't a quote unquote 00:10:56.600 --> 00:11:02.400 free market of the kind that we imagining it today so there was a very conscious and deliberate 00:11:02.400 --> 00:11:06.800 attempt to make sure markets with limited markets could only take place in certain places on certain 00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:09.849 days of the year as well for example, so markets are important NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:11:09.849 --> 00:11:14.800 but they were deliberately politically organized to be kept in a secondary position and most 00:11:14.800 --> 00:11:20.300 people got most of their livelihood and reproduce their social relationships and brought up their 00:11:20.300 --> 00:11:25.800 children by virtue of being part of a different kind of economic system the system of feudalism 00:11:25.800 --> 00:11:33.150 where they were tied to the land and title certain land holder. Now Polanyi argues that markets 00:11:33.150 --> 00:11:40.150 become more important from the 16th century and onwards and this is a conscious political process this is not NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:11:40.150 --> 00:11:45.400 a natural phenomenon it's not something that simply emerges there's a conscious set of political 00:11:45.400 --> 00:11:47.200 decisions then NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:53.900 the spread of the market Polanyi did sort of try to demonstrate this historically was a process 00:11:53.900 --> 00:11:57.250 initiated and promoted by particular States NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:11:57.250 --> 00:12:02.200 they wanted to spread certain kinds of Market principles in order to spread their political and 00:12:02.200 --> 00:12:06.500 economic power and I can't go into the details of this now but we can talk about in more detail at 00:12:06.500 --> 00:12:12.400 other times but the whole point being is that often in classical economics markets and states are 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:17.300 often described as being opposed principles but you think of this particular neoliberal economics 00:12:17.300 --> 00:12:22.300 where the idea is the state is kind of bad it's for the bureaucrats state gets in the way of the 00:12:22.300 --> 00:12:27.300 market and the state should step back and let the market do its magic the idea NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:12:27.300 --> 00:12:32.100 Again come from Adam Smith that we leave the market alone individuals will actually create the most 00:12:32.100 --> 00:12:37.200 efficient market so the state shouldn't interfere but Polanyi makes the point that the for the markets to 00:12:37.200 --> 00:12:41.800 emerge and spread across Europe and then spread across the world the state had deliberately 00:12:41.800 --> 00:12:47.800 intervene and get rid of all sorts of constantly regulations force people sometimes to engage with 00:12:47.800 --> 00:12:52.600 the market when they didn't want to it was a process that far from being opposed to the state was 00:12:52.600 --> 00:12:56.300 politically initiated by certain powerful State actors NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:12:56.300 --> 00:13:03.200 and this is a process that eventually leads as he puts it to running society as an adjunct of the 00:13:03.200 --> 00:13:09.400 market as and this is the key term the economy becomes disembedded from other kinds of social 00:13:09.400 --> 00:13:16.300 relationships, but the market was a small part society that was embedded or rooted within family 00:13:16.300 --> 00:13:22.250 kinship, Politics, the state, religion. You could only have markets on certain Saints days for example 00:13:22.250 --> 00:13:26.150 it was tied in with other kinds of social obligation NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:13:26.150 --> 00:13:32.300 from the 16th century onwards particularly by the 19th century the market economy becomes 00:13:32.300 --> 00:13:38.300 increasingly as he puts it disembedded or unrooted from these other kinds of relationships becomes 00:13:38.300 --> 00:13:43.600 increasingly seen as a separate phenomenon in its own right and then become seen as the predominant 00:13:43.600 --> 00:13:47.099 most important institutions of society NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 72% (MEDIUM) 00:13:47.099 --> 00:13:52.900 this is not a transformation that happens organically it's not case the money magically 00:13:52.900 --> 00:13:58.700 dissolves traditional customs and makes markets become more powerful as I mentioned according to 00:13:58.700 --> 00:14:04.500 Polanyi this is a process which is deliberately encouraged by nation states and particularly in 00:14:04.500 --> 00:14:12.250 England. So here's Polanyi's argument in a nutshell this is a quote from his book The Great transformation 00:14:12.250 --> 00:14:17.100 a self-regulating market the idea that the market is left alone it emerges NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:14:17.100 --> 00:14:22.400 Organically you don't interfere in it the kind of argument you can see in Adam Smith used emerges naturally 00:14:22.400 --> 00:14:28.700 and then the invisible hand just makes everything work perfectly the idea of the self regulating 00:14:28.700 --> 00:14:35.400 Market demands according to Polanyi nothing less than the institutional separation of society into 00:14:35.400 --> 00:14:40.500 an economic and a political sphere so you take economics away from politics and other forms of 00:14:40.500 --> 00:14:46.750 social relationship and create a separate sphere called the market. 19th century NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:14:46.750 --> 00:14:53.900 in which economic activity was isolated was separated from other forms of productive activity and 00:14:53.900 --> 00:15:00.200 imputed to a distinctive economic motive far from being natural was a singular departure unpowered 00:15:00.200 --> 00:15:06.600 in human history and this is important because it going to reiterate the point, but all that we 00:15:06.600 --> 00:15:12.100 do we might argue and this would be Polanyi's argument and the argument of many anthropologists is 00:15:12.100 --> 00:15:17.050 we are reproducing persons we're reproducing social relationships NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:15:17.050 --> 00:15:22.300 When we circulate objects when we circulate Goods what we're doing is we're reproducing ourselves as 00:15:22.300 --> 00:15:29.000 persons we might argue but if I buy food I'm reproducing on helping to reproduce the livelihood of 00:15:29.000 --> 00:15:33.849 the farmers and the people who transport the food and the guy selling me the food at the supermarket 00:15:33.849 --> 00:15:38.800 I'm also reproducing my own family by ensuring that they don't starve to death so these circulation 00:15:38.800 --> 00:15:40.000 Goods NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.900 whether it's a gift exchange whether it's with commodity exchange whether it's from buying food in 00:15:44.900 --> 00:15:49.900 Supermarket or whether it's through taking that food and feeding it to my 13 month old daughter 00:15:49.900 --> 00:15:56.200 they're all part of a general process of reproducing social relationships and reproducing persons 00:15:56.200 --> 00:15:58.000 and human life NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:04.900 What Polanyi is saying is taking certain aspects of that process and separating it out and say these are 00:16:04.900 --> 00:16:10.300 economic when you buy food at the supermarket that's economics when you feed your daughter a home 00:16:10.300 --> 00:16:16.600 that's domestic that this kind of Separation far from being natural inevitable is a particular 00:16:16.600 --> 00:16:24.600 cultural construction and it has particularly powerful performative Effects by which I mean the 00:16:24.600 --> 00:16:27.349 language of separating economy out from the rest of the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:16:27.349 --> 00:16:34.700 Society is not simply a description its performative in the sense that it actually helps to create a 00:16:34.700 --> 00:16:40.400 particular set of social expectations and helps to reproduce the particular kinds of social 00:16:40.400 --> 00:16:44.900 divisions that it actually pretends Polanyi just describes. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (HØY) 00:16:44.900 --> 00:16:52.100 so this is what I mean by performance of Separation, the separation of economy from other aspects of 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:59.100 social life is essential part of the Great transformation as described by Polanyi but we could go on 00:16:59.100 --> 00:17:05.199 argue this is not just simply something that happened in the eighteen hundreds it's an ongoing 00:17:05.199 --> 00:17:11.599 process today as so for example if you take one example we can take many but the paper on the 00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:14.349 reading for this week Theodoros Rakopoulous paper NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:17:14.349 --> 00:17:22.250 on anti-mafia organizations it shows the central importance that people involved in these processes 00:17:22.250 --> 00:17:29.900 put upon keeping work separate from family for example so if you think of the mafia that's 00:17:29.900 --> 00:17:35.600 what Rakoupoulos is writing about he's writing about situation in rural Sicily where Vineyards and 00:17:35.600 --> 00:17:40.400 agricultural Enterprises that previously been owned by the mafia now has been confiscated and giving 00:17:40.400 --> 00:17:44.400 over to village-level cooperatives as part of the process of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 68% (MEDIUM) 00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:46.800 De-mafiazation NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:17:47.400 --> 00:17:53.500 and of course what is mafia? And in many regards we might argue that mafia among 00:17:53.500 --> 00:17:59.100 other reasons is an interesting social phenomena because it blurs that boundary between work and 00:17:59.100 --> 00:18:04.200 family. Mafia is based on kinship they might refer to themselves as family on one level but they're 00:18:04.200 --> 00:18:08.000 also multi-billion dollar businesses at the same time NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (HØY) 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:12.800 as of course many other businesses are as well we are all caught aware that in practice the 00:18:12.800 --> 00:18:18.900 separation between work and family particularly of the top levels of business is often quite blurred 00:18:18.900 --> 00:18:23.200 in practice even though it's supposed to be separate we're aware the lots of big companies are still 00:18:23.200 --> 00:18:29.150 family owned and we're aware the kinship relationships is often a key way of getting in business 00:18:29.150 --> 00:18:35.700 but mafia blurs those boundaries to a very extreme extent, and so Rakopoulous describes the way 00:18:35.700 --> 00:18:38.200 in which the distinction between NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:43.100 certain kinds of family relationships that are okay to have in the business and certain kinds of 00:18:43.100 --> 00:18:47.800 family relationships that are not okay to have in the business is far from natural and clear in 00:18:47.800 --> 00:18:54.700 other words there isn't a natural clear and obvious distinction between what is work or business and 00:18:54.700 --> 00:18:59.600 what is family and kinship on the other and that people had to argue amongst themselves about this 00:18:59.600 --> 00:19:03.700 kind of family relationship is okay but this kind of family relationships is a problem because it 00:19:03.700 --> 00:19:08.050 begins to look a bit like the kinds of family relationships we might have seen in mafia business NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:19:08.050 --> 00:19:13.500 and we need to keep kinship and work separate. In other words the great 00:19:13.500 --> 00:19:20.500 transformation that Polanyi talks about is in many regards paralleled by a mini Transformations or 00:19:20.500 --> 00:19:26.750 set of thousands of mini versions of that transformation or that separation 00:19:26.750 --> 00:19:32.850 that are going on in the day by day basis and Rakopolous points to one example of that, the way in which 00:19:32.850 --> 00:19:38.750 constant work of separation has to go on to keep family and business separate. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:19:38.750 --> 00:19:45.300 This is an important distinction because in many regards the separation of work or business on 00:19:45.300 --> 00:19:51.300 the one hand and family and kinship on the other is one of the key Central conceptual separations of 00:19:51.300 --> 00:19:59.200 capitalist society and it has many implications think for example of gender relationships to a 00:19:59.200 --> 00:20:05.600 degree is not the only part of the story I'm sure but a central part of gender inequality as it is 00:20:05.600 --> 00:20:08.350 constructed in capitalist economies NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (HØY) 00:20:08.350 --> 00:20:14.400 one could argue is precisely this separation but the kind of work I described of feeding my 13 month 00:20:14.400 --> 00:20:19.700 old or my 13 month old daughter of course you know I'm a very kind of progressive and liberal kind 00:20:19.700 --> 00:20:27.100 of guy and I do absolutely my fair share of all that kind of child care starts because I really 00:20:27.100 --> 00:20:33.150 genuinely enjoy it as a kind of modern liberated man but we do know historically of course NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:20:33.150 --> 00:20:40.700 but this kind of Burden if you view it as a bone as opposed to a privileges this 00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:48.350 kind of work let's say has fallen historically and still to an extent falls disproportionately upon 00:20:48.350 --> 00:20:56.200 women, with all sorts of implications and one might argue and many marxist or feminist Scholars 00:20:56.200 --> 00:21:01.700 from the 1960s onwards have argued this point but essential part of the inequality or oppression of 00:21:01.700 --> 00:21:02.700 women NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:21:02.700 --> 00:21:08.200 This is precisely because of this kind of separation that Polanyi talks about it's not simply an 00:21:08.200 --> 00:21:14.300 abstract thing it has a real life consequence, because these kinds of work and it is hard work trust 00:21:14.300 --> 00:21:16.550 me bringing up a kid NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:21:16.550 --> 00:21:23.700 Is in many regards even harder than sitting in front of this laptop and talking to you about Karl 00:21:23.700 --> 00:21:28.400 Polanyi I know it's hard to imagine but sometimes it's even harder than that it's hard work and 00:21:28.400 --> 00:21:34.600 one might argue it's just as socially productive indeed, don't take this the wrong way sometimes you 00:21:34.600 --> 00:21:39.200 know when I look at my daughter I think it's maybe even more socially productive than you know than 00:21:39.200 --> 00:21:45.600 talking about Karl Polanyi to to a computer screen we could also argue that some regards there's 00:21:45.600 --> 00:21:46.699 similar activities NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:21:46.699 --> 00:21:52.600 Even though they feel quite different because what am I doing when I talk to you when I'm part of your education 00:21:52.600 --> 00:21:58.000 and part of you gaining the ability to become maybe an economic economic Anthropologist with the 00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:02.600 very least it's part of you gaining the ability to get a degree which will then lead you to go out 00:22:02.600 --> 00:22:07.200 have skills when you go out on the labor market and in other words I'm part of the process of you 00:22:07.200 --> 00:22:11.800 gaining skills at create new as a certain kind of person and you will then go and reproduce certain 00:22:11.800 --> 00:22:16.699 kinds of relationships at work or in family of which these lectures will be a small part NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:22:16.699 --> 00:22:21.400 likewise when I bring up my daughter and reproducing a set of social relationships is very 00:22:21.400 --> 00:22:27.600 different form of producing social relationships but we could argue as I mentioned a few slides ago 00:22:27.600 --> 00:22:33.200 you could see this is all part of the same process but separating them out and saying one of them is 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:39.300 economic, my employment for University the other is simply I don't know hobby that I chose I 00:22:39.300 --> 00:22:43.000 thought I was just going to bring up a kid for 20 years in the same way that I might take up 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:46.750 gardening so that's my responsibility to do even though I'm still part NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (HØY) 00:22:46.750 --> 00:22:52.800 that process of bringing up the next generation og labor power next generation of people who go to work NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (HØY) 00:22:52.800 --> 00:22:59.300 in factories or offices and shops but we call one of those things not proper labor we call it 00:22:59.300 --> 00:23:05.600 domestic labor it's not real labor and that performative conceptual separations part of how that 00:23:05.600 --> 00:23:09.800 particular work doesn't get ruled in the same way NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:23:10.100 --> 00:23:15.500 and consequently I don't need to go through the details about how that might have implications for 00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:21.800 gender relations of gender and equality so gender inequality might say for example is not a separate 00:23:21.800 --> 00:23:27.650 issue we can't separate it out we do try and separate it out we might argue we fall for the same 00:23:27.650 --> 00:23:32.700 logical problem that underpins the great transformation in the first place of saying that this has 00:23:32.700 --> 00:23:38.500 an economic logic this has a non economic logic but maybe it's the actual separation itself that we 00:23:38.500 --> 00:23:39.750 need to be looking at NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:23:39.750 --> 00:23:45.800 And this is a central part in Rakopoulous' paper he shows us the way in 00:23:45.800 --> 00:23:51.200 which how kinship and work are separated in people's ideas is then part how they bring them together 00:23:51.200 --> 00:24:00.500 practice so to move towards the end. Polanyi argues that although the great transformation is great 00:24:00.500 --> 00:24:08.800 it's never absolute and final, the complete disembedding of the economy the 00:24:08.800 --> 00:24:09.650 free market dreams of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:24:09.650 --> 00:24:14.500 is actually impossible so to go back to the prior argument from the previous slide 00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:22.000 one might argue that the continued existence of capitalist economics in its current form is 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:29.500 impossible without the reproduction of Labour and human beings that goes on inside the family and 00:24:29.500 --> 00:24:36.650 one might view the domestic labor of parents particularly women as a form of hidden subsidy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:24:36.650 --> 00:24:46.400 performed by Ordinary People to prop up a free market, it's a form of unpaid labor that then produces 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:53.300 the key commodity that keeps a market economy going namely the next generation of wage labourers NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:24:53.300 --> 00:25:00.600 Polanyi argues if you look at examples like this the fantasy that economists or free market 00:25:00.600 --> 00:25:06.100 concept of a totally disembedded self regulating market would collapse almost instantly under 00:25:06.100 --> 00:25:11.700 the weight of social upheaval, but in reality all economic systems even if they have been ideally or 00:25:11.700 --> 00:25:17.800 conceptually disembedded from the rest of society rely upon being embedded in other institutions 00:25:17.800 --> 00:25:23.500 such as politics, law, kinship, and this is a point similar to the point that Gudeman NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:25:23.500 --> 00:25:28.200 Is making and I think if you understand this all this stuff you'll find it quite easy to read this 00:25:28.200 --> 00:25:33.600 paper. His point is is similar in many regards when he argues that all the economies are 00:25:33.600 --> 00:25:38.300 based upon a relationship between what he calls community and Market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:25:38.300 --> 00:25:44.000 and the two things rely upon each other but in different combinations or different emphasis and 00:25:44.000 --> 00:25:49.700 different certain for society one might become more important than the other. There's a consequence 00:25:49.700 --> 00:25:56.200 self-creating and self-standing markets simply empirically do not exist NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:25:56.900 --> 00:26:03.700 so just to conclude I want to conclude with a couple of small examples. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:26:03.800 --> 00:26:10.700 although economic anthropology was largely developed through the kinds of contrast between Western 00:26:10.700 --> 00:26:16.700 societies and the rest that we talked about in the earlier lectures most emblematic of course is 00:26:16.700 --> 00:26:21.900 Malinowski he went to the furthest away part of the world at the time to find people who seemed the 00:26:21.900 --> 00:26:27.000 most different from what he imagined Europeans look like in order to show that they weren't the same 00:26:27.000 --> 00:26:32.900 and there were different ways of organizing society. Economic anthropology was therefore in the early 00:26:32.900 --> 00:26:34.500 20th century around a hundred years ago NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:26:34.500 --> 00:26:40.200 largely developed from this kind of contrast but it's important to remember its main arguments do 00:26:40.200 --> 00:26:46.650 not necessarily rely upon this contrast what we find from Polanyi what we find from reading the 00:26:46.650 --> 00:26:54.500 scholars who have written since since Polanyi is that even in an alleged market economy we find 00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:59.300 that although there's a conceptual separation between Market principles and other principles with 00:26:59.300 --> 00:27:04.450 Market principles held to be predominant it's still the case that the market is intertwined NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 75% (MEDIUM) 00:27:04.450 --> 00:27:11.400 with other kinds of principles and we can see contrasts and debates between market bodies and 00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:21.200 other kinds of bodies. Even in our own Society even if we don't want to think too much anymore about 00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:25.600 the trobriand Islanders let's say I mean I find them interesting because I did my work in Papua New 00:27:25.600 --> 00:27:29.100 Guinea but let's say that you don't want to think about this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:27:29.100 --> 00:27:35.100 what's important is not whether we do field work or research in Papua New Guinea or whether we do 00:27:35.100 --> 00:27:41.900 research in Oslo or New York what's important is the critical perspective that the discipline can 00:27:41.900 --> 00:27:49.600 provide on issues such as the assumed naturalness or the assumed universality of particular kinds of 00:27:49.600 --> 00:27:55.650 economic principles we all know from our own lives that we don't always operate with homo economicus 00:27:55.650 --> 00:27:59.350 and so it's important to have maintained this critical perspective NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (HØY) 00:27:59.350 --> 00:28:06.700 to understand contemporary political and economic issues as well and contemporary anthropology can 00:28:06.700 --> 00:28:12.200 illustrate the ways in which non-market principles are Central to the existence and operation 00:28:12.200 --> 00:28:17.500 Of financial markets drawing on the insights of these earlier Works in order to develop an 00:28:17.500 --> 00:28:25.000 understanding of the world that we live in today and let me just finish with an example I could say 00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:28.950 any example is one example this is an anthropologist called Kaitlin Zaloom NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (HØY) 00:28:28.950 --> 00:28:32.800 it's a really interesting book if you have time to go away and read a book I'm sure you're all very 00:28:32.800 --> 00:28:36.500 busy with all the other readings people set you but if you have time this books very nice very 00:28:36.500 --> 00:28:43.600 clearly written this book out of the pits is an ethnography is an anthropological study of futures 00:28:43.600 --> 00:28:49.000 Market traders in Chicago in the early 2000s, people you would think would be the most hyper 00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:54.800 capitalist Ultra free market people in the world and in many regards they are. They are 00:28:54.800 --> 00:28:59.250 hyper-competitive hyper-masculine they used to operate in these pits here with NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:28:59.250 --> 00:29:06.450 which when you've got rid of from the late 1990s onwards and gone by the mid-2000s where these men 00:29:06.450 --> 00:29:11.200 They were all men pretty much they would stand there shouting bellowing and making trades worth 00:29:11.200 --> 00:29:16.100 millions of dollars every minute and they were hyper-competitive and hyper individualistic but the 00:29:16.100 --> 00:29:22.449 market they were part of didn't just spontaneously emerge from their competitive individual managers 00:29:22.449 --> 00:29:27.000 and they weren't just always motivated by individual greed for individual profit as well although 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:28.500 they often were NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:29:28.500 --> 00:29:34.400 Zaloom describes how they actually believe in the market as an institution as a cultural institution 00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:41.700 and they do work in order to help build and maintain the actual Marketplace sometimes when they see 00:29:41.700 --> 00:29:44.950 the market overall might take a big loss NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:29:44.950 --> 00:29:50.000 and they scared it's going to threaten the markets Integrity as individuals they will sometimes take 00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:55.500 heavy losses out of a sense of obligation to help build the market in other words the market doesn't 00:29:55.500 --> 00:30:01.850 emerge naturally from their selfishness they themselves often self sacrifice in order to help build 00:30:01.850 --> 00:30:07.000 the cultural institution called the market, so belief in the market appears as much as a cultural 00:30:07.000 --> 00:30:12.700 belief rather than simply the outcome of their individual desires to maximize their income 00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:14.300 NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (HØY) 00:30:14.300 --> 00:30:19.800 and Zaloom also lists the way in which markets are constructed from long-standing social 00:30:19.800 --> 00:30:25.400 relationships. Relationships of patronage and mentorage people gaining mentors or patrons and 00:30:25.400 --> 00:30:31.500 entering into long-term friendships with them often friendships and mediated kinds of gift exchange 00:30:31.500 --> 00:30:36.900 in other words the building the social fabric of the market still has within it all sorts of 00:30:36.900 --> 00:30:42.500 long-term gift exchange relationships even at the heart of one of the most powerful and seemingly 00:30:42.500 --> 00:30:45.350 most free market institutions in a capitalistic economy NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (HØY) 00:30:45.350 --> 00:30:53.000 and these links these relationships Place unspoken rules and unspoken unofficial limitations on the 00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:59.900 behavior of Traders they constrain them from being Ultra selfish they enforce them to try and on 00:30:59.900 --> 00:31:06.000 occasion take losses to sustain the market in other words the competitive activities of market 00:31:06.000 --> 00:31:11.700 trading would be impossible unless they were embedded still within other kinds of social 00:31:11.700 --> 00:31:13.250 relationships NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (HØY) 00:31:13.250 --> 00:31:18.800 and as I mentioned many of these long-term relationships will change by moves away from face-to-face 00:31:18.800 --> 00:31:25.400 trending towards computerized trading in the 1990s. I'll just show you this picture here because it's an 00:31:25.400 --> 00:31:29.200 interesting illustration of what I mean you see here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (HØY) 00:31:29.200 --> 00:31:35.200 these guys will be trading millions of dollars in this shouting noisy loud pit using these hand 00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:38.600 signals that would show how much what they were trading what they're buying what they were selling and how 00:31:38.600 --> 00:31:44.000 much money going through the point being is that no one taught you this I mean someone produced this 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:48.700 guide afterwards but there wasn't actually a textbook you can go and learn you only learnt this 00:31:48.700 --> 00:31:55.100 start by attaching yourself to someone who's already engaged in the market who was a powerful Mentor 00:31:55.100 --> 00:31:58.750 who had experience in other words you had to build up certain kinds NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (HØY) 00:31:58.750 --> 00:32:04.400 of social relationships to enter into the market it's not the case even here the market is a 00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:09.200 so-called free market but looks like the you know the way in which you know you might imagine from 00:32:09.200 --> 00:32:13.900 Reading Adam Smith but two guys meet each other in a forest and they just start exchanging bows and 00:32:13.900 --> 00:32:21.600 arrows or axes or whatever there's a whole set of cultural rules that you have to learn and whole 00:32:21.600 --> 00:32:27.500 set of social relationships and obligations you have to fulfill before you even have the cultural 00:32:27.500 --> 00:32:28.800 skill to enter into NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (HØY) 00:32:28.800 --> 00:32:35.100 particular kind of markets markets are still embedded within certain sets of cultural rules and 00:32:35.100 --> 00:32:41.500 certain set of cultural assumptions even at the heart of capitalism and so to conclude here's an 00:32:41.500 --> 00:32:48.100 anthropologist named Gillian tett Gillian tett did her anthropological fieldwork at Cambridge in the 00:32:48.100 --> 00:32:53.700 early 1990s and went on to become a journalist of the financial times and she's now I think Deputy 00:32:53.700 --> 00:32:58.699 Global editor financial times and she became very famous in Britain and America NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:32:58.699 --> 00:33:04.400 the late 2000s as she was pretty much the only financial journalist who saw the economic crisis 00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:11.600 2007-2008 coming and she puts the fact that she was the only financial journalist to see this coming 00:33:11.600 --> 00:33:17.400 down to her training in anthropology and why is this because anthropology he says is a brilliant 00:33:17.400 --> 00:33:22.400 background looking at Finance. First you're trying to look at how Societies or cultures operate 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:27.200 holistically so you look at how all the bits and move together and most people in finance or the 00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:28.800 city of London don't do that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:33:28.800 --> 00:33:34.600 it's of specialized it's so busy they just look at their own little silos and one of the reasons we 00:33:34.600 --> 00:33:39.400 got into this mess we are in is because they were all so busy looking at their own little bit but 00:33:39.400 --> 00:33:46.250 they totally failed to understand how interacted with or as Polanyi might say how it was embedded within 00:33:46.250 --> 00:33:54.500 the rest of society so I leave you with that and I hope very much that next Autumn I think I will be 00:33:54.500 --> 00:33:58.699 teaching the economic anthropology course and I hope very much to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (HØY) 00:33:58.699 --> 00:34:05.300 Kind of have the chance to meet many of you in person and talk about some of this in a bit more 00:34:05.300 --> 00:34:12.600 detail and I hope that this has been reasonably interesting for you and if not interesting at least 00:34:12.600 --> 00:34:17.400 clear enough that you can use it for writing an essay with and I hope some of you at least found it 00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:23.699 interesting and most important as well if you have any queries or questions or thoughts please don't 00:34:23.699 --> 00:34:28.400 hesitate to email me I'm very very happy to answer any questions or whatever it might be NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (HØY) 00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:34.500 and that's it and I hope to see you all again in the not-too-distant future