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Beyond the object

Of rabbits, rutabagas and history

Carnegie Mellon University, USA, pke{at}andrew.cmu.edu

This article takes Raymond Williams' discussion of the `laborer's supper' as an entrée to an exploration of what `value' and `history' might mean, and especially, what the relations between the two might be. My purpose is neither to arrive at definitions of `value' or `history', nor to elaborate a general theory defining their nature or interrelation. Rather, it is to consider the presence of history, and in many cases, the implications of its absence or containment, in both structural and object-centered anthropological analyses of value. I take the `laborer's supper' as a challenge to consider the implications and possibilities of bringing the two concepts into a more explicit and dynamic relationship with each other, thus moving from the anthropology of value to something that might be called the anthropology and history of value.

Key Words: circulation • commodity • history • memory • money • performance • value

Anthropological Theory, Vol. 8, No. 1, 79-97 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1463499607087496


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