Rethinking Economic Anthropology: a human centred approach. Papers & Schedule

Friday 11th January 2008

Venue : Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre, SOAS

09:30 - 09:45 Welcome (Catherine Alexander) 09:45-10:45 Keynote lecture

Keith Hart : The Human Economy

Chair: Catherine Alexander

– 10:45 - 11:15 Coffee Break – 11:15-13:00 Plenary 1 : Ethnography of capitalism at the core

Chair: Jonathan Parry

Kalman Applbaum

Where Demand Meets Supply: Comorbidity and Channel Stabilization in the Creation of a Psychopharmaceutical Blockbuster

Hirokazu Miyazaki

The Temporality of No Hope

Sandy Robertson

Trust us – we’re anthropologists

Caitlin Zaloom

Economy in the Brain: Gifts and the Compromise of Medical Reason

Discussant: Marianne E. Lien

– 13:00 - 14:00 Lunch – 14:00-15:45 Plenary 2 : Political economy of peripheral areas

Chair: Stephen Gudeman

Fairtrade and its implications

Jane Guyer

Cash Economies

Barbara Harriss-White

Informal Capitalism: Social Order, Agency And Deviance (Five comments on Europe and India and their implications for anthropological research on the economy)

Janet Roitman

The Anti-Crisis

Discussant: Stephan Feuchtwang

– 15:45 - 16:15 Tea Break – 16:15-18:15 Plenary 3 : Alternative Economies

Chair: Deborah James

Stefan Ecks

What is “Global Corporate Citizenship”? A View from the Indian Pharmaceuticals Market

Jean-Louis Laville

Towards a theory of plural economy: in the footsteps of Mauss and Polanyi

Bill Maurer

Re-socialising Finance? Or Dressing it in Mufti? Calculating Alternatives for Cultural Economies

Richard Wilk

The strange economics of happiness

Discussant: David Graeber

Saturday 12th January

Venue: Clement House, LSE, Aldwych

Presented as two groups consisting of 3 parallel workshop sessions each 09:15-10:45 Workshops Group I (3 parallel sessions) Workshop 1: Calculability and Gambling

Venue: Room 302

Chair: Kalman Applbaum

Rebecca Cassidy

Getting lucky: the changing face of betting shops in Britain

Ilana van Wyk

Gambling on God in post-apartheid South Africa: money and sacrifice in the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God

Hans Steinmuller

The Moving Boundaries of Social Heat: Gambling in rural China

Discussant / rapporteur: Caitlin Zaloom

Workshop 2: Debt

Venue : Room 311

Chair: Barbara Harriss-White

Evan Killick

Good Debt and Bad Credit: A Cross-Cultural Consideration of Debt

Gustav Peebles

Alienated Futures, Alienated Money: The Nationalization of Hoarding and Its Implications

Nicolas Martin

Class Formation and the Political Economy of Bonded Labour in the Pakistani Punjab

Discussant/rapporteur: Janet Roitman

Workshop 3: Concepts, Methods, Objects 1

Venue: Room 306

Chair: Richard Wilk

Nicolas Ellison

Towards an anthropology of ‘economic practices’: perspectives on the ‘market nexus’ from the Totonac periphery (Mexico)

Alice Bryer

Beyond Bureaucracies? The Struggle for Self-Determination and Social Responsibility in the Argentine Worker-Run Companies

Dinah Rajak

‘Uplift and Empower’: Discourses of Responsibility in a Transnational Mining Corporation

Geert de Neve

From CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) to CSR (Corporate Social Regimes): the politics of ethical compliance in the South Indian garment industry

Discussant: Ravi Raman Rapporteur: Hirokazu Miyazaki

– 10:45-11:15 Coffee Break Room D402 – 11:15-13:00 Workshops Group II (3 parallel sessions) Workshop 4: Calculability, Reciprocity and Ethics

Venue: Room 311

Chair: Sandy Robertson

Antina von Schnitzler

Measuring Life: Technology, the life and the Production of Calculability in Soweto

Gregers Petersen

Circulating property. Free software as inalienable object and the reality of giving while-keeping

Andres Dapuez

Turbulences of the Present

Helen Busby

The contested values, promises and ethics of commercial cord blood banking in the UK

Discussant: Erik Baehre Rapporteur: Stephen Gudeman

Workshop 5: Labour

Venue: Room 302

Chair: Jonathan Parry

Elisabetta Basile

From Green Revolution to Industrial Dispersal: Informality and flexibility in an industrial district for silk in rural South India

Rebecca Chamberlain-Creanga,

Between money and soul: work, self and Soviet/Russian culturedness in a newly privatized global factory

Jaron Rowan

Notions of work under a regime of mass innovation

Discussant/rapporteur: Massimiliano Mollona

Workshop 6: Concepts, Methods, Objects II

Venue: Room 306

Chair: Catherine Alexander

Jose Ossandon

Property and the collective in Chile’s private health insurance

Horacio Ortiz

Everyday investment in Asset Backed Securities: an anthropology of

Kate Meagher

Informality Matters: Popular Economic Governance and Institutional Exclusion in Nigeria

Koray Caliskan & Michel Callon

Economization:New Directions in the Social Studies of the Market

Discussant/rapporteur: Bill Maurer

– 13:00-14:30 Lunch – 14:30-16:00 Discussants’ report, discussion and consolidation

Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, Aldwych

Chair: Jane Guyer

Rapporteurs: Caitlin Zaloom, Janet Roitman, Bill Maurer, Stephen Gudeman, Massimiliano Mollona, Hirokazu Miyazaki 16:00-16:30 Wrap-up: Rethinking Economic Anthropology

Venue: Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, Aldwych