On the Spirit of the Gift that Is ‘Stone Age Economics’

Chris Gregory ()
Additional contact information
Chris Gregory: Australian National University

Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science, 2021, vol. 55, issue 1, 11-34

Abstract: Graeber, in his forward to the 2017 Routledge Classic edition of Stone Age Economics (SAE), argues that the discipline of economics needs to be totally re-imagined if we are to survive as a species, and that there is no single work better suited to this task than SAE. How are we to make sense of this paradoxical argument? How can a book about the ‘stone age’ help us reimagine an economics of the future? Why has SAE had a profound effect on almost every discipline except economics? Such are the questions I will address here by contrasting Sahlins’s anthropological conception of value with the non-anthropological conception that informs both mainstream economics and that of its neo-Ricardian critics. Sahlins’s anthropological economics, when viewed from the perspective of Graeber’s development of it, is a form of ‘primitive economics’ in the sense of ‘first principles of economics’ or ‘elementary economics.’ Anthropological economics discovers these elementary principles using the methods of intensive fieldwork, deep historical analysis, and comparative cultural geography. Such an approach can reveal the Eurocentric preconceptions that imprison the value concepts of non-anthropological economics in a European economy of yesterday. It can also suggest reconceptualization, and indicate a way forward through modification in the light of new historical and ethnographic evidence.

Keywords: Use-Value; Exchange-Value; Reciprocity; Stone; Steel; Wheat; Rice; Taro; Menger; Walras; Jevons; Sraffa; Eurocentrism; Anthropological Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.annalsfondazioneluigieinaudi.it/images/LV/2021-1-002-gregory.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fle:journl:v:55:y:2021:i:1:p:11-34

DOI: 10.26331/1131

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science is currently edited by Francesco Cassata, Mario Aldo Cedrini, Roberto Marchionatti, Federica Morelli and Angela Ambrosino

More articles in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi. An Interdisciplinary Journal of Economics, History and Political Science from Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino (Italy) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mario Aldo Cedrini ().