The End of Potlatch: An Anthropological Approach to Nostromo

Tamás Juhász

A chapter in Choice in Economic Contexts, 2006, pp 285-298 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This study contends that the various forms of archaic trade that anthropologists have reconstructed on the Northwest Coast of America are explanatory of plot-construction and characterization in Conrad's South-American novel. My thesis is that Nostromo is a figure defined by the practice of potlatch, and that his key presence in the plot entails the representation of a culturally dislocating transition from archaic transactions to modern commerce. The theoretical framework of this chapter hinges on the insights of Marcel Mauss, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Karl Polanyi, and Georges Bataille.

Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(06)25013-3

DOI: 10.1016/S0190-1281(06)25013-3

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