The Cultural Topography of Wealth: Commodity Paths and the Structure of Property in Rural Lesotho

Discussions of poverty and wealth often assume that wealth is a measurable substance, the possession of which can be indexed on a linear scale, from high to low. This article contests this implicit assumption, arguing that wealth-holding is always complicated by the fact that exchange is culturally regulated, and guided along approved paths. An analysis of domains of wealth in a rural Lesotho village illustrates the point. Wealth-holding here is clearly unequal, but cultural, legal, and moral paths governing economic exchanges between different categories of property mean that the holdings of different households are in important ways incomparable, and that their wealth is different in kind, and not only in amount. The attempt to locate households economically in such a setting thus requires mapping a politicocultural "topography" of channels facilitating the flow of commodity exchange, dams obstructing, slowing, or filtering it, and furrows temporarily diverting the flow from one channel or dam into another. A meaningful ranking of wealth-holding must include a cultural analysis of commodity paths and the structure of property.     

The Lakhota Giveaway:

Abstract

Reciprocal gift-giving among Lakhota of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation is examined as a tradition promoting social alliance, interdependence. and the redistribution of wealth. Ceremonial Giveaways provide a context for the distribution of goods to non-kinsmen, a practice which extends kin-like obligations and benefits beyond the immediate. or extended family. Gift-giving is viewed as a mechanism of social control in that it prevents the uneven accumulation of wealth and directs negative sanction toward those reluctant to share their resources. Reciprocal exchange plays a fundamental role in reinforcing the moral value of generosity, a local system of insurance essential to modern reservation living.     

A prophet but not for profit: ethical value and character in Ghanaian Pentecostalism

The anthropological study of value has gained much currency in recent years. This article speaks to the importance of Pentecostal practices in understanding the qualitative aspects of value in Ghana. It demonstrates how practices relating to wealth accumulation and redistribution are in interaction with ethical evaluations about the character of charismatic Christian prophets. The moral evaluation of wealth of certain prophets, and the links perceived between their use of wealth and their character, tell us something about the moral climate in contemporary Ghanaian society, where wealth cannot simply be measured quantitatively (through acquiring riches), but also ought to be assessed qualitatively (discerned through the quality of one's acts).     

Chocolate and Cognac: Gifts and the Recognition of Social Worlds in Post-Soviet Russia

This paper examines the culture of gift-giving in contemporary urban Russia, illuminating in the process broader post-socialist deliberations about social identity and personal worth. Drawing upon ethnographic research in St. Petersburg (1998-99), I consider how marketization influences, informs, and overlaps with logics of gift-giving and with the social networking practices so central to Soviet-era consumer strategies. In contrast to most previous analyses of such phenomena, this article attends closely to the items of exchange themselves, asking why certain goods are chosen as gifts in particular contexts (such as the chocolate and cognac typically given as tokens of gratitude to doctors, teachers, and others whom one wishes to thank for services well provided). Social theorists have commented on the 'misrecognition' inherent in such gift-giving, in that transactors tend to view these presents not as pragmatic investments but simply - as Russian teachers put it - 'signs of attention' Yet here I push further to consider what it is people are actually recognizing about their shifting social worlds in these activities, as they take stock of one another's claims to cultural and moral value (as well as material wealth) and conceptualize the kind of 'society' in which they are participating.     

THE IMAGINED 'CONSUMER DEMOCRACY' AND ELITE (RE)PRODUCTION IN YEMEN

In the republican state which emerged in North Yemen after the 1962 revolution the new ruling elite, which forms the core of the nouveaux riches , buttresses its claim to high status by wealth display and conspicuous consumption. Depending on regional variation, the old elite's acquiescence in or rejection of new consumption practices expresses respectively either the maintenance of an elevated social position or a protest against what is considered a corrupt social order. Whereas consumption has led to a degree of homogeneity among the affluent old and the new elite of San'a, the old elite as a whole has become more fragmented. In light of Bourdieu's Distinction , this article argues that 'taste', generated by class-related incorporated dispositions, may manifest itself in practices ranging from lavish consumption to renunciation. Consumer choice must be explored in relation both to moral schemes and to the pursuit of social pre-eminence.     

Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-gatherers

We report quantitative estimates of intergenerational transmission and population-wide inequality for wealth measures in a set of hunter-gatherer populations. Wealth is defined broadly as factors that contribute to individual or household well-being, ranging from embodied forms such as weight and hunting success to material forms such household goods, as well as relational wealth in exchange partners. Intergenerational wealth transmission is low to moderate in these populations, but is still expected to have measurable influence on an individual's life chances. Wealth inequality (measured with Gini coefficients) is moderate for most wealth types, matching what qualitative ethnographic research has generally indicated (if not the stereotype of hunter-gatherers as extreme egalitarians). We discuss some plausible mechanisms for these patterns, and suggest ways in which future research could resolve questions about the role of wealth in hunter-gatherer social and economic life.     

The Uncertainty of Prosperity: Dependence and the Politics of Middle-Class Privilege in Maputo

In this essay, I examine the moral basis of a ‘middle class’ in Maputo, Mozambique, the narratives, forms of dependence and types of hegemony that the social hierarchy rests upon. I argue that the political and economic processes that have given rise to ‘new’ middle classes in the global south also create conditions of precariousness. In recent years, it has been argued that these ‘emerging middle classes’ are central for economic growth and the safeguarding of a stable, liberal order. The case of Mozambique complicates this assertion and demonstrates an occurrence now taking place across the globe. When the relationships of dependence and obligation and the narratives that justify them erode, the structures of power that may have once been mutually constitutive between an emerging middle class and the state can become damaging as the system they once upheld loses its legitimacy.     

Beyond the 'Village' Rhetoric: Creating Healthy Communities for Children and Adolescents

In this article, we explore the intertwining of moral identity and the social and cultural context. First, we review existing research on moral identity that has considered the role of social others and the cultural environment. Then we pose questions to further research in this area and offer a 3-level framework with which to understand how the cultural world influences moral identity development. Central to this framework is an analysis of the cultural practices within which moral identities develop, as well as the institutional contexts that support these practices and the social interactions that comprise them. Finally, we illustrate the components of framework using examples of data from 2 studies-1 focused on how an inner city Muslim school worked to foster the moral identities of students and the other on the development of civic identities among urban teens in a community action program.     

The Dying Animal

The study of animal death is poised to blossom into an exciting new interdisciplinary field—and one with profound relevance for bioethics. Areas of interest include the biology and evolution of death-related behavior in nonhuman animals, as well as human social, psychological, cultural, and moral attitudes toward and practices related to animal death. In this paper, I offer a brief overview of what we know about death-related behavior in animals. I will then sketch some of the bioethical implications of this emerging field of research.     

Sacred materialism: Things and relations in a US Pagan community

Ever since Marcel Mauss wrote The Gift, the notion that things exchanged as gifts take a personalised social form, and that they partake of and mediate relational sociality, has held an important place in anthropology. Examining material practices among contemporary Pagans in the Reclaiming tradition, this article shows how they seek to imbue things with personhood, exploring the sacredness of things as alive, active and participating in social relations. In doing so, these Pagans work to forge an alternative economy founded on gift exchange and generous labour, which they hope might form a basis for a different kind of sociality from the capitalist system dominant in the United States. In practice, the encounter between gift and commodity forms in this community is a source of both conflict and emergent forms of sociality, as these alternative economic practices are fashioned around the margins of mainstream economic life.     

基于Agent模型的生态公平指数构建与模拟

伴随着社会经济的发展,社会公平逐渐成为热点话题。社会公平问题不但体现在社会现象上,还对生态系统起着重要的影响。通过构建资本交换自主体模型,模拟社会财富分配动态过程,可观测资本交换熵指数变化情况,从而解释熵增原理。除此以外,不同系统的最终状态能达到的最大熵指数不同,用熵增原理与本文构建的最大熵指数模型可以对系统的生态公平进行纵向或横向评价。构建的资本交换熵模型也可以证明最大熵原理,同时,财富集中的现象将会使生态环境的选择权完全交予富人群体,影响可持续发展。     

Opinion: the neural basis of human moral cognition

Moral cognitive neuroscience is an emerging field of research that focuses on the neural basis of uniquely human forms of social cognition and behaviour. Recent functional imaging and clinical evidence indicates that a remarkably consistent network of brain regions is involved in moral cognition. These findings are fostering new interpretations of social behavioural impairments in patients with brain dysfunction, and require new approaches to enable us to understand the complex links between individuals and society. Here, we propose a cognitive neuroscience view of how cultural and context-dependent knowledge, semantic social knowledge and motivational states can be integrated to explain complex aspects of human moral cognition.     

The Changing Moral Economy of Ancestor Worship in a Chinese Emigrant District

This paper describes the reciprocal influences between Anxi County Fujianese, whose families and clans have migrated to Singapore, and their ancestral villages in Fujian, China. The Singaporeans bring wealth and cultural capital to their poor relations in rural China. Their participation is crucial for local socioeconomic development. Besides bringing material support and globalizing values and lifestyles, they also reinvigorate and transform the local religious tradition. They, in turn, reaffirm and even remake their own ethnic and regional identity. The complex outcome illustrates the fact that China's social change under economic reforms and global influence is, in its huge rural core, not merely a matter of infrastructural, market, and social welfare improvements, but involves exchange and transformation in meanings of rituals and experiences. We can see that kinship and religion are not unchanging aspects of the cultural tradition that are separate from programs of modernity. Indeed, modernity and tradition appear to be inseparable, and they may reveal that the recipe for effective community projects requires a vital tie between cultural, social, and interpersonal processes.     

Indicators for sustaining biological diversity in Canada's most controversial forest type—Coastal temperate rainforest

Canada's most controversial forest type is the coastal temperate rainforest. I summarize the use of indicators to assess effectiveness at sustaining biological diversity within a large managed forest in temperate rainforest of coastal British Columbia. Physical, biological, historical and social features have made the management area controversial. To avoid controversy and environmental boycotts, one forest company introduced novel planning and practices. Outcomes of the new practices were unknown but intended to sustain biological diversity in an area of unusual species richness. The criterion, indicators and feedback to management from these indicators is reviewed. Findings from indicators served to address major areas of uncertainty identified by managers. However, many recommendations emerging from the monitoring were not implemented for social and economic reasons.     

Modeling the Origin and Possible Control of the Wealth Inequality Surge

The rapid increase of wealth inequality in the past few decades is a most disturbing social and economic issue of our time. In order to control, and even reverse that surge, its origin and underlying mechanisms should be revealed. One of the challenges in studying these mechanisms is to incorporate realistic individual dynamics in the population level in a self-consistent manner. Our theoretical approach meets the challenge by using interacting multi-agent master-equations to model the dynamics of wealth inequality. The model is solved using stochastic multi-agent iterated maps. Taking into account growth rate, return on capital, private savings and economic mobility, we were able to capture the historical dynamics of wealth inequality in the United States during the course of the 20th century. We show that the fraction of capital income in the national income and the fraction of private savings are the critical factors that govern the wealth inequality dynamics. In addition, we found that economic mobility plays a crucial role in wealth accumulation. Notably, we found that the major decrease in private savings since the 1980s could be associated primarily with the recent surge in wealth inequality and if nothing changes in this respect we predict further increase in wealth inequality in the future. However, the 2007–08 financial crisis brought an opportunity to restrain the wealth inequality surge by increasing private savings. If this trend continues, it may lead to prevention, and even reversing, of the ongoing inequality surge.     

Fertility decline and the changing dynamics of wealth,status and inequality

In the course of demographic transitions (DTs), two large-scale trends become apparent: (i) the broadly positive association between wealth, status and fertility tends to reverse, and (ii) wealth inequalities increase and then temporarily decrease. We argue that these two broad patterns are linked, through a diversification of reproductive strategies that subsequently converge as populations consume more, become less self-sufficient and increasingly depend on education as a route to socio-economic status. We examine these links using data from 22 mid-transition communities in rural Poland. We identify changing relationships between fertility and multiple measures of wealth, status and inequality. Wealth and status generally have opposing effects on fertility, but these associations vary by community. Where farming remains a viable livelihood, reproductive strategies typical of both pre- and post-DT populations coexist. Fertility is lower and less variable in communities with lower wealth inequality, and macro-level patterns in inequality are generally reproduced at the community level. Our results provide a detailed insight into the changing dynamics of wealth, status and inequality that accompany DTs at the community level where peoples'' social and economic interactions typically take place. We find no evidence to suggest that women with the most educational capital gain wealth advantages from reducing fertility, nor that higher educational capital delays the onset of childbearing in this population. Rather, these patterns reflect changing reproductive preferences during a period of profound economic and social change, with implications for our understanding of reproductive and socio-economic inequalities in transitioning populations.     

The social, moral, ethical, legal and political implications of today's biological technologies: an Indian point of view

The last 50 years have seen an increasing emphasis on ethical, moral, social, legal, political and economic implications of science for reasons that are discussed in this article. Biotechnology has been no exception to this trend. Areas of biotechnology where the above implications have been important, are briefly described. Ethical and related issues in today's biology-based technologies are discussed with special reference to India. Examples of technological exploitation within a country, or of one country by another, using modern biology-based technologies are given. The possible implications of one new and emerging biology-based technology are discussed. It is concluded that a well-informed and knowledgeable society is the only assured insurance against possible misuse of biology-based technologies of today and tomorrow, including their use for the exploitation of people. The recent decision of the Prime Minister of India to set up a National Knowledge Commission is mentioned in this context.     

Cultural and health influences on building,housing, and community standards: Cost implications for the human habitat

International research and practices are reviewed with regard to cultural, social, economic, health, and physical-technological features of needs, standards, and codes regulating the residential environment. Housing and building codes, as well as zoning and subdivision ordinances, are influenced by nonscientific considerations that have significant cost and other policy implications. Noxious and promotive influences are examined for public health codes regulating potable water, waste disposal, and safety in the home, as well as density and congestion for cities, neighborhoods, and individual dwelling units. Density is distinguished from congestion, and the policy implications of both are examined. Cost-benefit ratios indicate that many standards can be appreciably lowered. Vague definitions of health, as adopted by WHO, also invite costinducing moral judgments.     

The influence of social niche on cultural niche construction: modelling changes in belief about marriage form in Taiwan

With introduction of social niche effects into a model of cultural change, the frequency of a practice cannot predict the frequency of its underlying belief. The combination of a general model with empirical data from a specific case illustrates the importance of collaboration between modellers and field researchers, and identifies the type of quantitative data necessary for analysing case studies. Demographic data from colonial-period household registers in Taiwan document a shift in marriage form within 40 years, from a mixture of uxorilocal marriages and virilocal marriages to the latter's dominance. Ethnographic data indicate marriage-related beliefs, costs, ethnic effects and colonial policies as well as the importance of horizontal cultural transmission. We present a formal model for the effects of moral beliefs about marriage and a population economic index on the decline of uxorilocal marriage. We integrate empirical marriage rates and an estimated economic index to produce five projections of the historical frequencies of one belief. These projections demonstrate how economic development may affect a cultural niche. They also indicate the need for future research on the relationship between wealth and cultural variability, the motivational force of cultural versus social factors, and the process of cultural niche construction.     

Toward a Science of Welfare for Animals in the Zoo

Although the accredited institutions of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums have all committed to enhancing the welfare of nonhuman animals, acceptable standards and best practices are still under debate. Currently, experts from zoos and the field hold widely divergent opinions about exhibition and management standards for elephants. Standards and practices for managing nonhuman primates provide a model for other nonhuman creatures exhibited in zoos and aquariums. Examining the key issues for primates demonstrates the value of applying scientific data before promulgating standards. The field of applied behavior analysis provides a wealth of information to frame the debate. Animal behaviorists have contributed to an emerging science of animal welfare, which may provide a foundation for empirical zoo management, standards, and practices.