All theorists

Question 1

Polanyi

Answer 1

Substantivist: Economy is embedded in social relations

Question 2

James C. Scott

Answer 2

Moral economy: peasats are busier with just getting by, subsistence over profit.

Question 3

Thompson

Answer 3

Uses an example for the moral economy, the food riots. People rebel for moral rights to fair prices.

Question 4

Marcel Mauss

Answer 4

The gift: gift giving creates social ties. The gift giver becomes superior, creates a sense of imbalance.

Question 5

Graeber

Answer 5

Value is how people represent the importance of their actions. Value is not just price or profit, it is symbolic.
Example: if you give a cup of coffee to a homeless person, how much value do you ascribe to that cup of coffee yourself?

Question 6

Geertz:

Answer 6

• Religion is a symbolic system, embedded in life and makes life have meaning. It is subjective and personal.

Question 7

Functionalism: Durkheim

Answer 7

Religion creates a sort of collective conscience and religion is social

Question 8

Functionalism: Malinowski

Answer 8

Religion is psychological comfort, it helps people cope with uncertainty and misfortune

Question 9

Functionalism: Radcliffe-Brown

Answer 9

Religion maintains social order

Question 10

Misfortune: Malinowski

Answer 10

Witchcraft is there to comfort and explain. It explains misfortune and helps people cope. It is a rational and moral explanation for misfortune.

Question 11

Turner

Answer 11

Liminality in ritual: being neither here nor there, betwixt and between two states of being. Spirit possession as a liminal space for transformation.

Question 12

Applied anthropology debate

Answer 12

Applied anthropology: commercial side of anthropology
Academic anthropology: ivory tower
detachment versus intervention
purity versus practicality
can we apply anthropology without reinforcing existing power dynamics?

Question 13

Applied anthropology debate examples

Answer 13

Malinowski, while being the founding father of anthropology, advised colonial authoroties
Hutton worked for the British Raj, anthropology used to manage empire

Question 14

Sol Tax

Answer 14

Action Anthropology, anthropology must not only describe but serve

Question 15

Critiques of academic anthropology

Answer 15

detachment from urgent problems, over-reliance on theory (that has colonial roots)
Scheper-Hughes: moral anthropology, anthropology should provoke moral and political responses

Question 16

Guest

Answer 16

anthropology used in the tech industry: creating what people need