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This article looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discursive social practice that attempts to interrogate the global market economy and its neoliberal underpinnings and that reflects as well as frames and shapes domestic and global politics and institutions. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s notions of reciprocity and redistribution while also emphasizing the normative content of the concept, the article inquires into the position that the CSR discourse occupies in addressing the corporate transnational risks derived from social tensions and conflicts and more generally, in answering social expectations for justice. The Polanyian perspective highlights the CSR discursive quest for a missing conceptual consistency and implicitly, for a constructive “critical” core. From this perspective, the article shows CSR to reside within controversial conceptual boundaries; a discursive social practice that engages with the social aspiration of embedding market economy in society while it is also in need of reclaiming its critical core and its potential for social change.

In a period of moral and economic crisis all the alternative solutions to finance economic activities are interesting to study, specifically those embedded in solidarity practices. The nature of the ties (bonding ties, linking ties or bridging ties) and solidarities (institutional solidarity, formal or informal solidarity, intergenerational solidarity) must then be examined.

The exchanges between the people are governed by three different modes: the market, the redistribution and the reciprocity which acts to maintain the relation (Lavoué, Jézequel, & Janvier, 2010, p. 34). The exchanges are not only of economic order and also participate in the symbolic world. Our main question is: can the relations of exchange become emancipated from the reification? We illustrate this chapter with the case of the Kabylian traditional society and market (Benet, 1957–1975) where the practices of exchanges are not only of economic order (redistribution …) but also matter with the symbolic world (honour).

Even today, in Kabylia, the survival of an ancestral social organisation (tajmaat) which has anchored in tradition and rooted values (tirugza) and practices (tiwiza) sometimes allows the local populations to offer the missing public goods or the solidarity towards those who need help (elders, orphans).

In traditional Kabyle society, exchange practices are not only economic in nature (they contribute to mutual assistance, redistribution, etc.), but are also symbolic.

This chapter intends to seize the different economic and financial dimensions of the crowdfunding and shows how this latter contributes to transforming donations through its financialisation. Here, Polanyi's lessons on reciprocity and Keynes's lessons on monetary economics and conventions are enlightening. Indeed, by setting up an intermediary or by putting projects in competition, platforms develop the use of conventions linked to market coordination. By encouraging the monetarisation of expenses and projects and the commodification of donation activities, the crowdfunding not only becomes a tool of financialisation but also modifies social relations. Moreover, it creates new niches of financial exclusion, particularly for projects with a significant social or environmental dimension, and tends to make the financing of certain projects rely on savings rather than on monetary creation. Far from being the alternative and a counter-model to traditional finance, crowdfunding actually reinforces financialisation by introducing a new financial intermediary and contributes to its expansion in hybrid forms.

This chapter will address (only) one issue from the 1960s substantivist/formalist debate, the treatment of choice. The substantivists rejected the economic universality of the neoclassical axioms of choice under scarcity and the isolated and selfish nature of the choice process. A common formalist response was that their model based on these axioms could be modified to include whatever specific conditions economic choice was being made under. This chapter rejects that claim, based on a consideration not included in the debate. It is argued that the mathematical structure of the standard formal neoclassical model prevents it from incorporating the substantivist criticisms, and that to modify it in accord with these criticisms would necessarily result in a model that is outside the neoclassical approach to economic decision-making.

Poor health conditions are a major factor in perpetuating poverty on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This chapter explores the ways in which market-based health care delivery systems shirk health care costs of Lakota households on the periphery of the market economy. Furthermore, the economic value of health care services provided by these same marginal households is understated because market-based health care privileges commodified biomedicine. Examining economic activity beyond formal market integration reveals how households least able to bear the costs of health care subsidize the market economy at the expense of their own efforts to move out of poverty.

Although Research in Economic Anthropology (REA) actually hit the quarter-century mark in 2003 with the publication of Volume 22, the series has now done so also in terms of the number of volumes. Twenty-five seems like an important milestone, and perhaps this edition can be noted for passing that, but it also marks the third editorial change in the history of REA. When a new editor takes over, it seems prudent to offer a summary of the book series’ evolution to date. As many know, George Dalton was the original editor – beginning in 1978 (REA was then published by JAI Press). Dalton subsequently handed the reins to Barry Isaac, who produced Volumes 6 through 20, along with a number of supplemental publications that focused on specific topics or regions and contained only chapters of an archeological or ethnohistorical nature. In fact, Isaac is still recognized for his efforts at granting archeology an equal footing with ethnology in the study of human economic behavior.¹ While Dalton included previously published material in the pages of REA and welcomed works by non-anthropologists, Isaac considered only original manuscripts and generally limited his selection of chapters to those written by anthropologists. Since Volume 20, REA has been published by Elsevier.

This paper seeks: (1) to understand householding as an economic survival strategy by viewing new, historical, evidence in light of previous work on the theme, (2) to fill gaps in the historical and anthropological literature on prewar Japanese farming villages that have resulted in an incomplete conceptualization of the household as a unit of production and consumption, and (3) to improve the overall comprehension of peasant behavior vis-à-vis questions about moral economy, ecological adaptation, and risk-taking.

The essay relies on information gleaned from a detailed 1935–1936 one-year diary of a small-scale farmer, published in 1938.

The prewar Japanese farming village was far more than a collection of households linked by sharing and reciprocal ties. It was not only a place where households as economic units of production and consumption were central, but one where individuals strived to obtain whatever they could, whenever they could. It appears that small-scale prewar Japanese farmers were as likely to take risks and to experiment in order to improve their lot as any other peasants around the world.

It adds to the understanding of prewar Japanese farming villages by presenting valuable historical data that has previously been unavailable in English. It also helps to better situate Japanese peasants in the context of global peasant culture and society, and improves understanding of developmental processes – especially in the case of 20th century Japan.

Relationships between long-distance exchange, especially of luxury goods, and the centralization of political power represent a fundamental dimension of political and economic organization. Precolumbian American societies, outside familiar European contexts that have shaped analytical perspectives, provide a broadened comparative field with the potential for more nuanced analysis.

Analysis focuses on four cases that vary in political centralization, institutional complexity, and geographic scale: Ulúa societies without political centralization; small Maya states; Aztec; and Inka empires. Emphasis on relationships between principals and agents highlights the potential of social practices to perform the functions often associated with state institutions

In the Ulúa region, commerce flourished in the absence of states and their concomitants. The very wealth of Ulúa societies and the unusually broad dispersion of prosperity across social segments impeded the development of states by limiting the ability of local lords to intensify their status and convert it to political power. Intensity of market activity and long-distance exchange does not correlate well with the florescence of states. Less centralized and non-centralized political systems may in fact facilitate mercantile activity (or impede it less) in comparison with states.

These cases frame a useful perspective on the organizational configuration of long-distance trade. Informal social mechanisms and practices can be an alternative to state institutions in structuring complex economic relations. The implications for understanding trajectories of societal change are clear: the development of states and centralized political organization is not a prerequisite for robust long-distance commerce.

Hann, C. & Hart, K. (Eds) (2009). Market and society: The great transformation today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, cloth, $110.00, pp. xi, 320, index.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck eastern Japan on March 11, 2011, not only caused extensive direct damage to the population but also triggered a nuclear power plant accident that brought the terror and reality of radiation. The restoration of communities in Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima Prefectures presents enormous problems. People from the radiation-contaminated areas have faced numerous ordeals since resettlement after the accident. Through personal interviews with victims, this chapter investigates what happened in the regional societies and how community consciousness changed as a result of the combined natural and manmade catastrophes. The study focuses on the restoration of community from social bonds through mutual help networks as a spontaneous social order. As the result of interviewing, some propositions were developed concerning the transformation of mutual help networks. The stronger the outside assistance from volunteers whom the victims came to trust and rely on, the weaker inside communal help becomes. Inventorying and clarifying the particular problems of conflict in stricken communities such as the loss of confidence in neighbors, the possibilities of rebuilding communities are explored, especially indicating how to cope with the social demise of communities that local people had formed and occupied all their lives.