Appadurai’s paper uses Simmel’s concept of value and critiques Marx’s understanding of the commodity to fuse together a concept of object value as derived from acts of exchange, the creation of value not a ‘natural’ phenomenon but a ‘political’ one. Citing Kopytoff’s argument that social contest and individual taste determine object biography, Appadurai demonstrates that commodity is a phase is the life of some things, as opposed to being a permanent state of all things. The things only being of value when they are commoditized and in the process or consideration of exchange. In the paper, Munn’s study of the kula system in the Massim Islands shows that price is derived not by negotiation of supply and demand but of calculated exchange of value perception and individual interest in one’s own reputation. Concurrently in these systems, men and commodities are “reciprocal agents of value definition” (20). Appadurai also makes the claim that demand is socially regulated and generated and proposes that the distribution of and discrepancies in knowledge about the commodity at different phases in its life (production, distribution, consumption) drive varying degrees of demand and construct different stories about the commodity. Appadurai conducts a survey of various literature on the issue of commodities to construct his argument.
Appadurai’s survey is lengthy and tangential, veering off into arguing that commodity is a state not a thing, and a state that is temporal. Lingering on Daventport’s idea of ‘enclaved commodities’, and ‘zones of commodification’, as well as Kopytoff’s ‘jurisdiction of objectification’ Appadurai seems distracted by this issue that may link to the paper’s original claim about value as a political construction, yet clearly creates a distinct claim of commodity temporality and perhaps deserves its own essay. Because of this blending, I found the paper confusing to follow and was frequently in need of reminder of the claims of the paper. Yet in constructing the argument for the political nature of value, the examples Appadurai cites are quite useful on their own. Baudrillard’s ‘tournaments of value’, Munn’s ‘calculated exchange of value perception’ and the section on demand and knowledge, I found to be particularly apt within the paper’s context.
Carrier’s introduction argues that sociologists have been lacking in their approach to studying objects, particularly in their neglect to examine the interaction between the person and the object. The way Carrier constructs this argument is by setting up a survey of existing literature about objects as status symbols (Weber, Veblen, Young & Willmott) and objects as signs (Bourdieu, Baudrillard, Schudson, Ewen). This short paper concludes with mapping out the scheme of the book it introduces, the book claiming to further interrogate in inform the previous object examinations in the realm of the private, through person-object interactions.
Carrier’s paper is disappointingly top-heavy. The survey of what Carrier isn’t trying to prove far outweighs the support for what he is trying to prove. Perhaps the lack of support for how objects are constructed through “distinct and concrete social relationships in which people experience them” (7) lies deeper in the actual book, however as an independent paper it’s argument doesn’t land.
Question 1: Taking into account Carrier’s (lack of) argument about objects and the use of studying people’s interaction with them, can you provide an example from previous readings that Carrier may have found useful?
Question 2: Appadurai’s sources constantly refer to ‘modern capitalist societies’ and ‘pre-modern’ or ‘non-Western, preindustrial, nonmonetized” societies and systems of exchange. To what degree do you find this distinction necessary towards illustrating and supporting Appadurai’s argument of value as politically constructed?
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