Fluid Objects

Appadurai’s “Introduction: commodities and the politics of value” challenges the basic assumptions and theorization around commodities put forth by Marx and other early political economists. Carrier’s introduction, “Approaching Objects” also questions historic assumptions in the study of commodities, in particular the focus upon the production of commodities, and the function of commodities in the public realm over the private. Both articles challenge dominant and conventional definitions and positioning of objects and commodities, and they also focus upon exchanges and transactions as the source of value and meaning.

Appadurai and Carrier challenge the assumption of many theorists of mass society and capitalism who articulate “a link between a growth in the perception of objects as signs and the emergence of capitalism” (5). Refocusing the analysis of objects away from capitalist mass society is crucial for Carrier’s task in orienting the reader towards objects as they are situated in private contexts. I found that Carrier’s article illuminated and articulated a lot of the choices made by authors in last week’s readings, in particular Tolia-Kelly’s focus upon the home and female subjects. The significance for diasporic communities or objects may lie in the fact that public meanings and value do not necessarily correlate in the private context. The notion of private situations, or enclaves where objects have restricted meanings challenges theory and inquiry that is dependent upon totalizing systems of signs and meanings.

Thus both Appadurai and Carrier are interested in how objects are situated spatially, temporally, and institutionally. I found their interest in these contexts and how object exchange facilitates and creates value in social relationships convincing. However Carrier’s citing of Mauss’ essay The Gift and the development and progression of objects in social relations from embodiments of the group to individuated and impersonal objects was less convincing to me. The articles made me think about the many different positioning of objects and forms of exchange that exist even within late capitalist Western mass society and so I was less taken with Mauss’ development trajectory.

Instead of taking a historical approach that can often romanticize, idealize, and simplify social relations in pre-capitalist societies, I much prefer Appadurai’s notion of “commodity potential” and the “total trajectory from production, through exchange, distribution, to consumption” (13). This approach is an analysis of objects and commodities that seeks to shift away from the Marxist economic analysis of commodities, which limits itself to mechanisms of production. The focus upon consumption and “commodity candidacy” is a definitional shift emphasizing temporal fluidity and how meanings are embedded through exchange, and can shift over time and space (13). Appadurai refines Marx’s arguments about commodity culture in modern capitalist society, observing that while such cultures are more intensely commoditized, they cannot be totally commoditized because social exchange places objects in motion, and they can occupy a variety of states over time. Maquet’s four types of commodities (16) is an important part of Appadurai’s argument against Marx’s focus on production.

The method of analysis that Appadurai proposes for the study of objects and commodities is more convincing that the traditional Marxist view because it includes both production and consumption. While Appadurai fails to focus on his definition of politics, and his claim that “the link between exchange and value is politics” (3), he presents a compelling case where the lives of objects are complicated, and I found it more reflective of my everyday and daily interactions with objects. The article challenged the idea that consumers are passive recipients of meaningless, unnecessary commodities in contemporary capitalist societies, and offered a perspective that allows for inquiry into relationships with objects. Appadurai’s article does a better example of explaining relationships with objects, like the many examples from last week’s readings, than the Marxist model because in allowing for greater complexity in relation to objects, Appadurai is more attuned to the less economic and more affective meanings of objects.

1. Did you agree with Mauss’ stages of social evolution in interaction with objects? [The idea that in ‘archaic’ societies “transactions are motivated by a mixture of need and social obligation…people are indistinct from the groups that define and contain them, just as objects are indistinct from the groups that posses them” (9) and in modern societies “objects and society increasingly have come to be seen as independent of each other” (10).]
2. According to Appadurai, “The diversion of commodities from specified paths is always a sign of creativity or crisis, whether aesthetic or economic” (26). Can you think of such diversions, and what creativity or crisis do you think they are indicative of?