Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy: Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 9

Author(s): Leslie C. Aiello

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 55, No. S9, Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the
Economy (August 2014), pp. S1-S3
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research

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Current Anthropology Volume 55, Supplement 9, August 2014

S1

Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking

the Economy
Wenner-Gren Symposium Supplement 9
by Leslie C. Aiello

Figure 1. Participants in the symposium Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy. Front row, from left to right: Deborah
James, Shenjing He, Magdalena Villarreal, Jennifer Cole, Karen Brodkin, Isabelle Guerin, Leslie Aiello, Laurie Obbink. Middle row:
Janet Roitman, Katherine Gibson, Jaime Palomera, Frances Pine, Susana Narotzky, Stephen Gudeman. Back row: Parker Shipton,
Stef Jansen, Benot de LEstoile, Niko Besnier, Gavin Smith, Vincent Dubois. A color version of this photo appears in the online
edition of Current Anthropology.

Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy is the ninth

Wenner-Gren symposium to be published as an open-access
supplement of Current Anthropology. It is also the 146th symposium in the Wenner-Gren symposium series, which began
in 1952 with the International Symposium on Anthropol-

ogy organized by Alfred E. Kroeber.1 Crisis, Value, and

Hope was organized by Susana Narotzky (Universitat de
Barcelona) and Niko Besnier (University of Amsterdam) and
was held September 1420, 2012, at Tivoli Palacio de Seteais,
Sintra, Portugal (fig. 1).

Leslie C. Aiello is President of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for

Anthropological Research (470 Park Avenue South, 8th Floor North,
New York, New York 10016, U.S.A.).

1. See the Foundations website for a history of the symposium program: http://www.wennergren.org/history/conferences-seminars-symposia
/wenner-gren-symposia.

2014 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2014/55S9-0001$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/676666

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S2

Current Anthropology Volume 55, Supplement 9, August 2014

Figure 2. Wenner-Gren Symposium 12, Economics and Anthropology: Capital, Saving, and Credit in Peasant Societies, held at
Burg Wartenstein Conference Center, August 2228, 1960. Seated on the ground, from left to right: Sidney Mintz, F. G. Bailey, Basil
Yamey, Sol Tax, M. G. Swift. The remaining participants, from left to right: Zofia Szyfelbejn, Eric de Dampierre, Chie Nakane, Cyril
Belshaw, Fredrik Barth, Bert F. Hoselitz, Lorraine Lancaster, Joan Thirsk, Rudolf Bicanic, A. G. Frank, Henri Mendras, Raymond
Firth.

The main aim of the Crisis, Value, and Hope symposium

and of this CA issue is to fundamentally rethink the nature
of economic life, emphasizing the realities of ordinary people
in contrast to abstract economic models, which in recent years
have proven to be all too unreliable. Narotzky and Besnier
(2014) argue that the economy cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of human existence and redefine the
economy to consist of all the processes that are involved in
making a living, stressing both the effort involved and the
aim of sustaining life.
The varied papers in this issue explore the complex ways
in which people in different ethnographic contexts negotiate
often precarious conditions to make a life for themselves and

for future generations. Crisis, value, and hope provide the

three major cross-cutting themes for the papers. Crisis refers
to the processes beyond individual control that force change
in traditional modes of livelihood and value to the recognition
that value exceeds mere monetary worth and can be variable
across economic cases. Hope reflects the objective and subjective possibilities for the future.
The 12 contributions that comprise this issue are grouped
under three major headings: (1) negotiating regimes of value:
debt, shame, sacrifice, and the future, (2) time-space dimensions of making a living in times of uncertainty, and (3) the
worth of people and the moral obligation to care. The broadranging topics covered extend from borrowing and lending

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Aiello Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy

in South Africa (James 2014), to social roles and value production among Malagasy marriage migrants to France (Cole
2014), to identity building in the context of land grabs in
Wukan, China (He 2014). An afterword to the issue draws
out the main issues and calls for rethinking the economy,
emphasizing thick ethnographic description and weak theory
(Gibson-Graham 2014).
There are few issues of greater relevance than the economy,
both within the field of anthropology and beyond, and this
has been recognized by anthropologists for a number of years.
Crisis, Value, and Hope is a modern successor to a WennerGren symposium held 54 years ago in 1960, Economics and
Anthropology: Capital, Saving, and Credit in Peasant Societies, organized by Raymond Firth and Bert F. Hoselitz (fig.
2). This meeting resulted in a landmark publication (Firth
and Yamey 1964), and as is the case with Crisis, Value, and
Hope, emphasized both the importance of economic knowledge for the understanding of relevant social relationships and
the necessity of an understanding of social relationships for
the interpretation of observed economic situations and behavior. Crisis, Value and Hope updates and expands these
ideas and more in the modern anthropological context.
The Wenner-Gren Foundation has a long history of encouraging work on significant anthropological issues and
is always looking for innovative new ideas in all areas of

S3

anthropology for future Foundation-sponsored and Foundation-organized symposia and eventual CA publication.
We encourage anthropologists to contact us with their proposals for future meetings. Information about the WennerGren Foundation, the symposium program, application
procedures and deadlines, and what constitutes a good
symposium topic can be found on the Foundations website (http://wennergren.org/programs/international
-symposia).

References Cited
Cole, Jennifer. 2014. Producing value among Malagasy marriage migrants in
France: managing horizons of expectation. Current Anthropology 55(suppl.
9):S85S94.
Firth, Raymond, and Basil S. Yamey, eds. 1964. Capital, saving and credit in
peasant societies. London: Allen & Unwin.
Gibson-Graham, J. K. 2014. Rethinking the economy with thick description
and weak theory. Current Anthropology 55(suppl. 9):S147S153.
James, Deborah. 2014. Deeper into a hole? borrowing and lending in South
Africa. Current Anthropology 55(suppl. 9):S17S29.
Narotzky, Susana, and Niko Besnier. 2014. Crisis, value, and hope: rethinking
the economy: an introduction to supplement 9. Current Anthropology
55(suppl. 9):S4S16.
He, Shenjing, and Desheng Xue. 2014. Identity building and communal resistance against landgrabs in Wukan Village, China. Current Anthropology
55(suppl. 9):S126S137.

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