“Global spread of unregulated markets as the major cause of global instability”

1. In your opinion, what is specific for an anthropological approach to economy in the society dominated by the logic of the market?

It is the same approach for any economy: we analyze the cultural assumptions, the social order and keep a critical stance. We do not assume that our everyday experience or academic knowledge about markets provides the key to understanding; instead, we work to grasp those assumptions and the social patterning.

2. Within anthropology you are well-known as an author of original model of economy. Could you, please, mention what are the major characteristics of your model for non-anthropologists?

I am interested in the local concepts that a people have and deploy; these help constitute economic relationships and activities, though not directly. We might label this a cultural approach, but that word sometimes eclipses what people do.

I assume value plurality not only between but also within economies; economies are not smooth plains; we do not reduce everything to a single measuring rod but encounter value spheres involving different institutions and exchange circuits. In high market economies we often reduce this diversity to money price in a single sphere and mystify ourselves by presenting one value as if it were another.

3. In your last book “Economy´s Tension” you also trace the origins of modern market society. Could you, please, clarify these origins for our readers?

I am not an historian and do not actually trace the origins of market society; I leave those questions to Braudel, Polanyi and others. I am interested in the structural or logical core of markets, which is competitive trade for advantage. That does not capture all that happens in markets, but it is central to the concept of “rational man.”

4. Does the idea of individual profit and cost – benefit market calculation originate in the practices and worldviews of protestant urban Western Europe as it is commonly held by the majority of Westerners or we can see more general origins of impersonal market in cultures worldwide?

My hypothesis is that all humans are capable of, and practice, cost/benefit calculations or ratios, which are prices. But I have endeavored to show that this mode of reason is elicited and elaborated by market participation. People practice calculative reason with more and less success, but its use is needed to stay in the market. Given its repeated practice and reflection on it, calculative reason becomes a dominant mentality or subjectivity by which we know ourselves: it spills over or cascades outside the borders of established markets, which leads to market expansion, the colonization of other economies, and the increasing transformation of ourselves into rational calculators.

5. You are also known for long-term promotion of mutual borrowing and discussions between anthropology and economy. How would you see this endeavor if, broadly speaking, culture for economists is just one variable among many and culture for anthropologists actually explains the whole economy?

Economists have built and continually revise an incredible armature of ideas. I respect that intellectual endeavor. But economics is largely limited to one form of economy and often presents it is an ideal, such as price equilibrium across markets, which requires a host of ideal assumptions. I like to see this discourse as a narrative about and for our practices, but it is not a science.

I seldom hear economists talk about culture, unless they mean art, dance, writing, and so forth, which can be analyzed as a cost, as a feedback mechanism or whatever. Largely, culture means for them a constraint on economic growth and reinvestment, although some new institutionalists try work around this. So, culture as you mention is a variable for economists. This perspective that economy consists of discrete variables implies a rather “scientific” view, which is not usually that of anthropologists.

I turn it around and consider economics as a cultural output that is a response to the lived experience of markets. On that perspective, markets with their representations are “local models.” Are they reproductions, justifications, ideals, forms of science or metaphors? How do we assess or understand them?

6. Do you see any novel perspectives taking shape in contemporary discussions on economic and societal arrangements of the world? Is there an alternative to capitalism or what are the possible alternatives of capitalism?

For several hundred years after Adam Smith, there have been discussions about alternatives to market economies and some enactments, from religious communities to Marxist inspired modes, and after. But that is hardly new, Aristotle, in his way, was voicing concern two thousand years ago.

Capitalism has been resilient, but now we are facing enormous problems that affect us all – global warming, so-called terrorism, new expanding economies that are competing against the older powers, resource depletion, and more. One response to these changes may be local, such as building green communities or nations; another may be warfare. We may find our way toward varieties of economy that are local combinations of markets and community with different values. It will not be an easy path to discover such combinations in which mutuality and market are differently combined, because it would mean accepting and adjusting to a plural world of local, culturally different economies.

7. Is capitalism a religion? Can we eventually define its moral order?

I see the morality or moral value of capitalism as efficiency, which refers to market allocation and trade. Anything less is “inefficient” or non rational, which is always the trump card of market proponents. The argument justifies perfect markets. Anything less is of lesser value.

Moralities justifying other forms of resource, asset, and commodity allocation might be age, need, gender, kinship, power, and more, as anthropologists have shown. Studying these other moralities and their mixes is the province of economic anthropology.

From this perspective an economy is always a religion; at least it consists of a community of believers and nonbelievers. High market participants try to practice, with success and failure like any member of a congregation, the central tenet of the faith, which is calculative reason. Is advanced capitalism a ritual?

8. What is the role of the state in economy and community during and after the financial and economic crisis, especially regarding regulations and deregulations?

To date, state actions in the US and UK have mostly centered on the financial sphere (via interest rates and other operations) and on the commercial sphere (via government spending). The crisis was broader than that to which these band-aids were applied. To a small extent, in the United States there has been an effort to regulate the banking sector and control the top end of the salary scale, but more needs to be done as extreme inequality of wealth is detrimental to lives and sociality. The BP oil spill drew people’s attention and there will be financial penalties for this error of calculation, but are people really thinking about ways to regulate the high risks of market penetration into the environment? We need to think far more deeply about the role of the state, not so much as internal economic actor but as the institution through which the arena of markets is set.

9. How can we approach the role of international actors (WTO, IMF, World Bank) in the world economy today?

The main task of the WTO is to promote world trade or free markets. We ought to rethink that role – does one size fit all nations? The IMF has been under critical glare for some time – think of Stiglitz’ book. Does a neoliberal approach to economy promote what we want to achieve; it may be the doctrinaire way to arrive at efficiency in the use of resources, but is that the value we want? As for the World Bank, it seems to adopt a new tactical goal every few years. But has development been successful? In other words, we need to open up a long, continuing discussion about goals, leave room for local response and voices, and not consider that more money, technology, education or even free markets is the “solution.”

10. In your opinion, how have ideas and practices of equality (regarding ethnicity, gender, class) and well-being (welfare) changed in last two – three decades in the developed and developing world?

In the US we have achieved a measure of gender equality and some respect for ethnic differences, though there are certainly many pockets of resistance as in job promotions, language use, and bullying. I am concerned that in the US the notion of “welfare” does not mean wellbeing. It refers to government programs rather than a deeper sense concerning human development, relationships, and existence. In this highly individualistic nation, there is little concern for others, and little thought given to what the ends of economy should be: accumulation and competition with others, or wellbeing in the sense of achieving use of our capacities in relation to ourselves and others? What do we need to change in economy to improve wellbeing? As one example, the US food system, with its expenditures on advertising, high prices, search for corporate profit, and heavy reliance on maize products, hardly promotes the wellbeing of a nation.

11. In light of current economic crisis, could you, please, comment on the relations of industrial and financial sectors of the economy? Who produces today, for whom and what exactly?

An economist can better respond to this question. But there are some hints. My concern is that the financial sector has been gaining increased economic power and secures the profits or surplus of the industrial sector. But it is the industrial sphere that produces the goods by which we live. Both are needed in market economy, but we need a coherent and convincing theory about how this power imbalance of the two sectors happens, although Veblen was acutely aware of it a century ago. When this power imbalance is connected to commercial outsourcing abroad, with concentration on accruing finance at home, I wonder about the long-term viability of the outsourcing economy. What happens to employment? Who grows wealthy and who grows poor?

12. What do you consider to be the three major economic problems of today?

1. Environmental devastation – global warming, extinction of species, pollution, resource use
2. The growing inequality of wealth
3. The inability to see the linkage of the first two problems

13. How do power inequalities in the control of production, distribution and consumption of wealth contribute to the instability of the world today?

I am probably more materialist than many others, but I do see the global spread of unregulated markets as the major cause of global instability, although others might speak about conflict between political or religious beliefs and regimes. The economic issues that lead to instability are complex but include the power to extract from others, status envy that accompanies wealth inequality, impoverishment, economic inequality as buttressing political inequality and the like– all have a touchstone in the way wealth is held, secured and used.

14. What is the importance of technology for human well-being? Which are the technologies you think are most useful? Where do they come from?

I see technological advances as instances of human creativity, and they have been impressive. I also see them as collective products in that we build on the accomplishments of others in the past, and on communication with others in the present. All are a result of individual inspiration in the context of mutuality and social relationships.

An economist might argue that technological advances are brought to community approval and disapproval through markets and demand; but that does not speak to their community embedding or to the long-term issues. Do we leave the production of nuclear power to today’s market demand for energy or do we need a larger discussion that includes its possible impact far in the future?

15. How can we understand mutual connections between nationalism and capitalism? Why in Europe, for example, so many followers of neoclassical market logic currently use and misuse nationalistic logic and argue against solidarity with Greece?

Asserting solidarity with Greece is based on the assumption that they are rational actors and choosers just like everyone else; of course, they are rational, but is the assumption that they are rational selectors sufficient for achieving solidarity, or are there cultural issues? The discourse and forms of economy allow for no other form of affiliation than meeting in the market. Greeks are angry at the new regulations coming from the banking sectors, and everyone else is angry at the Greeks for costing them money. Nationalism as cultural affiliation does not sit easily with the assumption that we are all separate, market choosers. The idea of nationalistic affiliation and anonymous and competitive choice in markets is filled with contradictions.

Let us frame it this way: in pure markets everyone else is an anonymous trader; therefore, we have no solidarity, so appeals to it make no sense. Similarity, nationalism can be used to justify offering no help to the other, self-interested trader. It is a nice example of the difference between mutuality and markets.

16. Does academic capitalism exist? If it does, which direction does it move to nowadays?

I am not certain what academic capitalism means, but certainly the University is becoming corporate-like. We have burgeoning administrations with high salaries that float above what the professorate receives. Above all, we count and measure performance – where our students are hired and for how much, how many students are in the classroom and paying tuition for our salaries, how many books, articles and even words professors are publishing, how much space we occupy, and more. We quantify and commensurate to allocate money to teachers, departments and space. Given this logic, why not abolish university buildings and rent offices for professors at the lowest rates possible, whether or not they are near one another? To put it in consumer language, we often judge quality by quantity, which is backwards even in commodity markets. And, of course, we compete so that group work in addition to the above reasons is often difficult to achieve, because individual contributions must be separated to be documented. Why should a professor spend time talking to a student about an interesting problem, unless this time spent is counted as work? A bleak view, but perhaps an indication of the future.

17. European Union often presents itself as a unique modernization project. For some economists it is rather old-fashioned planning dinosaur that had passed away as a model after state-socialist planning failure. How do you see the feasibility of EU as an alternative development model in the world and for the world?

The EU, of course, had its origin after World War II in the hope that economic interdependence would make further war unfeasible. I see it more as a political rather than a modernization project. The EU is and was to be one big market. But the market regulations for some do not work for all – at least in the short run. I have been skeptical of the Euro project as too constraining in light of different national economies with different strengths and weaknesses that require different monetary responses. I do understand that the Euro has a rationale, such as collective competition with the dollar, lowering transaction costs within the EU, and so forth. But some parts of this movement may have been undertaken too quickly especially in response to the fall of the Wall. If the EU could incorporate cultural and value diversity in combination with a common market, which is a challenging project, it would have a profound project and a fascinating future.