Anthology course reading discussion
Fifteen years have passed since this book first saw the light of day. It
thus seems an apt moment to reflect on what the book set. out to do
and how it has been understood by readers. This new preface also offers the occasion for clarifying some of the issues raised by commentators, both friendly and critical.
I wrote the book as an anthropologist but also drew on history and
the social sciences. I tried to be historical by envisaging the unfolding
of structures and patterns over time. I also attempted to relate the
findings of anthropology to perspectives drawn from a historically oriented political economy-with the emphasis on the historical. The
term “political economy,” usually defined as the study of ways in
which resources are made available to society and the state, tends to
confound two kinds of inquiry. One works with techniques derived
from market economics to assess state fiscal policy. The other, with
which I associate myself, studies societies, states, and markets as historically evolving phenomena <md hence questions whether conceptions of these arrangements particular to the capitalist experience can
be generalized to cover all times and places. We must remember that
Karl Marx subtitled his Kapital “A Critique of Political Economy.” I
thus use the term “political economy” to designate inquiries into the
economic foundations of different polities and societies in their changing trajectories.
