Bin Yang on the Global History of Cowries

2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-109
Author(s):  
Dennis O. Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Global History ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
Cultural Preferences ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Answer ◽  
Geographical Locations ◽  
Global Evidence

Abstract Bin Yang correctly states that cowrie shells (250 species) and cowrie monies (two species mostly) deserve far more attention in global histories than they have received. He provides the most comprehensive view of the global history of cowries and cowrie monies to date. Multiple shell monies proliferated worldwide, but they did not concentrate within China (except Yunnan) nor within Europe. Why did specific cowries accumulate only in certain specific geographical locations? Yang establishes a general answer: cultural preferences for holding specific objects, including specific monies, determined where the shells were concentrated. He offers global evidence that, I argue, contradicts mainstream economic theory, which is based upon conceptual aggregation of diverse monies into amorphous stocks of (national or regional) money (singular). Yang demonstrates repeatedly that distinct market locations and distinct market prices existed for specific cowrie and other shell monies (plural) throughout global history. His evidence starkly demonstrates inadequacies of mainstream monetary theory (although he does not say as much). The relentless evidence of the existence of monetary disaggregation, evidence highlighted throughout Yang’s volume, demonstrates an urgent need for alternative monetary theories that portray prices and stocks of individual monies in conformity with empirical evidence provided by archival historians.

scholarly journals Toward an Ecological Monetary Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 923 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Ament
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
Ecological Economics ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
A Value

Money is the most ubiquitous institution on the planet and lays the foundation for human civilization. As such it should underlie economic theory. Due to the dualized nature of Western culture, however, mainstream economic theory assumes that money is simply a value relation to make barter efficient. This theory is manifest in orthodox monetary theory and policy. Ecological economics understands the problems attendant to modern money but has heretofore not developed a theory of money of its own. In order to make its economic theory and policy prescriptions viable, this paper argues that ecological economics must develop a theory of money that is simultaneously rooted in an understanding of money’s socio-history, and an ontological reimagining of dualized Western culture.

THE HISTORY OF ATTITUDES TOWARDS INTERDEPENDENT PREFERENCES

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 541-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
STAVROS A. DRAKOPOULOS
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Methodology ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
Interdependent Preferences ◽  
Relative Consumption ◽  
Positional Goods ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orthodox Theory ◽  
Reference Income

The notion of interdependent preferences has a long history in economic thought. In its general form, it can be found in the works of authors such as Hume, Rae, Genovesi, Smith, Marx, and Mill, among others. In the twentieth century, the idea became more widespread mainly through the works of Veblen and Duesenberry. Recently, an increasing number of theorists are interested in issues such as reference income, relative consumption, and positional goods, which are all based on the concept of interdependent preferences. However, such preferences were never part of the corpus of orthodox theory. For instance, although Pareto and Marshall were aware of their existence, they did not advocate their incorporation into orthodox economic theory. This paper argues that the structure of mainstream economic methodology and the challenging theoretical implications of adopting interdependent preferences were two possible reasons for the mainstream rejection. The discussion includes the more recent orthodox attitudes towards such preferences.

Nikolay Sieber in the history of prerevolutionary Russian economic thought

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.

Kornai, Schumpeter, and Economic Theory

2012 ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Maevsky
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
Level Of Analysis

The author claims that J. Kornai in his paper Innovation and Dynamism (Voprosy Ekonomiki. 2012. No 4) ignored the understanding of socialism as a specific type of culture and not just as an economic system. He also shows profound differences between Schumpeters theory and mainstream economic models. Evolutionary theory, he claims, may itself become mainstream if Schumpeters legacy is not interpreted straightforwardly and if evolutionary economists consider not only micro-, but also macro-level of analysis in studying macrogenerations of capital of a different age.

Essays of a “comparatively progressive” economist (On the 150th birth anniversary of Vladimir Geleznoff)

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Working Ability ◽  
Intellectual Inquiry ◽  
History Of

Deep comprehension of the advanced economic theory, the talent of lecturer enforced by the outstanding working ability forwarded Vladimir Geleznoff scarcely at the end of his thirties to prepare the publication of “The essays of the political economy” (1898). The subsequent publishing success (8 editions in Russia, the 1918­-year edition in Germany) sufficiently demonstrates that Geleznoff well succeded in meeting the intellectual inquiry of the cross­road epoch of the Russian history and by that taking the worthful place in the history of economic thought in Russia. Being an acknowledged historian of science V. Geleznoff was the first and up to now one of the few to demonstrate the worldwide community of economists the theoretically saturated view of Russian economic thought in its most fruitful period (end of XIX — first quarter of XX century).

Indian Sex Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Global History ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
History Of

During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. This book shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. The book demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world. Reframing the prostitute as a concept, the book overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

Fellow Worker

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Barry Pateman
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Workers ◽  
Global History ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fellow Worker

Review of Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, Wobblies of the World. A new edited collection on the global history of the Industrial Workers of the World.  

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