Commodification: Things, Agency, and Identities

The empirically rich and analytically provocative contributions to this volume focus on Africa and on the process through which commodities come into being. Commodifcation is shown to be a powerful tool towards understanding the modern world, especially South economies and South-North interactions today. It greatly illuminates the three central concepts things, agency, and identities, and thus is conducive to the much-needed dialogue between anthropology and economics. In the book, some of the original contributors of A. Appadurai's edited collection from 1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective meet with today's prominent names in the field (Jean & John Comaroff, Paul & Jennifer Alexander, R. Dilley, M. Rowlands, and award-winning N. Rose Hunt) and with scholars of the next generation: B. Weiss, R. van Dijk, J. Roitman, J. Leach, and I. Stengs. Together with W. van Binsbergen and P. Geschiere, this team explores the dynamics of Commodification.