Economy and Ritual

According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people''s economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising.

According to accepted wisdom, rational practices and ritual action are opposed. Rituals drain wealth from capital investment and draw on a mode of thought different from practical ideas. The studies in this volume contest this view. Comparative, historical, and contemporary, the six ethnographies extend from Macedonia to Kyrgyzstan. Each one illuminates the economic and ritual changes in an area as it emerged from socialism and (re-)entered market society. Cutting against the idea that economy only means markets and that market action exhausts the meaning of economy, the studies show that much of what is critical for a people’s economic life takes place outside markets and hinges on ritual, understood as the negation of the everyday world of economising.

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Ritual, Economy and the Institutions of the Base
Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann

Chapter 1. Economy as Ritual: The Problems of Paying in Wine
Jennifer Cash

Chapter 2. Animals in the Kyrgyz Ritual Economy: Symbolic and Moral Dimensions of Economic Embedding
Nathan Light

Chapter 3. From Pig-Sticking to Festival: Changes in Pig-Sticking Practices in the Hungarian Countryside
Bea Vidacs

Chapter 4. Kurban: Shifting Economy and the Transformations of a Ritual
Detelina Tocheva

Chapter 5. The Trader’s Wedding: Ritual Inflation and Money Gifts in Transylvania
Monica Vasile

Chapter 6. “We don’t have work. We just grow a little tobacco”: Household Economy and Ritual Effervescence in a Macedonian Town
Miladina Monova

Appendix: The “Economy and Ritual” Project and the Field Questionnaire

Notes on Contributors
Index