Legacies, Logics, Logistics brings together a set of essays, written
both before and after the financial crisis of 2007-08, by eminent
Africanist and economic anthropologist Jane I. Guyer. Each was written
initially for a conference on a defined theme. When they are brought
together and interpreted as a whole by Guyer, these varied essays show
how an anthropological and socio-historical approach to economic
practices--both in the West and elsewhere--can illuminate deep facets of
economic life that the big theories and models may fail to capture.
Focusing on economic actors--whether ordinary consumers or financial
experts--Guyer traces how people and institutions hold together past
experiences (legacies), imagined scenarios and models (logics), and
situational challenges (logistics) in a way that makes the performance
of economic life (on platforms made of these legacies, logics, and
logistics) work in practice. Individual essays explore a number of
topics--including time frames and the future, the use of percentages in
observations and judgments, the explanation of prices, the coexistence
of different world currencies, the reapplication of longtime economic
theories in new settings, and, crucially, how we talk about the economy,
how we use stable terms to describe a turbulent system. Valuable as
standalone pieces, the essays build into a cogent method of economic
anthropology.
