EXPANDING THE ECONOMIC CONCEPT OF EXCHANGE

EXPANDING THE ECONOMIC CONCEPT OF EXCHANGE

Expanding the Economic Concept of Exchange Deception, Self-Deception and IlIusions edited by Caroline Gerschlager Institute of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and the University ofvienna, Austria SPRINGER-SCIENCE+ BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4613-5297-6 ISBN 978-1-4615-0905-9 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-0905-9 Printed on acid~free paper AH Rights Reserved 2001 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston in 2001 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 2001 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Chapter 1, Caroline Gerschlager Introduction PART I: THE CONCEPTUAL RANGE OF EXCHANGE AND DECEPTION 25 Chapter 2, Caroline Gerschlager Is (Self-)Deception an Indispensable Quality of Exchange? 27 A New Approach to Adam Smith's Concept Chapter 3, Paul Dumouchel Exchange and Emotions 53 Chapter 4, Ulrich Thielemann On Exchange and Deception. 67 How the Logic of Exchange Excludes Deception and Fraud, And How We Thereby are Mistaken about its True Ethical Properties PART II: THE ECONOMICS OF DECEPTION: 83 SIMULATION AND PSEUDO-REALITIES Chapter 5, Holger Bonus On Exchange and Deceit 85 Chapter 6, Philip Mirowski Economists Encounter Cyborgs 101 PART III: ARCHAIC RELIGIOUS SETTINGS OF EXCHANGE: 119 ANIMAL SPIRITS, GODS AND OTHER "IMAGINARY PARTNERS" Chapter 7, Anne de Sales The Go-Between: Reflections on a Mechanism of Ritual Exchange 121 Chapter 8, Roberte N. Hamayon Tricks of the Trade or How Siberian Hunters 133 Play the Game of Life-Exchange

vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 9, Martin Treml On Mauss and Myths. 149 Exploring Different Forms of Exchange PART IV: DECEPTION IN ECONOMIC ANTHROPOLOGY: BEING MYSTIFIED? 165 Chapter 10, Isabelle Schulte-Tenckhoff Misrepresenting the Potlatch 167 Chapter 11, Jilrgen Fahlbusch On Reciprocity. A Case Study on Insufficient 189 State of Notions of Economic Criticism PART V: GENDER, SACRIFICE AND VEILS 199 Chapter 12, Birge Krondarfer IN-EX-CHANGE-ABLE 201 Sketches on Women - Exchange - Desire Chapter 13, Mark Ragin Anspach Violence Deceived: Changing Reciprocities from Vengeance to Gift Exchange Chapter 14, Wilhelm Berger The Technologisation of Money 213 225 Chapter 15, Caroline Gerschlager Conclusions 237 Subject Index Author Index About the Authors 243 255 261

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The articles in this book were created subsequent to brief presentations at the workshop "On Exchange. Reflections on Expanding the Economic Concept" which was conceptualized and organised by the editor of this book at IFK (Intemationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften) in Vienna in October 1996. The workshop aimed at crossing the boundaries laid down by economists and was an initial step towards expanding the conceptual scope of economic exchange by focusing on the function played by deceptions, self-deceptions and illusions. This present volume is the result of subsequent discussions between the editor and the authors on the subject matter of this book which engendered processes of revising the original contributions. Many of the contributions were only agreed upon subsequent to the workshop as a direct result of the changes brought about there in the author's interest in the topic. I am very grateful to the authors of this volume for their patience and for having borne with me and this project. Also, I would like to thank the referees for their helpful comments which have contributed to amending this project. A great deal of my fascination with interdisciplinary work to which this volume has been dedicated is due to the IFF (Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of Austrian Universities), and in particular to the members of the research group "Alternative Modellbildung in der Okonomie" which I had the good fortune to join as a member and which accompanied my thinking for several years. I am especially thankful to Luise Gubitzer, Peter Heintel and Erich Kitzmiiller, who founded and worked with this group, for their assistance and support in various ways. I have also benefited from support from Leonhard Bauer and Hanns J. Pichler from the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU Wien) and from Andre Gingrich from the Vienna University. I am greatly indebted to Maurice Aymard at MSH (Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de I'Homme) for his support and Jean-Pierre Dupuy who invited me to CREA, Ecole Poly technique. I am very grateful to Roberte N. Hamayon for her unfailing verve and generosity. Finally, this work would never have been possible without the financial support of the Erwin Schrodinger Forschungsstipendium at FWF [Austrian Funds for the Promotion of Scientific Research] which allowed me to pursue my research project in Paris and The Austrian Ministry of Science (BM:BWK). The Editor vii