This article is built on a close reading of the use of the term 'calculation' by Max Weber. On the basis of this reading, I argue for a deeper understanding of Weber's views on uncertainty in the Calvinist ethos, and for a new approach to some key issues in the moral and discursive world of financial capital today, in which accounting, accountability and profit-making have become dangerously delinked from one another.
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 3–17 (15 total)
Keith Hart
This note revisits Weber (especially his General Economic History) and Knight on risk and calculation, while adding commentary based on some other authors, notably Durkheim in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Some recent ethnographies of finance are considered, as well as popular literature on making money. The future is unknowable, but modern societies train their members to expect to pin down future time. Precise calculation of future outcomes is a chimera, one of the principal causes of the recent financial collapse. Reasoning works best backwards as rationalization and this is scientific method. Extrapolation from the past to the future is where it all breaks down.
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 18–24 (7 total)
Pamela McElwee
need to see how a calculation happens (who does it, with what means, and for what ends) before it disappears from view. We also need to understand the implications of the replacement of ideas of actual physical things, like forests or rivers, with the
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 96–124 (29 total)
Nigel Dodd
because spending them involves counting. Or to express this point from the other direction, it is as if all calculation is the same; ergo , all dollars will be the same. The classical literature was full of brilliant insights into how money can flatten
Dan Brockington
center of calculation, surrounded by a network of allies … The quantification of qualities is as much an administrative accomplishment as an intellectual one. And no matter what the skeptics may say, many social qualities have already been successfully
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–8 (8 total)
Five Thousand, 5,000, and Five Thousands
Disentangling Ruble Quantities and Qualities
Sandy Ross
converter. But in her mental computation, 10 euros equals a Five Hundred ruble note. As equivalences proliferate, denominations provide “tropic points” ( Guyer 2004: 50 ; cf. Rosin 1984 ) for fuzzy calculations and rules of thumb. Rather than generating
Natural Resources by Numbers
The Promise of “El uno por mil” in Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Oil Operations
Amelia Fiske
role of numerical calculations in the governance of subterranean resources. Quantification processes and their results constitute some of our most basic understandings of society and the environment, such as the untapped value of the Amazon in
In Environment and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 125–143 (19 total)
Kaloyan Haralampiev and Georgi Dimitrov
1 Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients between initial indicators and the total rank (in descending order) Indicator Spearman’s correlation Source: Our own calculation based on data taken from statistical factsheets for each
In Regions and Cohesion
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 20–51 (32 total)
Julián Antonio Moraga Riquelme, Leslie E. Sponsel, Katrien Pype, Diana Riboli, Ellen Lewin, Marina Pignatelli, Katherine Swancutt, Alejandra Carreño Calderón, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Sergio González Varela, Eugenia Roussou, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Miho Ishii, Markus Balkenhol, and Marcelo González Gálvez
reading for the public at large. Marina Pignatelli ISCSP-University of Lisbon Note 1 The Masorti movement is identified with Conservative Judaism, often described as ‘traditional’. LI, Geng, Fate Calculation Experts: Diviners Seeking
In Religion and Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2020
- Article Type:
- Book Review
- Pages:
- 205–228 (24 total)
Rural Poverty in Jordan
Assessment and Characterisation
Mohamed Tarawneh and Abdel Hakim Al Husban
Adopting a qualitative anthropological approach, this report discusses and critiques dominant theoretical currents in the study of poverty and presents a more qualitative analysis of the topic. Through an examination of rural Jordan, new sets of concepts and calculations on poverty - both qualitative and quantitative - have been forged. The research indicates that poverty, as an economic fact, can easily be manipulated and treated as a numerical game. As a social fact, poverty is seen in terms of complex coping strategies that are managed within a framework of social norms.
In Anthropology of the Middle East
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2011
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 94–107 (14 total)