Rethinking the Economy with Thick Description and Weak Theory
Rethinking the Economy with Thick Description and Weak Theory
复制标题
DOI：
10.1086/676646
复制
发表时间：
2014-08-01
影响因子：
2.2
通讯作者：
Gibson-Graham, J. K.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Gibson-Graham, J. K.
在这篇论文中，我复述了吉布森-格雷厄姆（J.K. Gibson-Graham）为了将不同的经济体理论化并揭示经济差异的图景而发展的思维步骤。阅读和反对克利福德·格尔茨1973年的文章“厚描述：走向文化的解释性理论”，我讨论了如何“厚描述”的不同经济实践可以与弱理论相结合，以产生一个表演的重新思考经济为中心的福祉的人和地球。我讨论了抵制“强理论”的影响的困难-也就是说，强有力的话语，组织成可理解的和看似可预测的轨迹事件。我概述了多样性经济，一种重新构建，允许更广泛的社会关系被视为对经济实践的影响，包括，仅举一些例子，信任，关怀，分享，互惠，合作，胁迫，束缚，节俭，内疚，爱，公平，自我剥削，团结，分配正义，管理，精神联系，以及环境和社会正义。在多元化经济的复杂超定领域，我们被邀请追踪多种动力在发挥作用。正是在理解这些不同的决定因素的过程中，人种志的详细描述才得以发挥作用，并引导人们重新思考经济。对于今天的民族志学家来说，没有什么任务比让小事实说明大问题更重要了，让民族志描述的伦理行为成为经济的行为本体论，并成为出现在日常革命故事中的希望之线。
In this paper I rehearse the thinking steps J.K Gibson-Graham developed in order to theorize diverse economies and reveal a landscape of economic difference. Reading with and against Clifford Geertz's 1973 essay "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture," I discuss how " thick description" of diverse economic practices can be combined with weak theory to produce a performative rethinking of economy centered on the well-being of people and the planet. I discuss the difficulties of resisting the influence of " strong theory"-that is, powerful discourses that organize events into understandable and seemingly predictable trajectories. I outline the diverse economy, a reframing that allows for a much wider range of social relations to be seen to bear on economic practices including, to name just some, trust, care, sharing, reciprocity, cooperation, coercion, bondage, thrift, guilt, love, equity, self-exploitation, solidarity, distributive justice, stewardship, spiritual connection, and environmental and social justice. In the complexly overdetermined field of a diverse economy, we are invited to trace multiple dynamics at play. It is in the apprehension of these diverse determinations that ethnographic thick description comes into its own and leads the way toward rethinking the economy. For ethnographers today, no task is more important than to make small facts speak to large concerns, to make the ethical acts ethnography describes into a performative ontology of economy and the threads of hope that emerge into stories of everyday revolution.