The social life of things: Introduction: commodities and the politics of value
The social life of things: Introduction: commodities and the politics of value
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事物的社会生活：简介：商品和价值政治
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发表时间：
1986
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通讯作者：
A. Appadurai
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作者：
A. Appadurai
本文有两个目的。第一个是预览和设置本卷后续文章的背景。二是提出了社会生活中商品流通的新视角。这一观点的要点可表述如下。经济交换创造价值。价值体现在交换的商品中。关注被交换的东西，而不是简单地关注交换的形式或功能，使人们有可能认为，创造交换和价值之间联系的是广义上的政治。这一论点在本文中得到了详细的阐述，它证明了商品和人一样也有社会生活这一自负。商品可以暂时定义为具有经济价值的对象。至于我们应该如何定义经济价值，最有用的（虽然不是标准的）指南是格奥尔格·齐美尔。在《货币哲学》（The Philosophy of Money，1907;英译本，1978）的第一章中，齐美尔系统地阐述了如何最好地定义经济价值。在齐美尔看来，价值从来不是客体的固有属性，而是主体对客体的判断。然而，根据齐美尔的观点，理解价值的关键在于“主观性只是暂时的，实际上并不是非常重要的”（Simmel 1978：73）。在探索这个既不完全主观也不完全客观的、价值在其中产生和发挥作用的困难领域时，齐美尔认为，物体之所以难以获得，并不是因为它们有价值，“但是，我们把那些抵制我们占有它们的欲望的物体称为有价值的”（第67页）。
This essay has two aims. The first is to preview and set the context for the essays that follow it in this volume. The second is to propose a new perspective on the circulation of commodities in social life. The gist of this perspective can be put in the following way. Economic exchange creates value. Value is embodied in commodities that are exchanged. Focusing on the things that are exchanged, rather than simply on the forms or functions of exchange, makes it possible to argue that what creates the link between exchange and value is politics , construed broadly. This argument, which is elaborated in the text of this essay, justifies the conceit that commodities, like persons, have social lives. Commodities can provisionally be defined as objects of economic value. As to what we ought to mean by economic value, the most useful (though not quite standard) guide is Georg Simmel. In the first chapter of The Philosophy of Money (1907; English translation, 1978), Simmel provides a systematic account of how economic value is best defined. Value, for Simmel, is never an inherent property of objects, but is a judgment made about them by subjects. Yet the key to the comprehension of value, according to Simmel, lies in a region where “that subjectivity is only provisional and actually not very essential” (Simmel 1978:73). In exploring this difficult realm, which is neither wholly subjective nor quite objective, in which value emerges and functions, Simmel suggests that objects are not difficult to acquire because they are valuable, “but we call those objects valuable that resist our desire to possess them” (p. 67).