Anthropology and Economic Imperialism: The Battlefield of Culture

Occasional Papers from Nottingham University Business School

Abstract: The concept of culture is traditionally the home turf of anthropologists. However, economists have become increasingly interested in culture, using the language of culture to study both macro- and micro-level economic phenomena. Anthropologists view this as an encroachment into their territory and are battling to keep the 'economic imperialists' out. This paper examines, from a philosophy of science perspective, the inherent differences between the disciplines of anthropology and economics that lie at the heart of this battle. It concludes by observing how a greater appreciation of and respect for each other’s view of culture can foster closer collaboration and further enrich both disciplines.

Keywords: Culture; anthropology; methodology; modernism; relativism; post-modernism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B12 B40 N01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages
Date: 2003
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://all.repec.org/RePEc/nom/occasi/imperialism.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Failed to CWD to directory nom [Failed to change directory.]

Related works:
Working Paper: Anthropology and Economic Imperialism: The Battlefield of Culture (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nom:occasi:3

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Occasional Papers from Nottingham University Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Robert Hoffmann ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).