The Politics of Value in the Circulation of Commodities

The trajectory of objects and the ways in which they develop meaning are the principal focus of the discussions elaborated by Appadurai and Carrier. In essence, the authors join in an ongoing conversation regarding the agency and mobility of objects and the role that they play in the economic system. Appadurai examines the ways in which the forces of desire and demand interact to lend economic value to otherwise exclusively social situations, and asserts that economic value is created through certain motivations and social factors surrounding the commodities exchanged. Carrier focuses more attention on the role of status in the pursuit and exchange of commodities, and makes the claim that the social groups and aspirations influence the circulation of goods.
Appadurai invokes the writings of Simmel to launch his discussion of the value of commodities as “a judgement made about them by subjects,” that is to say that politics, culture, and knowledge embody objects with distinctly social lives. Appadurai's argument that demand is a socially-regulated phenomenon I found to be especially well presented. The case study of the kula system in the Massim Islands provided a particularly vibrant example of the means by which social status and power took precedence over economic value in regulating the exchange of valued commodities. Carrier's work, too, placed precedence on the social lives of objects with an eye to the importance of status in determining object value. The works of Veblen and Weber are analysed and contrasted to debate the dynamic relationship between objects and people, with Veblen's work being given more weight in the discussion.
Veblen makes a valuable observation that objects gain greater importance in larger societies due to the subject's necessity to communicate his position in society to people who “have no other means of judging his reputability than the display of goods.” I found this particular commentary to be very illuminating to the larger conversation of diasporic objects, particularly in the context of commodity desire among certain communities. Indeed, both Appadurai's and Carrier's comments addressed a number of concerns that I had with the previous week's discussion of Shankar. The relationship between status and the value given to commodities, when viewed in the group context, lends greater understanding to Shankar's examination of the Desi community in Silicon Valley. That said, Carrier's view that status markers gain importance in larger, disconnected societies stands in sharp contrast to the Shankar's close-nit cultural community.
Both authors offer a wealth of information concerning object value, production and circulation, and both effectively utilize a wealth of scholarly material to provide us with a multi-faceted platform from which to view the debate. That said, I found Appadurai's article to be a bit 'cluttered' at times. The analyses of various scholarly works and case studies, while helpful, often became excessively verbose, and lent a disjointed feel to the work. Carrier's work, on the other hand, was disappointingly one-sided, with an excessive amount of attention focused on the role of status in the commodity trade. These criticisms must, of course, be taken with a grain of salt as both readings were introductions to larger volumes of work on the subject, and therefore not intended to be viewed as conclusive.
Questions:
(1)Although I did not touch on this aspect of Appadurai's article in my commentary, I would like to discuss it here: Appadurai claims that by increasing the gap between the means of production and the consumer, a mythology of sorts grows up around a particular object, as seen in the case of 'cargo cults.' What role might distance from the production process (or origin) of a particular object play in the greater conversation about valued objects in the lives of diasporic subjects?
(2) Carrier examines Veblen's claim that objects become more important as status markers in mass societies, as opposed to close-knit traditional communities. Appadurai discusses at length the role of the kuna system in the Massim Island, and the ways in which it is utilized to gain status and power within the community. Can a small, close-knit group use objects to assert status and power within their community, or is this phenomenon limited to mass society?