Institutions and Culture: Neo-Weberian Economic Anthropology
Author(s)
Billig, Michael
Abstract
This paper discusses one theoretical perspective that is emerging within this reborn economic anthropology. After almost two decades in which Marxist approaches have dominated, economic anthropologists are increasingly looking to Max Weber as the venerable ancestor who asked the most prescient questions about the relationship between economy and culture. Rather than viewing culture as part of the epiphenomenal superstructure determined “in the last instance” by material forces, these neo-Weberians integrate a meaning-centered view of culture into their institutional and social analyses and view all of social life–including economic life–as animated by culture. Whereas an older tradition viewed economic life in non-market-oriented societies as being “embedded” in the social and cultural, neo-Weberians see such cultural embeddedness even in the most urban, complex, capitalist setting. The Neo-Weberian approach is, in this sense, an economic anthropology more in tune with the interpretive, cultural turn in many contemporary social sciences, including the rest of anthropology.
