About the Book:When anthropologists and other students of culture want to compare different societies in such areas as the organization of land, labor, trade, or barter, they often discover that individual researchers use these concepts inconsistently and from a variety of theoretical approaches, so that data from one society cannot be compared with data from another.In this book, Rhoda Halperin offers an analytical tool kit for studying economic processes in all societies and at all times. She uniquely organizes the book around key concepts: economy, ecology, equivalencies, householding, storage, and time and the economy. These concepts are designed to facilitate the understanding of similarities, differences, and changes between contemporary and past economies. While this is not only a “how-to” book or handbook, it can be used as such. It will be of great value to scholars and students of archaeology and history, as well as to ethnographers and economists.Table of Contents: Preface and AcknowledgmentsIntroductionOne. Methodological Individualism: Structure and Agency in Economic AnthropologyTwo. Marxs Institutional Paradigm and Polanyis Generic Model of the EconomyThree. Economy and Ecology: Basic Concepts, Their History, and ApplicationsFour. Equivalencies in Economic AnthropologyFive. Householding: Resistance and Livelihood in Rural EconomiesSix. Storage as an Economic ProcessSeven. A Cross-Cultural Treatment of the Informal EconomyEight. Time and the Economy: A Substantive PerspectiveNine. Looking Backward and Forward on Concepts of the Economy: The Discourse of Economic Anthropology in Historical and Comparative PerspectiveNotesBibliographyIndex