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SUMMARY:Toward an acknowledgement of the invisible social metabolism of pr
 estige-goods exchange in the Prehispanic Andes - Prof Alf Hornborg\, Lunds
  Universitet
DTSTART:20220428T150000Z
DTEND:20220428T163000Z
UID:TALK173147@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lydia Clough
DESCRIPTION:The presentation will deal with questions of political economy
  raised by an application of world-systems perspectives to the kingdoms of
  the prehispanic Andes. Pivotal to their social hierarchies were artifacts
  such as ornaments made from distantly derived marine shells and tropical 
 bird feathers. Beyond their symbolic significance\, we must acknowledge th
 e great quantities of labour that were expended in the extraction and tran
 sports of such artifacts\, as well as their formidable potential in cataly
 zing massive mobilisation of labour and resources at the receiving end. Wo
 rld-system theorists tend to underestimate the material\, socio-metabolic 
 role of such premodern ’preciosities’ (or prestige goods). The essenti
 al conditions for procuring them may have been almost as invisible to thei
 r owners as to modern historians and archaeologists. In emphasizing the ta
 ngibility and cultural semiotics of ancient artifacts\, economic historian
 s and archaeologists risk duplicating the commodity fetishism of mainstrea
 m economists\, who focus on the exchange values of trade goods while syste
 matically neglecting the transfers of embodied labour\, land\, energy\, an
 d materials that they represent. Socially decontextualized artifacts thus 
 pervasively obscure the extensive networks of relations of which they are 
 expressions. Estimating the scale of such invisible resource flows enables
  us to theorize ecologically unequal exchange in both premodern and modern
  world-systems.  \n\nRegister: https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/
 tJMld-usqTotHNLr19_cnrU4QfL7gYbrBIbX
LOCATION:Zoom
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