Volume 37 of REA features eleven original articles organized in four different sections, each focusing on a specific, popular and significant theme in economic anthropology: production, exchange, vending, and tourism. The first section investigates the brewing (and selling) of homemade beer among Maragoli women in western Kenya, continuity and change in small-scale family farming in a rural part of Costa Rica, and theoretical models of the transitions to farming that marked the Neolithic Revolution. The second section, on exchange, opens with another archaeological examination—of relationships between long-distance exchange and the centralization of political power in Pre-Columbian America. This section also explores adaptations of the Ten Thousand Villages fair trade organization following the recent global recession, exchanges and “productive leisure” at North Market in Columbus, Ohio, and social values in flux over problems relating to exchange amidst conditions of scarcity in the Solomon Islands. The third section investigates the plight and adaptations of vendors in a southern Chinese city and on a Mexican beach, drawing attention to the effects of both national government policies and international trade agreements on their lives. The volume closes with a section that considers important and timely issues in tourism—the role of debt in commission-based relationships between showroom owners and tour guides in Agra, India, and risk, resilience, health, and government policy in Jamaica’s sex tourism industry.
PART I PRODUCTION
CULTURAL ECONOMICS AND RAMIFICATIONS OF HOME-BREWING, SELLING AND CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL AMONG THE MARAGOLI OF WESTERN KENYA; Edwins Laban Moogi Gwako
SYNERGISTIC CHANGE AND SMALLHOLDER AGRICULTURE IN PÉREZ ZELEDÓN, COSTA RICA; Deborah Sick
TRANSITION TO FARMING MORE LIKELY IN A LAND OF PLENTY; Serge Svizzero
PART IIEXCHANGE
LONG-DISTANCE EXCHANGE AND CENTRALIZED POWER IN PRECOLUMBIAN AMERICA; Kathryn M. Hudson and John S. Henderson
MARKETS OF THE HEART: WEIGHING ECONOMIC AND ETHICAL VALUES AT TEN THOUSAND VILLAGES; Laurel Zwissler
PROVISIONING, SHOPPING AND PRODUCTIVE LEISURE AT NORTH MARKET, COLUMBUS, OHIO; Lisa Marie Beiswenger and Jeffrey H. Cohen
RELATIVE CUSTOMERS: DEMAND-SHARING, KINSHIP AND SELLING IN SOLOMON ISLANDS; Rodolfo Maggio
PART IIIVENDING
STRUGGLES WITH CHANGING POLITICS: STREET VENDOR LIVELIHOODS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA; Shuru Zhong and Hongyang Di
SONS OF PEASANTS ON THE BEACH: VENDORS IN CABO SAN LUCAS, MEXICO; Tamar Diana Wilson
PART IVTOURISM
DEBTS AND UNCERTAINTY: CIRCULATION OF ADVANCE MONEY AMONG TOURISM ENTREPRENEURS IN AGRA, INDIA; Riddhi Bhandari
MAKING “EASY” MONEY: RESILIENCE AND RISK IN JAMAICA; Lauren C. Johnson