Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T20:04:19.405Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Signs of Power and the Power of Signs

Semiotics, Materiality, and the Political Economy of Status and Consumption

from Part III - Continuity and Discontinuity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2021

By
Alf Hornborg
Edited by
Paul Roscoe  and
Cindy Isenhour
Paul Roscoe
Affiliation:
University of Maine
Cindy Isenhour
Affiliation:
University of Maine
Get access

Summary

This chapter uses ethnohistorical information on prehispanic Andean kingdoms to illuminate how semiotic and material aspects of political economy are intertwined in premodern and modern approaches to various kinds of signs of social status. It argues that both anthropologists and mainstream economists tend to focus on semiotic aspects of human societies while largely ignoring their material conditions and repercussions, which are fundamental to grasping the role of identity and consumption in aggravating global inequalities and unsustainability.

Keywords

Consumptionidentitymaterialitypolitical economysemioticsstatus competition
Type
Chapter
Information
Consumption, Status, and Sustainability
Ecological and Anthropological Perspectives
 , pp. 193 - 221
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Århem, Kaj 1996 The Cosmic Food Web: Human-Nature Relatedness in the Northwest Amazon. In Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. Descola, Philippe and Pálsson, Gisli, eds. Pp. 185–204. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Balée, William L., and Erickson, Clark L., eds. 2006 Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean 1981 For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis, MO: Telos Press.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean 1993 Symbolic Exchange and Death. Theory, Culture, and Society. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bauer, Brian S. 1998 Sacred Landscape of the Inca: The Cusco Ceque System. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Brian S. 2004 Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Brian S., and Stanish, Charles 2001 Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Ancient Andes: The Islands of the Sun and the Moon. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bogadóttir, Ragnheidur 2016 Time-Space Appropriation in the Inka Empire: A Study of Imperial Metabolism. Lund, Sweden: Lund University.Google Scholar
Boomert, Arie 1987 Gifts of the Amazons: ‘Green Stone’ Pendants and Beads as Items of Ceremonial Exchange in Amazonia and the Caribbean. Antropologica 67:33–54.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
de la Cadena, Marisol 2015 Earth Beings: Ecologies of Practice across Andean Worlds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cerrón-Palomino, Rodolfo 2012 Unravelling the Enigma of the ‘Particular Language’ of the Incas. In Archaeology and Language in the Andes: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Prehistory. Heggarty, Paul and Beresford-Jones, David, eds. Pp. 265–294. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, Christopher K., and Hall, Thomas D., eds. 1991 Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Chase-Dunn, Christopher K., and Hall, Thomas D. 1997 Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Conrad, Geoffrey W. 1981 Cultural Materialism, Split Inheritance, and the Expansion of Ancient Peruvian Empires. American Antiquity 46(1):3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Descola, Philippe 2013 Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dorninger, Christian, and Hornborg, Alf 2015 Can EEMRIO Analyses Establish the Occurrence of Ecologically Unequal Exchange? Ecological Economics 119:414–418.Google Scholar
Emmanuel, Arghiri 1972 Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Gasparini, Graziano, and Margolies, Luise 1980 Inca Architecture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gassón, Raphael A. 2000 Quiripas and Mostacillas: The Evolution of Shell Beads as a Medium of Exchange in Northern South America. Ethnohistory 47(3–4):581–609.Google Scholar
Godelier, Maurice 1977 The Concept of ‘Social and Economic Formation’: The Inca Example. In Perspectives in Marxist Anthropology. Godelier, Maurice, ed. Pp. 63–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gose, Peter 1996 The Past Is a Lower Moiety: Diarchy, History, and Divine Kingship in the Inka Empire. History and Anthropology 9(4):383–414.Google Scholar
Graeber, David 2011a Consumption. Current Anthropology 52(4):489–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graeber, David 2011b Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House.Google Scholar
Graeber, David 2017 Notes on the Politics of Divine Kingship; or, Elements for an Archaeology of Sovereignty. In On Kings. Graeber, David and Sahlins, Marshall, eds. Pp. 377–464. Chicago: HAU Books.Google Scholar
Graeber, David, and Sahlins, Marshall, eds. 2017 On Kings. Chicago: HAU Books.Google Scholar
Helms, Mary W. 1988 Ulysees’ Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2000 Accumulation Based on Symbolic versus Intrinsic ‘Productivity’: Conceptualizing Unequal Exchange from Spondylus Shells to Fossil Fuels. In World System History: The Social Science of Long-Term Change. Denemark, Robert A., Friedman, Jonathan, Gills, Barry K., and Modelski, George, eds. Pp. 235–252. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2001 Vital Signs: An Ecosemiotic Perspective on the Human Ecology of Amazonia.Sign Systems Studies 29(1):121–152.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2013 Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange: Fetishism in a Zero-Sum World. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2014 Political Economy, Ethnogenesis, and Language Dispersals in the Prehispanic Andes: A World-System Perspective. American Anthropologist 116(4):810–823.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2017 Convictions, Beliefs, and the Suspension of Disbelief: On the Insidious Logic of Neoliberalism. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 7:553–558.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2019 Nature, Society, and Justice in the Anthropocene: Unravelling the Money–Energy–Technology Complex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf 2020 Crossing Frontiers: Perspectives from the Various Disciplines. 1.4. Anthropology. In Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration. Pearce, Adrian J., Beresford-Jones, David, and Heggarty, Paul, eds. Pp. 58–66. London: University College London Press.Google Scholar
Hornborg, Alf, and Eriksen, Love 2011 An Attempt to Understand Panoan Ethnogenesis in Relation to Long-Term Patterns and Transformations of Regional Interaction in Western Amazonia. In Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia: Reconstructing Past Identities from Archaeology, Linguistics, and Ethnohistory. Hornborg, Alf and Hill, Jonathan D., eds. Pp. 129–151. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb 2005 Signs Are Not the Garb of Meaning: On the Social Analysis of Material Things. In Materiality. Miller, Daniel, ed. Pp. 182–205. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Montell, Gösta 1929 Dress and Ornaments in Ancient Peru: Archaeological and Historical Studies. Göteborg, Sweden: University of Göteborg.Google Scholar
Pärssinen, Martti, and Korpisaari, Antti, eds. 2003 Western Amazonia – Amazônia Ocidental: Multidisciplinary Studies on Ancient Expansionistic Movements, Fortifications and Sedentary Life. Helsinki, Finland: University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Raymond, J. Scott 1988 A View from the Tropical Forest. In Peruvian Prehistory: An Overview of Pre-Inca and Inca Society. Keatinge, Richard W., ed. Pp. 279–300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, John H. 1946 Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest. In Handbook of South American Indians, vol. II. Julian H. Steward, ed. Pp. 183–330. Bureau of American Ethnology 143. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Rowe, John H. 1967 What Kind of a Settlement Was Inca Cuzco? Ñawpa Pacha 5:59–76.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 1976 Culture and Practical Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 1985 Islands of History. London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 2013 Foreword to Beyond Nature and Culture. Pp. xi–xiv. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 2017a The Original Political Society. In On Kings. Graeber, David and Sahlins, Marshall D., eds. Pp. 23–64. Chicago: HAU Books.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 2017b The Stranger-Kingship of the Mexica. In On Kings. Graeber, David and Sahlins, Marshall D., eds. Pp. 223–248. Chicago: HAU Books.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall D. 2017c The Cultural Politics of Core–Periphery Relations. In On Kings. Graeber, David and Sahlins, Marshall D., eds. Pp. 345–376. Chicago: HAU Books.Google Scholar
Santos-Granero, Fernando 2009a Introduction: Amerindian Constructional Views of the World. In The Occult Life of Things: Native Amazonian Theories of Materiality and Personhood, Santos-Granero, Fernando, ed. Pp. 1–29. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Santos-Granero, Fernando 2009b Vital Enemies: Slavery, Predation, and the Amerindian Political Economy of Life. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Schaan, Denise P. 2012 Sacred Geographies of Ancient Amazonia: Historical Ecology of Social Complexity. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Scott, James C. 2017 Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Tessmann, Günter 1999 Los Indigenas Del Peru Nororiental: Investigaciones Fundamentales Para Un Estudio Sistemático de La Cultura. Quito, Peru: Abya-Yala.Google Scholar
Torres, Constantino M. 1987 The Iconography of South American Snuff Trays and Related Paraphernalia. Göteborg, Sweden: Göteborgs Etnografiska Museum.Google Scholar
Uexküll, Jakob von 1982 The Theory of Meaning. Semiotica 42(1):25–82.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel M. 2004 World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, Darryl 2018 The Influence of Amazonia on State Formation in the Ancient Andes. Antiquity 92(365):1362–1376.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×