This volume is intended as a brief introduction to economic anthropology for readers who are not very familiar with either anthropology or economics. This means that I have had to be selective in what I write, in a number of ways.

The most obvious way springs from the fact that economic anthropology is a large and diverse sub-part of anthropology. Its scope ranges from ceremonial exchanges on tiny islands in the Pacific through the relationship between brands and corporate value to the effects of the revaluation of the Swiss franc in 2015 on households in Poland, so that thorough coverage of all its facets is impossible. Instead, the volume is organized in terms of a small number of large processes that are repeated foci of enquiry. They are production, circulation and consumption. The justification for this is that, if people are to survive, they need to produce things; at a minimum, food, shelter and clothing. Some of these things are consumed directly by the people who produce them, but most circulate among people within a social group, and even beyond it to outsiders. At some point, however, the circulation stops, as people consume them.

My aim is to present some of the ideas that scholars have developed to help them think about aspects of those large processes. To do this I have laid out concepts and approaches in ways that focus on their essential insights as they are presented in classic texts. These often are fairly old works, but they are important because they lay the foundation for thinking about these concepts and are points of departure for the development of the field. In addition, they provide us with resources that help us to make sense of social life, whether it is what we see around us or what is in the news.

I do not, then, go into the ways that writers have elaborated and extended things such as the idea of the gift or of class or the development of mass manufacturing. Naturally, this does not do justice to the breadth of work on those concepts and approaches, but if I am successful it will give readers a basis that will help them to recognize and understand those elaborations and extensions.