---
title: Economic Anthropology
description: Economic anthropology examines how human societies produce, distribute, and consume goods and services. Learners will understand the cultural, social, and historical factors that shape economic systems, trade practices, and concepts of value.
category: humanities
subcategory: anthropology
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/economic-anthropology
---

# Economic Anthropology

Economic anthropology examines how human societies produce, distribute, and consume goods and services. Learners will understand the cultural, social, and historical factors that shape economic systems, trade practices, and concepts of value.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 1 Websites

## Books

### 1. Debt: The First 5,000 Years

**Author:** David Graeber

Anthropological history arguing credit preceded coinage by millennia, tracing debt through Mesopotamian temple accounts, axial-age empires, and modern finance. Readers gain a case against the barter origin myth and a vocabulary for debt as a moral relation.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612194192?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, anthropology

### 2. The Great Transformation

**Author:** Karl Polanyi

Polanyi's 1944 account of how self-regulating markets were created by state action in nineteenth-century Britain, and how society moved to protect itself. Introduces embeddedness, fictitious commodities, and the double movement as tools for reading market history.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0241685559?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, anthropology

### 3. Limited Wants, Unlimited Means

**Author:** John Gowdy

Island Press reader collecting anthropological and economic writing on hunter-gatherer societies, including Sahlins on the original affluent society. Readers come away with evidence that scarcity is socially constructed rather than a universal economic condition.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/155963555X?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, anthropology

## Websites

### 1. econanthro.org

econanthro.org is a scholarly resource hub for Economic Anthropology, featuring research articles, teaching materials, and case studies. It also provides bibliographies, course syllabi, and links to journals, organizations, and field networks.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://econanthro.org

**Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, anthropology

---

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