Comment on Economic Anthropology

Dear reader, in the last issue we looked at economic anthropology, and the current issue contains a comment on this by the anthropologist Chris Hann. The theme of the issue is economics. In our leading article, sociologists and economists look closer at economics. One conclusion, after having looked at contemporary economics, is that economists are getting closer to sociology. Rainer Diaz-Bone interviews one of the leading members of the French school of convention , the economist Robert Salais. This school is a result of a collaboration of both sociologists and economists, and the interview, together with the text of this issue, may make the dialogue between the two disciplines easier. The book review editor, Brooke Harrington, offers a number of reviews of recent titles. To stay updated on job openings in the field, conferences and much more, please visit our website. of Economics and Political Science) will take over the edi-torship of the Newsletter. In the 2008/2009 issues we would like to keep the interdisciplinary spirit of the Newsletter and welcome in particular contributions exploring intersections between economic sociology and calculative practices, risk, regulation and law. Chris Hann reflects on the anthropology theme of the Newsletter's last issue. The excellent short survey of economic anthropology given (in the previous issue of this Newsletter) by Aspers, Darr and Kohl was nicely complemented by the interview with Keith Hart which followed. As Hart mentioned, he and I are currently working together on a couple of projects, one a collection of essays focused on the work of Karl Polanyi (to be published by Cambridge University Press) and the other a textbook for Polity Press outlining the history of economic anthropology (both certain to supersede all rival volumes noted by Aspers, Darr and Kohl!). Although my perspectives have been formed by fieldwork in socialist and postsocialist Eurasia rather than Africa and the Caribbean, collaboration with Keith Hart is very easy because we generally see eye to eye on the important issues. One of my goals at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle is to promote a countercurrent to economists' interpretations of the Second World's transition that might match the impact and elegance of Hart's theorization of the concept of the informal economy, which originated as a counter to dominant economics models of the Third World (see Hann 2006, 2007). Here my more modest goal is to use the space allotted to …