Duran Bell and Cynthia Werner From the earliest days of the field, economic anthropologists have observed that material objects often are imbued with sacred qualities whose values can never be reduced to material necessity or monetary equivalent. In 2002, the Society for Economic Anthropology hosted a conference to reconsider these ideas in the world today. We invited Professor Maurice Godelier...

The northern Ethiopian landscape is dotted with small patches of church forests that are religious centers for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church (EOTC). These sacred groves are what remain of the once vast tropical Afromontane dry forest. Herein we review the landscape pattern of sacred groves in the Amhara region of Ethiopia, and their local scale nutrient status at two sites, Zahara and ...

In corporate spin-offs, spun-off units pursue two major objectives: separating and restructuring their business for independent operation; and retaining business continuity and minimizing operational disruptions. In trying to balance the conflicting demands of these objectives, spun-off units often turn to “transitional IT services” provided by their parents. However, the business value of the ...

There has been an upsurge of interest in moral decision making, which appears to have some distinctive properties. For example, some moral decisions are so strongly influenced by ideas about how sacred entities are to be treated, that they seem to be relatively insensitive to the costs and benefits entailed (e.g., ‘‘do not allow companies to pollute the earth for a fee, even if pollution credit...

Conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, which involves a US-led policy to impose sanctions on Iran, is perceived by each side as a preeminent challenge to its own national security and global peace. Yet, there is little scientific study or understanding of how material incentives and disincentives, such as economic sanctions, psychologically affect the targeted population and potentially influenc...