What happens to authenticity in the age of global markets? Rather than enforce such sharp dichotomies as 'authentic/inauthentic' (object) or 'exploited/ not-exploited' (artisan), this article recognizes that the notion of authenticity evolves and gains strength through a process of differentiation that largely relies on the social situations that the artisans, the sellers and the buyers inhabit. This article documents how the Thai artisans of the Hang Dong district have diversified their notions of authenticity in producing and marketing their ethnic and tourist arts. Handicraft artisans and entrepreneurs sometimes create multiple meanings of authenticity to accommodate, modify, and at times resist, the effects of globalization on local culture and local economic life. These different understandings of authenticity initially direct the course of production and exchange; but new, sometimes unexpected, understandings emerge in the course of action. The four social sources of authenticity are reactive identity, reluctant engagement, complicit appropriation, and transcendental values. Each source has a different effect on how much local control artisans exert in production and exchange and how long traditional motifs and production processes endure in the commercial market for crafts.
This article extends both Viviana Zelizer's discussion of the social meaning of money and Charles Smith's proposal that pricing is a definitional practice to the under-theorized realm of the social meanings generated in the pricing system. Individuals are attributed with calculating or not calculating whether an object or service is "worth" its price, but these attributions differ according to the individual's social location as being near to or far from a societal reference point rather than by the inherent qualities of the object or service purchased. Prices offer seemingly objective (quantitative) proof of the individual's "logic of appropriateness"-in other words, people like that pay prices such as those. This article sketches a preliminary but nonexhaustive typology of the social characterizations of individuals within the pricing system; these ideal types-the fool, the faithful, the frugal, and the frivolous-and their components offer a systematic approach to understanding prices as embedded in and constituents of social meaning systems.
This article extends (but goes beyond) Zelier's original concept of relational earmarking, where individuals engaged in dynamic forms of relational work categorize their spending and develop practices of resource allocation by virtue of the relationships being managed. This article pushes for a performative understanding of accounting practices by elaborating a theory of relational accounting based on the outlines proposed by Zelizer. Relational accounting begins (i) upstream where identifiable codes and structured meaning systems shape the set of options, non-options and their sense of being possible for the person engaged in action. Moral considerations embedded in these codes affect the geometric shape of the individual's decision tree, nearly collapsing some decision branches. (ii) In mid-stream there are meaningful, ritually prescribed occasions altering accounting priorities. And (iii) downstream people are engaged in relational work where the meanings of their relationships function performatively. Deals make more or less sense by virtue of the types of relationships being managed and the meanings of the relational sites where monetary evaluations take place. Identifiable third parties sanction these relational performances. The article concludes with concrete examples of relational accounting for luxury transactions and for high cost debt.
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