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I began my work as an economic anthropologist after nearly twenty years as an economist, holding a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from UC Berkeley. I was lured into anthropology by an interest in intra-household resource allocation, a subject on which anthropology presents an abundance of cultural variation. I then became interested in bridewealth and dowry and consequently with the nature of lineage organization as wealth-holding social entities, leading finally to a more general interest in wealth-assets and their implications for social structure and social process.
Having developed the set of necessary and sufficient conditions that must characterize any form of wealth, my current work locates the fundamental dynamic that orients the development and management of lineages, tribes and states. There is now a basis for investigating the dynamics and the evolution of social formations, using wealth as the central instrumental variable and positing the survival of wealth-holding groups as the central criterion. The establishment of a Society for Anthropological Sciences offers an encouragement to focus more directly on the evolution of social systems, together with an attempt to chart the future course of capitalist globalization.
I hope, now, to pursue a more in depth study of culture and social transformation in the context of the People Republic of China.
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