Trading Culture

The trade between peoples of differinf cultures, from the ancient world to the commercial revolution.

An Expert Chronicle of the Market's Ever-Growing Role Worldwide The modern stock market, B. Mark Smith's new book makes clear, is only one component of a much broader "equity culture"-a lively and complex international market involving stocks, bonds, mutual funds; joint stock and limited liability corporations; and trading in grain, gold, diamonds, and currency. The Equity Culture is the story of how that market came about-from shipping magnates banding together in eighteenth-century India to the railroad robber barons of nineteenth-century America to currency traders such as George Soros. Smith's spirited and colorful telling makes two points especially clear: that the equity culture has always been international, with globalization as merely its current phase; and that the equity culture is often surprisingly self-adjusting, with "manias, panics, and crashes" making possible ever greater risk and innovation.

The Slave Trade and Culture in the Bight of Biafra dissects and explains the structure, dramatic expansion, and manifold effects of the slave trade in the Bight of Biafra. By showing that the rise of the Aro merchant group was the key factor in trade expansion, G. Ugo Nwokeji reinterprets why and how such large-scale commerce developed in the absence of large-scale centralized states. The result is the first study to link the structure and trajectory of the slave trade in a major exporting region to the expansion of a specific African merchant group - among other fresh insights into Atlantic Africa's involvement in the trade - and the most comprehensive treatment of Atlantic slave trade in the Bight of Biafra. The fundamental role of culture in the organization of trade is highlighted, transcending the usual economic explanations in a way that complicates traditional generalizations about work, domestic slavery, and gender in pre-colonial Africa.

Examines film and television media within the context of globalization

The way merchants trade, think about business and represent commerce in art forms define merchant culture. The world between 1500 and 1800 encompassed different merchant cultures that stood alone and in contact with others. Culture, power relations and institutions framed similarities and differences and outlined the global outcome of these exchanges.

Dobie explores the place of the colonial world in the culture of the French Enlightenment, tracing the displacement of colonial questions onto two familiar aspects of Enlightenment thought: Orientalism and fascination with Amerindian cultures.

In a series of brief vignettes the authors bring to life international trade and its actors, and also demonstrate that economic activity cannot be divorced from social and cultural contexts. In the process they make clear that the seemingly modern concept of economic globalisation has deep historical roots.

This volume emphasizes the economic aspects of art and culture, a relatively new field that poses inherent problems for economics, with its quantitative concepts and tools. Building bridges across disciplines such as management, art history, art philosophy, sociology, and law, editors Victor Ginsburgh and David Throsby assemble chapters that yield new perspectives on the supply and demand for artistic services, the contribution of the arts sector to the economy, and the roles that public policies play. With its focus on culture rather than the arts, Ginsburgh and Throsby bring new clarity and definition to this rapidly growing area. Presents coherent summaries of major research in art and culture, a field that is inherently difficult to characterize with finance tools and concepts Offers a rigorous description that avoids common problems associated with art and culture scholarship Makes details about the economics of art and culture accessible to scholars in fields outside economics