ILCAA Joint Research Project

Comparative Ethnographical Study on the Dynamism of Debt(3) : Politics of Wealth Accumulation (jrp000308)

Keywords

• debt
• human economy
• Graeber
• accumulation

Areas

• Europe
• Sub-Saharan Africa
• Southeast Asia
• East Asia
• Oceania Pacific
• South America

Website

https://www.debtstudies.net/

About the Project

Project term: April, 2025–March, 2028

What does debt mean to human beings？This study seeks to answer this question by examining ethnographic cases from around the world, inspired by “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” of D. Graeber. During the third period, considering the current entanglement of “commercial economy” and “human economy,” the study aims to reveal the social contexts in which the specific relationships of indebting” and “indebted result in the accumulation of wealth through various ethnographic cases from Asia, Africa, and Oceania to discuss the mechanism by which the governance by state and capitalism is emerged, deconstructed, and reorganized.

Members

Coordinator

• Arihiro MINOO

ILCAA Staff

• Yukako YOSHIDA (Co-Coordinator)

Joint Researchers

• Yutaka SAKUMA (Co-Coordinator)
• Juntaro FUKADA
• Manami HAYASHI
• Eri KODA
• Keiichiro MATSUMURA
• Osamu NAKAGAWA
• Chikako NAKAYAMA
• Miki NAMBA
• Sayaka OGAWA
• Aoi OTAKE
• Takashi SAKAI
• Keiichiro SAKO
• Ayako SEKINO
• Miki YAMADA
• Matori YAMAMOTO
• Ryu YOSHIMURA

Outputs

Meetings

The 1st meeting ：Report (Japanese)

• Date/Time: Sun 6 Jul 2025 11:00-17:30
• Venue: Medium Conference Room, Administration Building
• Language: Japanese

• 11:00–11:05 Chairparson

  Greeting

  11:05–12:35 MARUYAMA Junko (Tsuda University)

  Letting Be: Sharing and Visiting among a Hunter-Gatherer Society in Botswana

  13:35–15:05 IKOMA Miki (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)

  “[Tentative Title] The Human Economy through Quantified Debt: Negotiations over Fresh Tea Leaves in a Tea-Producing Community in Myanmar”

  15:10–16:40 YAMADA Miki (ILCAA Joint Researcher, Kyoto University Ph.D. student)

  Fetishism of the Charisma in Northern Thailand: Constructing a Society through Constructing a Fetish

  16:45–17:15 All participants

  Discussion

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