Evolving Economic Anthropological Perspectives on Dis/Integration, Crises, and Post/Growth

• Applicant: Dr. Mechthild von Vacano
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573581973

Global dynamics are increasingly shaped by overlapping crises and deepening social, economic and political upheavals. These issues are at the heart of economic anthropology and form the core of our Early Career Researchers Network. As economic anthropologists, our strength lies in exploring the 'large issues' (Eriksen 2023) of the present through a variety of 'small', yet globally connected, field sites using situated fieldwork methodologies. We frame our network‘s endeavour as Wirtschaftsanthropologie Weiter Denken! in a dual sense of expanding – weiter denken as in ‘thinking more broadly’ – and advancing – weiter denken as in ‘thinking ahead’ – the subdiscipline of economic anthropology. By expansion, we mean moving beyond narrow conceptions of the economy – traditionally defined as the interplay of production, distribution, and consumption (Rössler 2005) – to include broader understandings of sustaining life (Narotzky and Besnier 2014; Bear et al. 2015). By advancement, we mean enhancing the public relevance of economic anthropology. The network’s goal is, first, to create a sustainable academic community by bringing together Early Career Researchers from German-speaking regions. The proposed members focus on empirical economic realities, transformations and crises beyond abstract indicators like GDP growth, stock market fluctuations, or employment statistics. Second, it aims to compare different contexts, regions and economic systems, and thereby produce dynamic, multi-scalar analyses combining field perspectives with social theory. This allows us to capture the plurality of economic practices and to provide empirical insights to inform alternative economic futures. Our research engages with alternative economic community practices and with diverse, non-Eurocentric visions of the good life – perspectives with potential to enrich public debates on the economic present. We pursue this research in three areas: global dis/integration; social reproduction; and post/growth futures. In doing so, we aim to fill remarkable gaps: Economic anthropology remains strikingly absent from German-language debates – both within academia, in terms of transdisciplinary exchange, and in public discourse. We seek to communicate economic anthropological research in local contexts in order to contribute meaningfully to civil society and political debates taking place right at our doorstep. Moreover, we seek to engage in interdisciplinary debates and increase our visibility in neighbouring fields where academic discourse is primarily conducted in German, including sociology and our anthropological sister discipline, Empirische Kulturwissenschaften. Our envisioned outcome of the proposed network is the publication of a new German-language compendium, a handbook on economic anthropology, which reflects the recent revival of the subdiscipline.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Verena La Mela