Economic Development, Integration, and Morality in Asia and the Americas

This 29th volume in the Research in Economic Anthropology series explores economic development, integration, and morality in economic transactions in Asia and the Americas through 14 original chapters based on ethnographic evidence collected by the authors. Under development, chapters look at underground gambling behavior in China in light of that country's current economic boom, recent retail store expansion and local socioeconomic effects in rural Mexico, a century of change in the ceramic industry of a major pottery town in Uzbekistan, marketplace vending as part of the household economy in Bolivia, and also women's economic activities as part of the household economy in Oaxaca, Mexico. As for economic integration, authors investigate monetization in the historical and archaeological records of the Angkorian Empire, transnational economic links between coffee producers in Costa Rica and Panama and concurrent socio-economic effects at the production sites, global flows of people and money in the international sex trade, implications of the "Made in China" label amidst China's economic rise, globalization, and international politics - especially in continental Asia, and the effect of in-migration and familial networks on total population in sites of heavy out-migration to the United States in Jalisco, Mexico. Finally, under the moral, chapters examine the culture of restaurant tipping in North America, the pre-school education market in northern Japan against a backdrop of scarcity of children, narrative and social pressure in a North American market environment, and the role of social capital in gender-specific credit association membership in Puebla, Mexico. Book jacket.