Keywords

group, redistribution, solidarity

Objectives

This joint research project illuminates the diversity of relationships between group and redistribution, with a special focus on how redistribution contributes to group formation. In Polanyi, redistribution is formally defined as a particular type of economic activity: a systematic movement of goods towards an administrative center and their redistribution by the authorities at the center. Rituals, celebrations, taxes, and household economies are all described using the same formula. Society’s existence is assumed and stress is placed on the role of redistribution as a mechanism of social control. In contrast, our joint research project does not assume that society’s existence is a self-evident reality. Instead, it examines the role of redistribution in group formation. As illustrated by the case of intellectual historian Francoise Ewald’s account of social insurance in France, participation in redistribution can foster a feeling of solidarity. Another important question is how participation in redistribution defines the boundaries of the group. From this perspective, we compare case studies from around the world to investigate how specific processes of redistribution are related to the distinctive features of groups.

Research Results

The most significant result of this joint research project was that we were able to identify a new direction of focusing on the process and effect of “gathering and distributing assets and services” aside from the already established systematic redistribution, at the same time referring to the research trends of economic anthropology in recent years, which have studied gift and market. The new direction provides at least two merits as explained below.
Firstly, the focus on the process enables analysis of the relationships between multiple redistributions and multiple groups emerging therefrom, thereby providing ideal cases to study one-to-many relationships. Moreover, the implementation of multiple redistributions, while inheriting Karl Polanyi’s intellectual legacy, expands the scope of analysis to include not only the relationships between redistributions but also the relationships with different types of processes, such as market and gift, thereby leading to the analysis of human economic activities that combine redistribution, market, and gift.
Secondly, redistribution is a process that materializes "the social" on the level of concrete action. "The social" has been the subject of heated discussions in the domains of political philosophy and sociology lately, and has been criticized as a form of governance as opposed to "the political" (equivalent to liberty), based on the discussions by Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. However, in recent years, "the social" has also been enthusiastically advocated as a promising counterweight to atomization promoted by neo-liberalism. The focus on redistribution as a process leads to the highlighting of the said ambiguity of "the social." That is to say, "the social" or redistribution is not in itself oppressive or something that would become a safety net. Inst