ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the author experiences in and reflections on things economic in the context of teaching, research, and working within university administration, as well as with interlocutors in various locations in industry and finance. It situates recent developments in the anthropological study of economy in a longer historical context of the subfield of economic anthropology, it cannot escape the time of its writing. If everybody maximizes and the realms of material and non-material goods cannot be separated, economic anthropology must be the study of all human behavior, and that seems strange. Etymologically, economics is unique in being a nomos field, concerned with law and stewardship, rather than a logos field, concerned with pure knowledge. The paradox for anthropology is that its own truths are by nature idiographic, not nomothetic. Obviating the purity of anthropological critique also entails a bracketing of the supposed purity of economics and capitalism.
