This volume is a synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber re-examines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects. He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning- making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.

交换，这个极为普遍而又普通的社会事实之所以被理解为一种文化现象，是因为交换所实现的是一种价值。本书以大量实证资料讨论了交换背后的社会文化的意义，并提出独到见解。作者认为：人们不仅处在以经济为主要内容的生产关系中，同时也处在饮食知识性财富和文化批评的生活关系中；在个人劳动向社会劳动转化的过程中，非物质交换的“生活关系”有十分重要的作用，它与生产关系相互制约，使劳动和消费得以沟通；这种“生活关系”中交换的内容，大多与人格、品质、威信等相关，它们构成了无形财产，即“文化资本”；由于文化酱是无形的，交换往往是跨时空的，所以这种交换往往是不等量、不等时、不等价的，但确实是至关重要的。