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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.orqocs

>

Where these data come from
Sketch for a theory of the thermo-economic embedding of societal phenomena : from an empirical investigation of alcohol consumption of Han Chinese to an epistemological revival of social anthropology

Abstract

This work is based on an investigation commissioned by a cognac manufacturer. Heavily hit by the anti-corruption campaign launched by Chinese top leaders at the end of 2012, this manufacturer was seeking to develop a cognac product dedicated to the Sinophone (Chinese, Singaporean and Taiwanese) market of nightclubs and bars. Using an approach that subjects the marketing problem to the ethnographic method, we first performed an ethnography of the alcohol consumption of young Sinophone people in nightclubs and bars. This investigation was then supplemented by another one on the consumption of alcohol by the Chinese in general. The inductive method which we have employed has allowed us to use these ethnographic materials as a generator of research questions which we had not expected. Thus, apart from the descriptive part that synthesises the different modes of alcohol consumption that we have observed, this thesis is also composed of another theoretical part. On the basis of the questions raised by the first descriptive part, this theoretical part aims at sketching a theory of the “economic” embedding of the “social”, which runs counter to the sociologist trends characterising the postwar anthropology. In order to break with both the evolutionist and anti-evolutionist excesses of anthropological history, this thesis consists, among other things, in a revision of the monetary theory, the function of which would be to account for the geopolitical synergy between the “one-party China” and the “multi-party West” at present.

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