Unequal exchange revolves around the labor and consumption of wealth

Author: Luo Hongguang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2000-04-01
Features: Exchange, this extremely common and ordinary social fact, is understood as a cultural phenomenon because exchange realizes a value. This book discusses the sociocultural significance behind exchange with a wealth of empirical evidence and proposes original insights. The author argues that: people are not only engaged in production relations primarily economic but also in life relationships related to food, knowledge, wealth, and cultural criticism. During the process of transforming individual labor into social labor, non-material exchange, or "life relationships," plays a crucial role. It interacts with production relations, facilitating the communication between labor and consumption. The content of exchange in this "life relationship" is mostly related to personality, quality, and prestige, forming intangible assets, i.e., "cultural capital." Since cultural capital is intangible, exchange is often across time and space, making it often unequal in quantity, timing, and value, but it is indeed vital.