| Summary: | Capitalism as a world historical process intimately associated with the forces of modernity and colonialism has been widely studied by historical archaeologists from different perspectives. In spite of this, most researchers agree that the formal aspects of capitalism are frequently associated with practices and relationships that encourage the experience of certain degrees of distance, rupture, and exteriority with nature, things, and people, opening the way to objectification, commodification, and individualism. The intervention of capitalist businessmen and the socio-spatial segmentation of gathering, manufacturing, exchanging, and consuming practices sometimes leads to mediated and impersonal relationships, whereby commodities lack other non-economic values. Furthermore, differential access to commodities often emphasizes social distinction and hierarchies. Over the last decades, several researchers have insisted that -even though it induces significant changes in different societies- capitalism is not a homogenous process. The analysis of specific archaeological contexts has provided numerous examples of resistance and re-signification of capitalist practices and relationships. These examples have proven useful for discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of capitalism at different scales of analysis. Following the work of anthropologists, historical archaeologists are currently discussing the implications of "other economies" that could have existed alongside the formal aspects of capitalism. In particular, some researchers are attempting to understand a relatively unexplored aspect of these "other economies," that is to say, their intimate dimension. In contrast to formal capitalism, researchers stress that intimate economies are bound to practices and relationships that foster the experience of encounters, intimacy, and permeable frontiers among nature, people, and things. Intimate economies frequently take place in small groups having a real, perceived, or pretended confidence -such as family, ...
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