This article explores the challenge of how to make sense of ethnographic moments, which are saturated with qualities of immediacy, abruptness, and the faltering of subjective expectations. It approaches the problem through the theoretical lens of nominalism versus realism and, drawing on Marx's inquiries into value formation and Peirce's semiotic logic, develops an approach predicated on discerning a three-way recursively embedded relationship among `the potential', `the actual' and `the general'. The article argues that such a modality — a `realist semiotic of value' — illuminates a great deal more than is otherwise visible and does so in a way that has important political and ethical implications for the subjects involved.
Apel, Karl-Otto (1981[1967]) Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism (trans. John Michael Krois). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
2.
Appadurai, Arjun (1990) `Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy', Theory, Culture & Society7(2/3): 295—310.
3.
Avineri, Schlomo (1990[1968]) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4.
Bernstein, Richard J. (1999 [1971]) Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
5.
Bhaskar, Roy (1994) Plato etc.: The Problems of Philosophy and their Resolution. London and New York : Verso.
6.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) `Two Histories of Capital', in Dipesh Chakrabarty Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference , pp. 47—96. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
Connor, Melissa, Tara Gruzen, Larry Sachs, Jude SunderlandDarcy Tromanhauser and Shubham Chaudhuri (1999) `The Case for Corporate Responsibility: Paying a Living Wage to Maquila Workers in El Salvador', in Program in Economic and Political Development. New York : School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.
8.
Dijkstra, Geske and Carlos Rivera Alemán (1993) `The Export Processing Free Zone of San Bartolo in El Salvador', in Ruud Buitelaar and Pitou Van Dijck (eds) Latin America's New Insertion in the World Economy: Towards Systemic Competitiveness in Small Economies, pp. 95—104. New York : St Martin's Press and London: Macmillan Press.
9.
Elson, Diane (1979) `Value Theory of Labor', in Diane Elson (ed.) Value: The Representation of Labour in Capitalism, pp. 115—79. London: CSE Books.
10.
Fann, K.T. (1970) Peirce's Theory of Abduction. The Hague: Martins Nijhoff.
11.
Gibson-Graham, J.K., Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolf, eds (2001) Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism . Durham, NC: Duke University Press .
12.
Goudge, Thomas A. (1950) The Thought of C.S. Peirce. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
13.
Harvey, David (1998) `The Body as an Accumulation Strategy', Society and Space16(4): 401—21. See also a version that appears as Chapter 6 in David Harvey (2000) Spaces of Hope, pp. 97—116. Berkeley : University of California Press.
14.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm F. (1975) `Logic of Hegel', in Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (trans. William Wallace). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
15.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1952[1821]) Philosophy of Right (trans. T.M. Knox). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
16.
Knockelman, Paul (2006) `A Semiotic Ontology of the Commodity', Journal of Linguistic Anthropology16(1): 76—102.
17.
McClellan, David (1977) Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
18.
Marx, K. (1964[1844]) The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (edited with an Introduction by Dirk J. Strunk. Trans. Martin Milligan). New York: International Publishers Co.
19.
Megill, Kenneth (1967) `Peirce and Marx', Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society3(2) fall: 55—65.
20.
Montes Mozo, Segundo and Juan José García Vasquez (1988) Salvadoran Migration to the United States: An Exploratory Study. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
21.
National Labor Committee (2001) Worker Rights in the Americas? A Rare Inside Glimpse. New York: NLC.
22.
Negri, Antonio (1991) Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse. New York and London: Automedia/Pluto Press.
23.
Ollman, Bertell (1976[1971]) Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
24.
Ollman, Bertell (1993) Dialectical Investigations. London and New York: Routledge .
25.
Ollman, Bertell (2003) Dance of the Dialectic: Steps in Marx's Method . Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
26.
Palmié, Stephan (2007) `Genomics, Divination, “Racecraft”' , American Ethnologist34(2): 205—22.
27.
Parker, Kelly (1989) The Continuity of Peirce's Thought. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
28.
Pedersen, David (1995) `States of Memory and Desire: The Meaning of City and Nation for Transnational Migrants in Washington, DC and El Salvador', Amerikastudien/American Studies40(3).
29.
Pedersen, David (2002) `The Storm We Call Dollars: Determining Value and Belief in El Salvador and the United States', Cultural Anthropology17(3): 431—59.
30.
Peirce, C.S. (1867) New List of Categories.
31.
Rosen, Ellen (2002) `Roots of the Postwar Textile and Apparel Trade: The Reconstruction of the Asian-Pacific Rim Textile Industry', in Ellen Rosen Making Sweatshops: The Globalization of the US Apparel Industry , pp. 27—54. Berkeley: University of California Press.
32.
Sahlins, Marshall (1981) Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
33.
Sahlins, Marshall (1985) Islands of History. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
34.
Sahlins, Marshall (1991) `The Return of the Event, Again: With Reflections on the Beginnings of the Great Fijian War of 1843—1855 between the Kingdoms of Bau and Rewa', in Aletta Biersack (ed.) Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical Anthropology, pp. 37—100. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
35.
Stern, Robert (2007) `Pierce, Hegel and the Category of Secondness' , Inquiry50(2): 123—55.
36.
Weiss, Frederick G., ed. (1974) Hegel: The Essential Writings. New York: Harper & Row.
37.
Williams, Robert G. (1986) Export Agriculture and the Crisis in Central America . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
