Making Things Better demonstrates how non-Western exchange practices and beliefs can redress the ills of contemporary economic systems in which our relationship to material things transforms animate elements of social life into inanimate commodities. Such processes separate objects from domains of deep meaning and release individuals from the moral relationships on which feelings of attachment, community responsibility, and a sense of place depend. Our impersonal relations to things—both our consuming and even our recycling habits—are so ingrained that we often fail to sense how i ... More

Making Things Better demonstrates how non-Western exchange practices and beliefs can redress the ills of contemporary economic systems in which our relationship to material things transforms animate elements of social life into inanimate commodities. Such processes separate objects from domains of deep meaning and release individuals from the moral relationships on which feelings of attachment, community responsibility, and a sense of place depend. Our impersonal relations to things—both our consuming and even our recycling habits—are so ingrained that we often fail to sense how important are the spiritual affiliations we are capable of creating through our local environments. Connections to things can help us nourish the moral commitments that make possible a person's sense of belonging and individual wellbeing. In Making Things Better Napier asks us to shed our unexamined assumptions about the things that surround us, using exercises and practice to assist readers in thinking differently about the way objects function in making moral meaning. Because it builds on well-documented non-Western practices, Making Things Better has implications not only for how the world's diminishing resources are managed, but for how the rights of indigenous peoples are addressed worldwide.