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Abstract

Conventional economic calculations view individuals as largely autonomous entities maximizing self‐interest through the acquisition of resources and positions through which to provide to others goods and services that fulfill specific needs and desires. In contrast, relational economy points to the ways the conjunction of people and things affected in these transactions generate unanticipated results and opportunities, where things and people may be used according to the identities through which they are conventionally understood but where different mutations can also occur. The objects transacted index a particular relationship between actors that is always in transition, as the implications of the transaction may ramify across different aspects of the actors' lives, enabling or constraining them in doing and thinking certain things as a function of the transaction itself.