Anthropologists have long acknowledged that ownership is a far more complex phenomenon than it seems at first. What on the surface appears to be a relationship between you and an object is actually a relationship between you, the object and everyone else. To borrow David Graeber’s example: “when one buys a car one is not really purchasing the right to use it so much as the right to prevent others from using it”.
Economic Anthropology
Beyond the sensory art of sorting fruit
Sorting fruit may be a sensory art, and it is possible to get entirely lost in the aesthetics of skilful hands and the physicality of localised knowledge. But these depictions should not come at the cost of a loss of context, and we should question why this work takes place, who largely occupies these roles, and what power they hold in these socioeconomic systems.