This article examines how market exchanges involving cultural elements can sustain Indigenous cultural vitality. Drawing on ethnographic research among the Yawanaw & aacute; of the Brazilian Amazon, it analyzes how the monetized circulation of songs, images, and healing rituals contributes to the revival of practices, the consolidation of alliances, and the assertion of collective identity - while also generating tensions over access, authority, and returns. Building on Cunha's (2009) distinction between culture and 'culture', the article shows how the Yawanaw & aacute; turn market encounters into arenas of recognition in which cultural difference is objectified, exchanged, and revalued. Three mechanisms are identified: the material effects of producing and circulating 'culture' which reactivate knowledge and support collective life; the monetary valuation of cultural elements, which reshapes internal and external judgments of worth; and the conversion of market exchanges into platforms for alliance-making, enabling the Yawanaw & aacute; to transform transactions into durable ties mobilized for political and economic support. Engaging debates on commodification, the article argues that the Yawanaw & aacute; indigenize market forms, using them not as instruments of assimilation but as resources for autonomy and collective projects. In doing so, they show how markets can become contingent sites for the renewal of belonging and the reassertion of difference.
This paper examines the social imaginary of ESG investing. I first contextualize ESG in the shifting state-market dynamics and changing flows of capital brought about by the rise of asset manager capitalism, household financialization and the de-risking state. I then draw on the concept of the 'financial tale,' a discursive tool to motivate financial activity, to analogize the construction of the ESG imaginary to the Goliath tale. Applying critical semiotic analysis to corporate communication of ESG service providers, I lay out the three narrative themes through which the ESG Goliath tale produces meaning in line with the current political economic trajectory: the underdog, the vigilante, and the eschaton.
This article examines how independent publishers in Hong Kong sustain their work amid structural precarity, market monopolisation, and political repression. Drawing on thirty-two interviews and an inductive thematic analysis, it reconceptualises publishing as a form of creative labour defined less by industrial boundaries than by the continuous reconfiguration of skills, relationships, and infrastructures. The study identifies three logics of adaptation - translation, embedding, and extension - through which publishers reorganise their expertise under constraint. Translation involves the lateral movement of editorial and curatorial skills into adjacent sectors such as consultancy and communication. Embedding anchors publishing within pedagogical and artistic ecologies, transforming it into a socially engaged and community-oriented practice. Extension reclaims control over circulation through self-managed retail and distribution networks that assert autonomy while exposing new vulnerabilities. Together, these logics illuminate skills reassemblage - captured in the Cantonese term zap saang ((sic)(sic)), 'to pick up life' - as an ongoing process of recombining what one knows and can do amid uncertainty. Far from romanticising resilience, the article argues that zap saang articulates a situated ethics of adaptability that emerges when infrastructures of stability collapse, offering a vocabulary for understanding how cultural workers persist within - and through - precarity.
