The inalienability or uniqueness of an object sometimes parallels the categories of common and luxury items, with common items being mutable and replaceable. Yet, the classification as 'common' or 'luxury' for a given object is not discrete. It has been widely observed that the distinction between common and luxury items is contingent in space and time.

The line between luxury and everyday commodities is not only a historically shifting one, but even at any given point in time what looks like a homogeneous, bulk item of extremely limited semantic range can become very different in the course of distribution and consumption...Demand is thus neither a mechanical response to the structure and level of production nor a bottomless natural appetite. It is a complex social mechanism that mediates between short- and long-term patterns of commodity circulation (Appadurai 1986: 40-41).

Appadurai presents sugar as an example of a product with widely varying significance, and he observes that it is not merely the possession of exotic goods, but also the social significance of the knowledge surrounding the production or consumption of these goods, that carries significance. Goods that are irregularly distributed in space, portable, and that have wide consumption appeal such as sugar, salt and obsidian, were transported great distances in prehistory. For example, in the Mantaro Valley of the central Andes, Bruce Owen (2001: 280) notes that a number of metal items such as copper needles went from being wealth goods found primarily in elite contexts prior to the Inka conquest, to being utilitarian items and found with equal frequency in commoner contexts under Inka rule.

The movement of commodities has the significant effect of reinforcing relationships between social groups in the sense that the Kula ring promotes regular contact (Malinowski 1984 [1922]). However, in circumstances where the elite strive to control consumption of commodities, exchange can threaten the position of the elite. In Appadurai's perspective, both rulers and traders are the critical agents in articulating supply and demand of commodities.

The politics of demand frequently lies at the root of the tension between merchants and political elites; whereas merchants tend to be the social representatives of unfettered equivalence, new commodities, and strange tastes, political elites tend to be the custodians of restricted exchange, fixed commodity systems, and established tastes and sumptuary customs. This antagonism between "foreign" goods and local sumptuary (and therefore political) structures is probably the fundamental reason for the often remarked tendency of primitive societies to restrict trade to a limited set of commodities and to dealings with strangers rather than with kinsmen or friends. The notion that trade violates the spirit of the gift may in complex societies be only a vaguely related by-product of this more fundamental antagonism (Appadurai 1986: 33).

The suggestion that exchange promotes contact that threatens elite control results from either a relatively independent group of traders, or competing elites that utilize external contacts to advance their positions. Appadurai's point, however, is that in the realm of political finance one might expect established elites to strive to exert greater control over the values of production and exchange rather than relegate this important issue to those who traffic in long-distance goods, such as caravan drivers.

Following Polanyi, one might expect to find that in complex, premodern societies without market-based exchange there was dominance of administered trade. However, a number of scholars have observed that Polanyi (1957) appears to have ruled out precapitalist commercialism in ancient states a priori, as he claimed that there were no true markets or prices that reflected supply and demand in the ancient world, but rather equivalences in value that were set by rulers in an administered context. These "dogmatic misconceptions" (Trigger 2003: 59) appear to have caused Polanyi to distort the historical evidence as his views of administered markets in premodern states have been widely refuted (Smith 2004: 75-76;Snell 1997). Historian Philip Curtin (1984: 58) observes that even within contexts of administered control traders may have had more freedom than previously thought.

In some regional contexts, such as the prehispanic Andes, Polanyi's interaction types continue to be viable because there is little evidence of commercialization and open markets. The prevailing interpretation of prehispanic economy, for the Inka period in the central Andes at least, is "supply on command" (LaLone 1982) with elite economic domination primarily through labor mobilization. This issue will be explored in more detail in the Chapter 3, but Andeanists have largely found that Polanyi's non-commercial typology of premodern exchange suffices for analyses of prehispanic Andean economies.

Exchange promotes interaction between communities, yet Appadurai also explains that "such a tendency is always balanced by a countertendency, in all societies, to restrict, control, and channel exchange" (1986: 38). Under the rubric of "politics of value" Appadurai describes a pattern of institutional or elite control of commerce monopolizing or redirecting the flow of commodities. On this issue Graeber characterizes Appadurai's 1986 framework as "neoliberal" and describes it as follows

Appadurai leaves one with an image of commerce (self-interested, acquisitive calculation) as a universal human urge, almost a libidinal, democratic force, always trying to subvert the powers of the state, aristocratic hierarchies, or cultural elites whose role always seems to be to try to inhibit, channel, or control it. It all rather makes one wish one still had Karl Polanyi (1944) around to remind us how much state power has created the very terms of what is now considered normal commercial life (Graeber 2001: 33).

Appadurai cites examples of historic royal monopolies and sumptuary laws restricting trade items in Rhodesia and renaissance Europe support his argument (Appadurai 1986: 38). However, without the state-organized overhead of basic institutions guaranteeing peace, investment, and the protection of property, the movement of goods would involve much more danger of theft by brigands or goods could be simply confiscated by rival authorities.

Appadurai's focus on consumption is a significant contribution in that it releases anthropologists to address activities specifically related to consumption behavior, even though the neglect of production presents an incomplete picture of economy. Consumption loci are often the contexts where the strongest evidence or patterning of interaction is found. Thus, consumption is particularly useful to archaeologists who may only have evidence of changing consumption patterns, or who must infer links between production and consumption indirectly.