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Introduction: Money and the morality of exchange
Abstract
This volume deals with the way in which money is symbolically represented in a range of different cultures, from South and South-east Asia, Africa and South America. It is also concerned with the moral evaluation of monetary and commercial exchanges as against exchanges of other kinds. The essays cast radical doubt on many Western assumptions about money: that it is the acid which corrodes community, depersonalises human relationships, and reduces differences of quality to those of mere quantity; that it is the instrument of man's freedom, and so on. Rather than supporting the proposition that money produces easily specifiable changes in world view, the emphasis here is on the way in which existing world views and economic systems give rise to particular ways of representing money. But this highly relativistic conclusion is qualified once we shift the focus from money to the system of exchange as a whole. One rather general pattern that then begins to emerge is of two separate but related transactional orders, the majority of systems making some ideological space for relatively impersonal, competitive and individual acquisitive activity. This implies that even in a non-monetary economy these features are likely to exist within a certain sphere of activity, and that it is therefore misleading to attribute them to money. By so doing, a contrast within cultures is turned into a contrast between cultures, thereby reinforcing the notion that money itself has the power to transform the nature of social relationships.
... Theories of exchange within anthropological literature mainly address the divergence or commensurability of market and non-market exchanges, as well as the underlying faulty assumptions of this division (Bloch and Parry 1989;Mauss [1950Mauss [ ] 1990Parry 1986;Sahlins 1972). However, few ethnographically grounded discussions exist on the exchanges that take place between the state and its citizens-and specifically fiscal stories-despite the fact that taxes are often construed in political philosophy as the "founding economic transfer" (Roitman 2005: 27). ...
... Crucial to this population's rejection of the state's offer of a fiscal model of reciprocity was that the fact that they did not conceive of paying taxes as an act that would bring about a collective society. In other words, taxes were not imagined as an instance of what Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (1989) describe as long-term cycles of exchange that are concerned with the reproduction of the social and cosmic order. This might appear surprising, as fiscal systems generally claim to be all about the production and reproduction of particular social orders, the Bolivian one being no exception. ...
... Theories of exchange within anthropological literature mainly address the divergence or commensurability of market and non-market exchanges, as well as the underlying faulty assumptions of this division (Bloch and Parry 1989;Mauss [ ] 1990Parry 1986;. However, few ethnographically grounded discussions exist on the exchanges that take place between the state and its citizens-and specifically fiscal stories-despite the fact that taxes are often construed in political philosophy as the "founding economic transfer" (Roitman 2005: 27). ...
... Crucial to this population's rejection of the state's offer of a fiscal model of reciprocity was that the fact that they did not conceive of paying taxes as an act that would bring about a collective society. In other words, taxes were not imagined as an instance of what Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry (1989) describe as long-term cycles of exchange that are concerned with the reproduction of the social and cosmic order. This might appear surprising, as fiscal systems generally claim to be all about the production and reproduction of particular social orders, the Bolivian one being no exception. ...
Tax and taxation are conventionally understood as the embodiment of social contract. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges this truism, examining what tax might tell us about the limits of social-contract thinking. The contributors shed light on contemporary fiscal structures and public debates about the moralities, practices, and imaginaries of tax systems, using tax to explore the nature of citizenship, personal freedom, and moral and economic value. Their ethnographically grounded accounts show how taxation may be influenced by spaces of fiscal sovereignty that exist outside or alongside the state, taking various forms, from alternative religious communities to economic collectives.
... A common theme surfacing in our respective research was genuine anxiety among Irish Catholics and Buddhist Tibetans about the expansion of commoditisation and increased dominance of transactional thinking in relations between religious institutions, religious specialists (monks, lamas, clergy, bishops), and their laities. To think through these anxieties without falling back on simplistic ideas about Buddhist or Catholic values and their relation to capitalism, we borrow from the framework developed by Parry and Bloch (1996) to problematise the 'revolutionary implications' ascribed to money in Western discourse. ...
... To some extent this might reflect concerns and anxieties peculiar to the commonalities in institutional form and historical milieux of our cases. 24 Beyond those specificities, however, we have borrowed from Parry and Bloch (1996) to sketch out a more generally applicable framework for thinking about religious financing, which avoids treating religion and economy as reified categories. Religious fundraising, we suggest, can be seen as a form of practice that ideally works to articulate short-and long-term cycles of value production essential to the ongoing formation of religious institutions and communities. ...
What impacts does the transition from a land-based to predominantly cash-based economy have on the fundraising strategies of religious institutions? What new opportunities does it present and what moral debates and dilemmas does it prompt? What is at stake? This article explores these questions through examples from two very different contexts: the Irish Catholic Church in the nineteenth century and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in late twentieth century to early twenty-first century Amdo (northeast Tibet). In both cases, political and religious oppression, poverty, and crisis presaged periods of both religious resurgence and significant economic shift that had profound effects on religious funding models, as well as the debates they generated. By bringing these cases into dialogue, this article identifies common themes and patterns beyond the specificities of religious tradition and cultural milieu that usually frame analyses of religion and economy. Building on these insights, we suggest a framework for conceptualising religious fundraising that explains why it is often a site of contestation where ideas about religion and economy are (re)produced and played out, without assuming that religion and economy are separate ontological categories.
... Because of his dual notion of money, Schurtz has sometimes mistakenly been placed into the "diverse group of social scientists including Marx, Schurtz, Buecher, Weber, and Polanyi" who "argued that money as a medium of exchange arises first in the foreign trade sector" (Pryor 1977: 395). 8 In contrast, Schurtz understands money as a circulating medium that fulfills two opposing social functions depending on the location of its circulation, setting in motion a kind of permanent and productive tension between inside-and outside-money that closely corresponds to Jonathan Parry and Maurice Bloch's (1989) insight about money's dual role in the reproduction of both the "short-term" commercial transactional and the "long-term" social order. Just like the gift, money is a "total social fact" that crystallizes social contradictions in its material embodiments and movements, producing constant social change, development, and tension (Mauss [1925(Mauss [ ] 2016Balandier [1961Balandier [ ] 2018Orléan 2013;Schmidt 2014). ...
“On this subject, I only knew the excellent little book by the late Schurtz”
— Marcel Mauss, 1914, Les origines de la notion de monnaie
Heinrich Schurtz’s 1898 book has been a touchstone for economic historians, anthropologists, and philosophers interested in the nature and origins of money in various societies, including Georg Simmel, Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, and Karl Polanyi. Schurtz experimented with concepts about money, going beyond traditional economic paradigms. Drawing on an extensive range of archaeological and ethnographic sources, he reframed a theory of money to include its materiality, symbolic nature, relationship to forms of property, and its dual origin in “outside-” and “inside-money.” While not well known today, it was important to the theorization of money in the first half of the 20th century and its innovative synthesis offers galvanizing questions and insights into how value relations are formed and how currency systems are interrelated.
... Following the spread of weighing technology, however, the economy had grown too fast, and going back to traditional accounting systems would have resulted in a slump that no one wanted, not even the most traditionalist. Still, something had to be done fast, before society transformed into a rational plutocracy in which even familial ties would be quantified in pieces of metal (Bloch & Parry, 1989). ...
... However, later critics argued that this division overlooks the social relationships influencing modern economies (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 183-197;Granovetter, 1985;Appadurai, 1986;Bloch and Parry, 1989) and the limited, context-dependent roles of modern money (Zelizer, 1989;Frank, 1990;Pickles, 2020). They highlighted that modern monetary transactions are also shaped by social factors like trust and status, and different money forms (coins, paper, bank transfers) perform distinct functions (Melitz, 1970;Beckert, 2011). ...
Introduction: This paper investigates whether the introduction of coinage in
Europe fundamentally changed pre-existing monetary circulation patterns. By
analysing the statistical properties of bronze money before and after the advent
of coinage (c. 1500–27 BCE), it challenges the prevailing assumption that
coinage revolutionized the use and exchange of money. The research engages
with longstanding academic debates between competing theories, which posit
that money is either market-driven or state-imposed.
Methods: Using a combination of archaeological data and quantitative analysis,
the study examines large datasets of pre-coinage money and early coinage,
focusing on weight-based regulation and the log-normal distribution of mass
values as key indicators of monetary behaviour.
Results: The findings reveal that pre-coinage bronze money, consisting of weighed
metal fragments, circulated in a manner similar to early coinage. Both forms of
money complied with weight-based systems and exhibited log-normal distribution
patterns, reflecting structured economic behaviours. The analysis suggests that
the introduction of coinage did not lead to a fundamental transformation in how
money circulated but rather continued pre-existing patterns.
Discussion: These results challenge the assumption that state-issued coinage
marked a watershed moment in the history of monetary economies. The paper
proposes that the beginning of coinage introduced a minor technological
improvement rather than a revolutionary change in monetary circulation,
offering a new perspective on the continuity between pre-coinage and coinagebased
economies in ancient Europe.
... In classical sociological thought, for instance in the work of Karl Marx ([1864] 1932) and Georg Simmel ([1907Simmel ([ ] 1978, money economies are generally seen as conducive for impersonality, anonymity, and the nullification of individual qualities. However, later work by anthropologists has demonstrated how such understandings of money are not universal, and that money can be deeply entangled in different cultural fabrics (Parry and Bloch 1989;Carstens 1989;Lindhardt 2009;Maurer 2006). In the case of posa, money is not an impersonal or anonymous medium of exchange that renders the individual qualities of those who give it irrelevant, but instead becomes a highly personalized gift which, similar to gifts that were exchanged in the so-called archaic societies studied by Mauss, contains qualities of its giver. ...
Based on long-term ethnographic research in Tanzania, this article contributes to existing scholarship on adaptations and modifications of the so-called gospel in African contexts. I show how the Prosperity Gospel has taken shape in an environment of intense religious/spiritual/medical competition and, not least, of widespread cultural concerns with the moral legitimacy of wealth generated through alliances with spiritual forces. However, I also argue that a deeper understanding of the ways in which the Prosperity Gospel has become contextualized can be reached by moving beyond a focus on cultural concerns with wealth and paying close attention to the exuberance of meanings attributed to money in its most concrete and tangible form, coins and banknotes, as well as to the religious/ritual practices involving money that such meanings inspire. I pursue my analysis by zooming in on two areas where cultural understandings of money as exceeding its materiality and its use value are prevalent: the use of powers of witchcraft to extract money from others and the practice of bride wealth. Whereas the first has to do with understandings of material money as imbued with spiritual powers, the second can be seen as an example of a gift economy, since money given by a groom to his parents-in-law by virtue of containing parts of his soul or his essence becomes the foundation of a relationship of mutual respect between them. In the last part of the article, I show how both understandings are entangled with Prosperity teachings and inform ritual practices involving material money.
... 7 Just as Black bodies were brutally enslaved as commodified objects, liberal mechanisms for superseding such exploitation has likewise relied on an assimilative process of whitening (see also Harris 1993;Hartman, 1997). 8 For critiques of capitalism's telos as the installing of abstract money, see Chu (2010); Graeber (2011); Parry (1986); Weiner (1992). 9 Such arguments disturbingly echo modes of environmental authoritarianism in which White supremacy is coded as "green," and poor Black and Indigenous people are considered at fault for ecological devastation and climate change (see Green 2020, 110;Salas Carreño 2021, 63 ...
Drawing inspiration from new work across the fields of political ecology, plantation and abolition studies, critical Indigenous studies, and racial capitalism, this Introduction to a special issue of The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology locates extraction within an account of property as a system of racialized exploitation. Aware of the risks of a cosmopolitics that romanticizes non‐Western value systems as largely untouched by extractivism, in this Introduction and in the articles themselves, we center the question of how Indigenous communities and others navigate extractivism in places and landscapes that have been deeply impacted and partly transformed by resource mining, agrarian monoculture, and deforestation. In voicing demands not subordinated by a materialist and secular language of resource exploitation, these accounts invite a less deterministic account of “our” late capitalist present. We contend that just as extraction is not monolithic, neither are its refusals, resistances, and alternatives.
... 20 GEORGESCU-ROEGEN (1976); PRICE (1993). 21 BLOCH-PARRY (1989). I discuss and paraphrase Parry and Bloch's model, using roughly the same phrasing, in VAN BERKEL (2024), 268 and VAN BERKEL (2020), 265-267. ...
One of the core tenets of Xenophon’s economic thought is the doctrine of Proper Use: χρήματα (‘wealth’, ‘assets’ or literally ‘usables’) only really count as χρήματα if one knows how to make use (χρῆσθαι) of them (Oeconomicus I 8-10). In developing this idea Xenophon seems to come close to articulating a distinction between use value and exchange value. What tends to be overlooked in discussions of this doctrine is the underlying concept of ‘use’ itself. Present-day epistemological and ethical assumptions warp our understanding of Xenophon’s conception of ‘utility’ and ‘use’. This paper is an exercise in ‘unthinking’ these assumptions by way of the critical lens offered by ecological economics and ecocriticism. It will be argued that Xenophon’s doctrine of Proper Use is ‘ecological’ in the sense that it espouses a relationality between subject and object that is entangled, reciprocal and interdependent. The ideal oikonomos does not perceive his environment as exogenous to himself; rather, his mandate is to participate in the larger order of things.
... These long-term obligations that are not specified nor limited in time period or kind compose a central feature of a moral economy. They reflect important social values and institutions in contrast to the direct, impersonal market exchanges that in economists' reckoning typically reflect self-interest (Bloch and Parry 1989). Investing in the social networks and relationships involved in such long-term circulation of material goods and care is valuable as a way of self-protection against uncertainties (De L'Estoile 2014, S69-S71). ...
This article addresses the importance of understanding informal and customary arrangements to comprehend social security in the contemporary Indonesian context. Highlighting the work of K. von Benda-Beckmann, the focus is on how people foster circles of solidarity to deal with vulnerability, and needs for food, shelter and care, while creating their social security mixes, in which state provisions and community arrangements are combined. We argue that – since there is no welfare state capable of providing for all aspects of social security – people will depend on informal provisions that belong to the realm of moral economy. Based on both authors’ field research, the article explains how this social security mix functions in practice, with examples from the Indonesian islands of Bali and Sumba. We explore to what extent such a moral economy persists, and how moral economy arrangements for mutual support differ from state welfare, in particular from normative and relational perspectives, and how people shape articulations between the two support systems. We argue, in line with the von Benda-Beckmann approach, that it is crucial to understand social security practices as a mixture resulting from Indonesia’s economic and legal pluralism.
... It is unfortunate when such hegemony influences how anthropologists and historians interpret the evidence with which they work. Cultural anthropologists have, of course, explored heterodox economic theories of money for decades (e.g., Bloch & Parry, 1989;Graeber, 2011;Hart, 1986Hart, , 2001Maurer, 2006;Muzio & Robbins, 2017;Peebles, 2010). A recent choir of archaeologists have also engaged with heterodox theories to understand the origins and function of money in the past (e.g., Baron, 2018;Baron & Millhauser, 2021;Millhauser, 2020;Sampeck, 2021;Smith, 2004;Smith et al., 2012;Souleles, 2020;von Reden, 2010). ...
This article defines social and financial money as distinct institutions that account for different realms of value. I present a fundamental dichotomy among economists' where orthodox theory defines money as a medium of exchange whereas heterodox chartalist economists characterize it as a unit of account. I argue that (pre)historical data provides clear evidence in support of the heterodox position. The unit of account function of money is exemplified by how wampum accounted for social debts and was expanded to also serve financial functions by European colonial governments. The heterodox position is further evidenced with the metal coins that denominated Rome's financial money that transitioned to serve primarily social purposes in early Anglo‐Saxon Britain. Focusing on the accounting function of social and financial monies transcends the Polanyian special‐versus‐general‐purpose framework that often still structures archaeological practice. With this framework of money defined by what gives it value, I then evaluate recent claims that financial money was integral to the political economies of Bronze Age Europe. I conclude that the adoption of the orthodox assumption that money is primarily a medium of exchange inhibits understanding of what money is and how the political economies of ancient societies were organized.
... The temporalities of responsibility, such as might emerge in relation to past events and suffering, but also relating to the future or what has been referred to as the futurity of responsibility, have been highlighted in the work of many anthropologists (Demian et al., 2023;Puccio-Den, 2021). Following Parry and Bloch's (1989) distinction between different transactional orders, the morality of exchange always includes weighing up the short term and the long term: one relates to markets, the other to broader 'cosmic' spheres. In kinship transactions, futures may entail entangling kin materially, as in the example of South African claimants in cases around inheritance (Bolt, 2021), studies of complex post-socialist negotiations around property ownership (Verdery, 2018(Verdery, [2003), or middleclass families in India and China considering investment in apartments (Donner, 2022;Zhang, 2010). ...
This special issue presents a range of case studies that exemplify the potential of kinship for thinking about and acting in relation to various kin and non-kin others in ways that invite us to reconsider the boundaries of politics and the political. The introduction examines ethnographic research that informs the articles in the special issue and shows the ways in which tensions and continuities across relations of intimacy, family and kinship, play out in response to contemporary capitalism. The articles in the special issue demonstrate the usefulness of exploring the interface and overlaps between the political and other fields that are all too often positioned – within scholarship and public discourses – as the antithesis of the political, variously understood in terms of the private, the familial, the domestic and the sphere of kinship.
... But, despite the general conception that money is a general equivalent, inherited money can take the quality of a thing and become rich in signifi cance. Some take pride in keeping inherited money separate from their everyday budget and spend it in a way that they imagine would have pleased the deceased, some acquire an object as a tribute to the deceased, while others invest the money in assets that they associate with a long-term transactional order (Parry and Bloch 1989) and for the good of coming generations (Selmer and Holdgaard 2013). On the other hand, spending inherited money hastily, carelessly and on transient consumption, as Peter did, can act as a denial of being part of the deceased's legacy. ...
Divorce, remarriage and new partnerships create blended families with complex configurations of emotional and financial engagements. The latest reform of the Danish Inheritance Act in 2008 was an attempt to cope with the legal challenges posed by blended families with regard to inheritance. The solution was to grant the surviving spouse greater rights as well as a greater share of the estate, thus favouring the horizontal conjugal bond between current spouses. Since the surviving spouse is often not the parent of all the deceased's children, the vertical transfer of assets and heirlooms between generations is challenged. This has consequences for the way material things can generate continuities and act to reproduce kinship over time, as a way of kinning former and coming generations. This article addresses the role of inheritance and heirlooms in processes of kinning and de-kinning.
Résumé
Divorce, mariages et nouveaux partenaires créent des familles recomposes avec des configurations émotionnelles et des engagements financiers complexes. La dernière réforme de la loi danoise sur l'héritage (2008) a été une tentative de répondre aux défis légaux posés par ces familles recomposées au regard de l'héritage. La solution a été de garantir à l’époux ou l’épouse du défunt plus de droits ainsi qu'une part plus importante sur les biens immobiliers, tout en favorisant les liens conjugaux horizontaux entre les époux actuels. Comme l’époux ou l’épouse survivant n'est pas toujours le parent de tous les enfants du défunt, le transfert vertical des biens et possessions entre génération n'est pas assuré. Cela a des conséquences sur la manière dont les biens matériels assurent la continuité de la parenté et assure sa reproduction dans le temps. Cet article interroge le rôle de l'héritage et des donations dans les processus de construction de la parenté et les formes de « dé-parenté ».
... While skillfully presented, this is not especially revelatory. Iconic contributors to theorizations of transaction all make movement over time a pillar in their models (e.g., Levi-Strauss 1966;Bourdieu 1977;Bloch and Parry 1989;Strathern 1988). Much of the continued potency of these contributions comes down to the clarity and conceptual development of the dynamic in their models (wife-givers and wife-takers, habitus, dynamic exchange hierarchies, the careful recomposition of gendered imbalance). ...
People engage in transactions because they expect to bring about certain futures. This suggests replacing Marcel Mauss's three obligations of gift exchange—giving, taking, and returning—with the notion of expectations. From this perspective, three contingencies constitute gift exchange: gifts create futures that remain indeterminate; they presuppose a social whole whose boundaries are unclear; and they visibly constitute opaque persons. Reconsidering gift exchange in these terms provides a set of analytical terms, like strong and weak expectations, moral horizons of value systems, and the opacity of personhood, that can be applied to sharing and commodity trade as well. This constitutes a dynamic and expansive theory for the analysis and comparison of case studies that understands society as a shared project of expecting the future.
... 9. Aristotle's views on 'natural production' and the evils of using money to make money stem from the same domestic/public divide; only the 'natural' sphere of the household (from whence we take our word 'economy') could produce legitimate value (Bloch and Parry 1989). ...
... 10-12) the importance of recognizing that such values do interact strongly and continuously with material interest but not for this they are necessarily predatory or strictly functional to utility maximization. Nor does purposive action merely (or basically) obey the 'clean' laws of economic behaviour (Parry and Bloch 1989). In managing their existence, most ordinary Neapolitans whom I have met quietly bring together personal resources of very different kinds with a commitment to action that gives satisfaction as well as producing tangible results. ...
Η "ιερά προστασία" των συντεχνιών, των επαγγελματικών ενώσεων και των συνδικάτων στο χριστιανικό κόσμο είναι μια παράδοση που αρχίζει στο Μεσαίωνα και επιβιώνει στον 21ο αιώνα. Η παράδοση είναι συνυφασμένη με την οργάνωση και λειτουργία αυτών των ενώσεων καθορίζοντας την κοινωνική τους θέση στο ευρύτερο κοινωνικό περιβάλλον και εξελισσόμενες παράλληλα με αυτό. Έτσι, ειδικά στην Ελλάδα, διαπιστώνουμε μια πολιτιστική συνέχεια με την "Εορτή της Εικόνας", που διατηρείται από τις συντεχνίες, τα συνδικάτα και τις επαγγελματικές ενώσεις στην ιστορική τους εξέλιξη. Η «Εορτή της Εικόνας " συνέβαλε στο να διατηρήσουν οι συντεχνίες και τα επαγγελματικά συνδικάτα ένα διακριτό όσο και σημαντικό ρόλο στην κοινωνική, οικονομική και πολιτική ζωή του τόπου τους, Βοήθησε ταυτόχρονα στο να λειτουργούν ως μηχανισμοί επαγγελματικής και κοινωνικής συνοχής. Η περίπτωση της Αργολίδας μας βοηθάει στην εξέλιξη της έρευνας, η οποία παραμένει ανοιχτή σε μελλοντικούς εμπλουτισμούς με νέα στοιχεία.
The “sacred protection” of guilds, professional associations and trade unions in the Christian world is a tradition that begins in the Middle Ages and continues to 21th century. The tradition intertwined with these associations defined its social position in the wider social environment and evolved in parallel with it. We certify a cultural continuity with the “feast of the image”, maintained by the guilds, unions and professional associations, in their historical development, especially in Greece. The “feast of the image” allowed guilds and professional unions to maintain an important social, economic, political, cultural role and to function as mechanisms of professional and social cohesion. The case of Argolida will help us to proceed with the research, which remains open, and to enrich it.
La «protection sacrée» des guildes, des associations professionnelles et des syndicats dans le monde chrétien est une tradition qui commence au Moyen Âge et survit au 21e siècle. La tradition est liée à l'organisation et au fonctionnement de ces associations en définissant leur statut social dans l'environnement social plus large et en évoluant parallèlement avec celui-ci. Ainsi, en particulier en Grèce, nous constatons une continuité culturelle avec la «fête de l'icône», conservé par des guildes, des syndicats et des associations professionnelles dans leur évolution historique. La «fête de l'icône» a contribué à maintenir aux guildes et aux syndicats professionnels un rôle distinct et important dans la vie sociale, économique et politique de leur pays et, en même temps, aidant à agir en tant que mécanismes de cohésion professionnelle et sociale. Le cas de l’Argolide, nous aide au développement de la recherche, qui reste ouverte à un enrichissement futur avec de nouveaux éléments.
... 10-12) the importance of recognizing that such values do interact strongly and continuously with material interest but not for this they are necessarily predatory or strictly functional to utility maximization. Nor does purposive action merely (or basically) obey the 'clean' laws of economic behaviour (Parry and Bloch 1989). In managing their existence, most ordinary Neapolitans whom I have met quietly bring together personal resources of very different kinds with a commitment to action that gives satisfaction as well as producing tangible results. ...
... However, as many villagers noted, these owners are renting tractors not to bring mechanized farming to everyone but rather to make as much profit as possible without doing any work. The machines are still marked with their government serial numbers, a constant reminder that the tractors did not materialize in the village "honestly," which would comprise someone purchasing a new tractor who has a right to recoup their costs by renting it in the villages (Parry and Bloch 1989;Wilkis 2018;Zelizer 1996). ...
Rice was historically a “total social phenomenon” in Sierra Leone, molding rural identities through farming. Crop yields are rapidly declining, forcing change among people who once claimed to be “wealthy” from rice and now face severe food insecurity. In response to change, they can take out loans—offered by “strangers”—to continue farming rice, or they can “diversify” and farm alternative crops. Low rice yields largely condemn those who accept a loan to farming solely to pay their debts, a “poverty trap” that most cannot overcome. However, the majority of farmers in our study area accepted seed and tractor loans, arguing that rice is “the only way” to offer their children a better life through education—even as no children from the villages have procured waged jobs—as it is the only commercial crop that pays school fees. We argue that thinking in terms of fetishes offers a constructive analysis of the dissolution of total social phenomena. Devoting the next generation to the new “fetish” of education is paradoxically dependent on retaining one's commitment to the old fetish of rice, allowing the usurious stranger to profit from this paradox.
... 21 That is why, following the anthropologists Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry, short-term, individualistic economies based on profiteering and acquisition normally coexist with a long-term sphere of exchange that revolves around collective and cultural concerns and transcends the temporal frames of individual lives. 22 This long-term sphere is also known as a moral economy. 23 The two spheres are kept separate in terms of the objects circulating within them (i.e., there are things money can't buy) and linked at the same time as short-term gains can end up perpetuating the values of society at large. ...
... On one hand, the energy infrastructures I explore are premised on their promised capacity to include people rapidly and permanently in an electrifi ed world, but yet depend on slow, oft en cumulative, long-term debt relationships which are always in danger of being broken and thus reversing inclusion. On the other hand, if long-term debt relationships are seen as a stretched-out market-exchange, then we also encounter a problem of coordination between what Parry and Bloch (1989) called the short-term transactional order and the longer-term reproduction of kinship. Th e market-based hire-purchase energy infrastructure had clearly been absorbed into the Maasai kinship relations and could not be extracted as easily as Samuel had hoped. ...
Around a third of Tanzanians light their homes with solar electricity. Foreign companies are building on the popularity and availability of solar to ‘leapfrog’ the classic state led mains electricity grid infrastructure by attempting to create new off-grid infrastructural pathways. Central to such ambitions is the fostering of individual ownership of these off-grid infrastructures that builds on the idea of self-reliant energy long known to Tanzanians. Yet, such individual ownership, enacted through the hire-purchase device, is precarious, leading to an infrastructure that not only grows but contracts. As it does so, off -grid infrastructures illuminate the dependencies and tensions, including temporal ones, of other techno-social grids. These grids include both emerging digital financial infrastructures and other forms of kinship-based social organisation and property relations.
French Abstract: Aujourd’hui, environ un tiers des Tanzaniens éclairent leur maison à l’électricité solaire. Des entreprises étrangères profitent de la popularité de l’énergie solaire pour « sauter » au-delà du réseau, une infrastructure classique gérée par l’État, et construire de nouvelles infrastructures électriques hors réseau. Ces entreprises visent à encourager la propriété individuelle de ces infrastructures hors réseau, et s’appuient sur l’idée d’une énergie autonome connue depuis longtemps par les Tanzaniens. Cependant, cette propriété individuelle, mise en œuvre par le biais du système de location-vente, est précaire et conduit à une infrastructure hors réseau qui non seulement s’étend mais se contracte. Ce faisant, elle sape d’autres formes de relations de propriété, tout en liant les gens à des infrastructures financières en réseau souvent indésirables.
The paper traces the common roots of climate change and diversity loss to the phenomenon of general-purpose money, viewed as a recent addition to the biosemiotics of the planet. Money is the driver of increasing greenhouse gas emissions as well as the homogenizing processes of globalization. From an evolutionary perspective, the money sign can be understood as emerging from the human capacity for symbolism, yet it is not itself a symbol, as it can be given any meaning that its owner wishes. The appearance of money has fundamentally transformed social and human-environmental relations, coinciding with a loss of concern about morally compelling forces in nature. As Marx observed, in exemplifying how human artifacts that are contingent on social relations are perceived as powerful in themselves, money is an instance of fetishism. In serving as a veil that obscures the asymmetric global trade in embodied labor and other biophysical resources, money prices are also the condition for technological fetishism. Money is central to the social condition of modernity and the decontextualizing logic of the market, which tends to reduce both biological and cultural diversity. In contrast, Indigenous societies suggest alternatives to monetization and homogenization, prompting us to revise aspects of our modern worldview.
The textile trade between Africa and India dates back to ancient times and is rooted in India’s rich heritage of textile production. India has been a significant player in African textile markets since 3000 BCE. The recognition of indigo-dyed clothes as “nīla” traced back from wrapped mummies in Egypt nearly into archaeological excavations at sites like Ingombe-Ilede in Zambia during the 14th to 15th centuries and was renowned for its superior quality as addressed by several Arab travelers. In modern times iconic Indian textiles are known for their superior quality and dynamic designs and are identified as “Kanga,” “Kitenge,” “Bleeding Madras,” and more. This research aims to find the cross-cultural connectivity through textiles by understanding the pattern from manufacturing to exports from ancient to contemporary times. Methodologically this research relies on a combination of primary sources including travel diaries, collective data gathered from colonial records, and reinterpretations of historical works alongside contemporary scholarly literature. The findings reveal the hold of Indian textiles over African markets since ancient times and the challenges faced by Indian traders in contemporary times. This study contributes to existing knowledge by giving comprehensive information about textile complexities of spinning, weaving, dyeing, and printing techniques, which have been preserved through centuries, especially for African markets. This research aims to offer valuable insights into conservation policies and practices that are crucial for safeguarding the identity of Indian textiles within an African context.
Xenophon (ca. 430–353 BCE) was a Greek soldier and prolific author engaged in experiments with different literary genres and a member of the Socratic circle. He is well known for his leadership theory as well as his reflections on economic phenomena—thematic lines that meet in the theory of value that underlies his conception of money. This theory, which I call the “doctrine of right use,” is clear and simple: things, including money, only have value for someone who knows how to use them properly. Centering knowledge as the locus of value, the doctrine of Right Use preemptively annuls any meaningful distinction between use value and exchange value. The central opposition in Xenophon’s value theory is therefore not between use and exchange, but between possession and use. What is less self-evident are the conceptions of “use” and “utility” on which the doctrine is built. In contrast to post-Enlightenment “split ontology” notions of use as an instrumental comportment, we find an understanding of “use” in terms of an interdependence of subject and object at the heart of Xenophon’s economics and his conception of money. The right use of money, and knowing how to use it, means being attuned to the world around us.
This “Introduction” situates the chapters in the second part of Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Money on Ancient Greece. The introduction frames the part as a whole with general comments on monetization in the Ancient Greek world as well as the various relationships between money and philosophy in Greek culture. This introduction locates these general issues within the individual chapters in the part whose major themes include: money and pre-Socratic thought; the sophists; the oligarch and hoarding in Plato; Xenophon on the right use of money; the cynics; and Aristotle on the relation of slavery and inequality to money.
Trust is an invaluable asset in today's business landscape, more valuable than money itself. The relationship between trust and the success of businesses is undeniable. However, trust is constantly threatened due to various socio-economic phenomena such as inequality, polarization, financial crises, and pandemics, further eroding confidence. As the world undergoes rapid changes, building and maintaining trust within the business sector has become one of the most challenging endeavors. In this dynamic business environment, businesses must develop and maintain trust by demonstrating transparency and fostering open communication. This research seeks to comprehensively examine the intricate interplay among trust, culture, money, and business systems to gain a macro-social perspective on the pivotal role of trust within a nation's culture, ultimately contributing valuable insights to the field of business studies. By delving into the complex dynamics between these elements, it aims to provide a deeper understanding of how trust influences and shapes the economic and cultural fabric of societies. The paper assesses that a significant level of trust within countries and/or between companies could foster social cohesion, increase collaboration, and contribute to overall prosperity. The paper emphasizes the impact of trust and its representation in money, crucial for effective economic transactions and a favorable business climate, while the ethical and transparent business system plays a pivotal role in fostering trust and ultimately building resilient economies that benefit individuals and communities. As socio-economic landscapes continue to evolve, businesses must embrace trust-building as a core strategy to thrive in an increasingly competitive and uncertain world.
The transdisciplinary argument in this article is that the social and ecological unsustainability of modern, globalized capitalism ultimately derives from the design of its central artifact: what Polanyi called all- or general-purpose money. The notion of a singular measure of economic value is a peculiar cultural conception that is inherently at odds with physical reality, yet it pervades modern economic thought and practice as if it were immutable. To transcend the political impasse of economic globalization, a complementary national currency (CC) exclusively for local use could distinguish a sphere of exchange and special-purpose currency for basic needs from a global sphere of more remote exchange-values. To avoid the pitfalls and failures of earlier experiments with local currencies, such a CC would require the support of national authorities, the specified objective of sustainable consumption and production, and systematic efforts to provide citizens and entrepreneurs with ample incentives to utilize it. In combining the concept of a CC with that of a universal basic income (UBI), the reform would allow their advantages to complement each other, joining the generalized scale of UBI with the potential of politically influencing consumption patterns that is inherent in CC. An essential difference in relation to earlier experiments would be that the reach of the CC would not be defined in terms of the geographical location of retailers but in terms of the derivation, relative to the consumer, of the products and services into which it could be converted. Although no such system yet exists, this should not stop us from imagining its possibilities.
The National Institute of the Popular Solidarity Economy (IEPS) in Ecuador was created to promote an alternative form of economy—the Popular Solidarity Economy (PSE). As a precarious institute with limited funding, IEPS staff worked hard to find alternative ways to support the PSE. In this article, I examine their work through the lens of valor agregado (added value), a commonly used local term for how economic value is created. Government bureaucrats intervened primarily by creating an audience that was interested in the social aspects of the alternative economy. Because valor agregado ambiguously refers to both monetary and social value, it helped the PSE better integrate with the wider economy. With this approach, I offer a potential new path for analyzing government support for alternative economies. By refocusing our attention on key actors' understandings of value creation, anthropologists can sidestep questions of whether alternative economies have been “co‐opted” by capitalism and instead examine the necessary interfaces between these alternatives and the mainstream.
This interdisciplinary edited volume presents twelve papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing the interconnected relationship between religion and the Roman economy over the period c. 500 bc to ad 350. The connection between Roman religion and the economy has largely been ignored in work on the Roman economy, but this volume explores the many complex ways in which economic and religious thinking and activities were interwoven, from individuals to institutions. The broad geographic and chronological scope of the volume engages with a notable variety of evidence: epigraphic, archaeological, historical, papyrological, and zooarchaeological. In addition to providing case studies that draw from the rich archaeological, documentary, and epigraphic evidence, the volume also explores the different and sometimes divergent pictures offered by these sources (from discrepancies in the cost of religious buildings, to the tensions between piety and ostentatious donation). The edited collection thus bridges economic, social, and religious themes. The volume provides a view of a society in which religion had a central role in economic activity on an institutional to individual scale. The volume allows an evaluation of impact of that activity from both financial and social viewpoints, providing a new perspective on Roman religion—a perspective to which a wide range of archaeological and documentary evidence, from animal bone to coins and building costs, has contributed. As a result, this volume not only provides new information on the economy of Roman religion: it also proposes new ways of looking at existing bodies of evidence.
A condition of excess characterizes Iraqi exiles' everyday life in Jordan: excesses of waiting and anticipation, bureaucratic work, and aspirations for future benevolent governance. To grapple with this excess, they have had to develop strategies that render their lives in exile more manageable. Despite being hosted as “guests” of the Hashemite monarchy—an ambitious status evoking notions of pan‐Arab solidarity and Arab traditions of hospitality—this status does not guarantee or grant them access to substantive citizenship rights. In light of this, Iraqi exiles who arrived in Jordan following the US‐led invasion of Iraq in 2003 have often found themselves dependent on potentially injurious ways to navigate their presence. One of these strategies are relations and practices of faḍl , a form of exchange governed by a foreclosure of reciprocity and necessity of public recognition. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among what I refer to as the Iraqi exilic milieu in Jordan, this article examines how, in the absence and denial of expected forms of exchange, the circulation of stately faḍl and its cooptation by ordinary people articulate new notions and practices of valuable yet nevertheless wounding citizenship.
The 'ethical turn' in anthropology has been one of the most vibrant fields in the discipline in the past quarter-century. It has fostered new dialogue between anthropology and philosophy, psychology, and theology and seen a wealth of theoretical innovation and influential ethnographic studies. This book brings together a global team of established and emerging leaders in the field and makes the results of this fast-growing body of diverse research available in one volume. Topics covered include: the philosophical and other intellectual sources of the ethical turn; inter-disciplinary dialogues; emerging conceptualizations of core aspects of ethical agency such as freedom, responsibility, and affect; and the diverse ways in which ethical thought and practice are institutionalized in social life, both intimate and institutional. Authoritative and cutting-edge, it is essential reading for researchers and students in anthropology, philosophy, psychology and theology, and will set the agenda for future research in the field.
Is life “priceless,” or can life be bought and sold like a commodity? Anthropological theory has not yet been able to integrate incommensurable value with commensurable value. But such an integrated theory of value exists—not explicitly in theory but implicitly in everyday ethics and fictional narratives. I analyze how the movie Titanic , one of the most commercially valuable artefacts of all time, reveals a comprehensive ideology of how life and material wealth should be valued. Titanic works through key themes in economic anthropology: social inequality, class struggle, gift/commodity distinctions, the meaning of money, and inalienable possessions. Titanic demonstrates that the tension between ethical values and economic value can be resolved when short‐term individual gains are transcended by a mutuality of being that reaches beyond death. Titanic proposes that American capitalism can integrate core cultural values with economic freedom and self‐realization.
The restoration of precolonial authorities in contemporary Uganda has inspired the revival of practices constitutive of local identities. The article focuses on the role of (re)distribution in the formation of Ganda identity in the Buganda kingdom, by exploring the moral conundrums lived by workers in Kisekka Market (Kampala). The article describes two principles underpinning economic relations. First, it explores culturally approved patronage and downwards distribution which, given the pyramidal structure of society, translates simultaneously into forms of redistribution and the upward submission of subjects to a higher order (clans and kingdom). This two-way process is called ‘nested redistribution’. Second, it shows how culturally approved forms of (re)distribution conflict with individual accumulation, culturally condemned but paradoxically key to afford redistribution itself. The ethnography describes how tensions between these principles are resolved, making use of the same categories (culture, morality) that engender them in the first place.
Έλληνες μισθοφόροι, νόμισμα και ιδεολογία. Οι σκοτεινοί αιώνες υπήρξαν για τον ελληνικό πολιτισμό η αφετηρία των σημαντικότερων αλλαγών που διακρίνονται αργότερα κατά την αρχαϊκή εποχή. Στην παρούσα εργασία υπογραμμίζεται η διαφορά στον τρόπο ζωής στην Ελλάδα των σκοτεινών αιώνων και στους πιο εξελιγμένους πολιτισμούς της Εγγύς Ανατολής και της Αιγύπτου, προκειμένου να γίνει αντιληπτό πόσο αποσταθεροποιητικοί πρέπει να υπήρξαν αυτοί οι πολιτισμοί στη ζωή των Ελλήνων που έρχονταν σε επαφή μαζί τους. Ενώ οι περισσότεροι μελετητές επικεντρώνονται στους εμπόρους ως την κύρια ομάδα επαφής, εδώ δίνεται έμφαση στους Έλληνες μισθοφόρους, οι οποίοι πολέμησαν στην Αίγυπτο και σε ολόκληρη την Εγγύς Ανατολή στα τέλη των σκοτεινών αιώνων και κατά την αρχαϊκή περίοδο. Η μισθοφορική υπηρεσία, όχι μόνο εξέθεσε τους Έλληνες σε διαφορετικούς υλικούς πολιτισμούς, αλλά επίσης συνέβαλλε στην διαμόρφωση της ιδέας περί Ελληνικής «εθνικότητας». Επιπλέον, αυτές οι επαφές οδήγησαν στην συνειδητοποίηση ότι οι κληρονομικές κοινωνικές δομές που βασίζονταν στη γενιά, «πίσω στην πατρίδα», θα μπορούσαν να αλλάξουν προς όφελος εκείνων που είχαν αποκομίσει πλούτο και αυτοπεποίθηση στο εξωτερικό. Η παρούσα μελέτη ασχολείται ειδικότερα με τον πραγματικό και συμβολικό ρόλο του νομίσματος σε αυτή την πολιτισμική αφύπνιση. Όποια και αν είναι τα πραγματικά πλεονεκτήματα του νομίσματος και οποιαδήποτε η πρακτική σχέση της εισαγωγής του με τα προϋπάρχοντα νομισματικά συστήματα της Δ. Ασίας, η συμβολική του δύναμη ήταν να ενδυναμώσει τον πυρήνα του κινητού πλούτου και να αμβλύνει την εξουσία του ακίνητου, βασισμένου στη γη, πλούτου. Ήταν επίσης ένα δυναμικό σύμβολο της σχετικότητας της δύναμης και ουσιαστικά η πραγματική ρίζα της δύναμης, άσχετα με τους μύθους που υπήρχαν για να νομιμοποιούν την συνέχιση της εξουσίας από μια ελίτ. Ως νόμισμα, το χρήμα ήταν πλέον πιο ορατό και ευκολότερο να αποκτηθεί από πριν, και ως τέτοιο μπορούσε να χρησιμοποιηθεί με μεγαλύτερη ευχέρεια για την αποσταθεροποίηση των υπαρχόντων διανοητικών και εξουσιαστικών δομών μιας ελίτ. Εν κατακλείδι, η εισαγωγή του νομίσματος αποτελεί αφενός τμήμα της πολιτισμικής μεταβολής που επηρεάστηκε από την επαφή των ελλήνων μισθοφόρων με τους πολιτισμούς της Εγγύς Ανατολής και της Αιγύπτου και αφετέρου έμβλημα των πολιτισμικών συνεπειών της ελληνικής εμπειρίας που αποκτήθηκε σε εκείνες τις περιοχές.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a systemic view of large business families. In particular, we offer a useful perspective on the specific challenges confronting this type of family business (business family 3.0). We distinguish between three types of business family, including nuclear business families (business family 1.0) and more formally organized business families (business family 2.0). Both these business family types must manage the contradicting logics of the family and the organization. Because business family 3.0 often comprises several hundred shareholders who own multiple business entities, it must address additional challenges. Our findings suggest that for such families to perform effectively they must establish both formal and informal networks among often distantly related shareholders who share only weak links. The leaders of business families 3.0 must initiate, shape, and maintain such social networks; accordingly, families of this type require additional and extended theoretical perspectives regarding family businesses. Drawing on prior work in sociology, we introduce a systems theory of large-scale business families to highlight the characteristics, particularities, and challenges in this type of extended business family.
Une des conséquences les plus manifestes de la conquête des Gaules fut sans conteste le passage de la monnaie gauloise à la monnaie romaine. Jusqu'à présent, aucune étude détaillée n'y avait pourtant été consacrée. En confrontant les données numismatiques aux sources archéologiques, littéraires et épigraphiques, et en s'appuyant sur plus d'une centaine de cartes et de graphiques produits spécialement pour cette recherche, cet ouvrage propose une analyse croisée de la monétarisation et de la romanisation dans la Gaule du Nord et de l'Est. Replacée dans son contexte économique, politique et social, la monnaie éclaire l'ensemble des processus qui ont mené à l'intégration des Trois Gaules dans le monde romain, depuis l'apparition d'une économie monétaire avec les premières monnaies gauloises du IIIe s. a.C. et les traités d'alliance entre Rome et peuples gaulois au IIe s. a.C., jusqu'à la conquête césarienne et la municipalisation augustéenne qui signe l'arrêt des frappes indigènes et leur disparition complète dès le milieu du Ier s. p.C.
This article focuses on the transnational giving practices of Kammas (a dominant caste in Coastal Andhra, South India) by examining their records, standing myths and evolving iterations around the practice. While Kammas date their giving practices to the 1700s, written records trace community giving to the late colonial period, where a few elites instituted and patronized caste associations. The practice was reconstituted in the late 1990s, with many affluent Kamma professionals in the US embracing the role of community welfare organizers. In its transnational moment, expressed through the idiom of donations, horizontal giving has become one of the key embodied markers of Kamma selfhood, recursively produced as a group trait of a globally dispersed community of professionals. Despite the evolving iterations and modernizing impulses, the article argues that historically, giving for the Kammas has engendered an interiority and exteriority and is intimately tied to their collective quest for upward social mobility.
Norway's welfare system is widely admired for its success in mitigating the worst effects of post‐industrial capitalism. In the past decade, however, that system has undergone remarkable – and controversial – change, as commercial firms have been permitted to play a growing role in administering services for the unemployed. This article, based on fieldwork in Oslo during the 2015‐16 oil crisis, examines Norway's ‘unemployment business’ and the high‐stakes symbolic struggle between its advocates and opponents. It shows that making unemployment services a business not only destabilizes the unique moral economy of social democracy, predicated on the conceptual entwinement of the state and society, but also requires the maintenance of a new class of precarious workers who administer the welfare system without having its guarantees. Beyond its Norwegian concerns, this article also refines our understanding of moral economy and privatization through highlighting the strategies actors deploy to endow new economic activities with moral legitimacy.
This paper traces the path of Motif K111.1, Alleged gold-dropping animal sold, through a series of tales in which the trickster Aldar Köse works his way to wealth through ruses that exploit the norms and institutions of mobile pastoral production. Comparison of the motif across eras reveals the ways in which a trickster figure who embodied a disorderly anarchy of appetite was improbably reborn as an apostle of order.
Byzantine Studies explores every aspect of the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, which flourished from AD 330 to 1453. Its heart was the city of Constantinople, also known as Byzantium and today as Istanbul. Byzantine Studies covers a vast range of research areas: archaeology and art history; linguistics, philology, and literature in Greek and other languages; economic, social, religious, military, and environmental history; and the history of philosophical thought and spirituality.
The Hungarian Bronze Age witnessed rapid sociopolitical transformation during the 16th century BCE as large communities scattered across the landscape, most long inhabited tell-settlements were reorganized, and centuries-old cemeteries were abandoned. Historical change on this scale is often perceived as a single, momentous episode elusive in the process, but visceral and consequential in its effect. This study develops a multiscalar approach to recover unfolding sequences of actions that led to such fundamental transformation of Bronze Age society. Examining material assemblages of five cemeteries in central Hungary, I explore the ways broadening economic activities, and increasing importance and control of bronze led to changing interpersonal relations and finally to disarticulation of communities. The study integrates a series of theoretical concepts to develop a middle-range theory of mortuary practice. This approach can recover material signatures of micro-political discourse during singular funerary occasions illuminating processes behind the transformation of Bronze Age society.
Along with exploring the role of wage labor and highlighting the socio-economic effects that it has had on the garment industry workers in Bangladesh, this chapter demonstrates how life outside the factories, to a large degree, revolved around the same values and concerns that preoccupied workers when they were at work. It is claimed that the ideological world had no outside, and that all the ruptures or changes in it continuously created new social orders with open-ended possibilities to which the workers were connected. The reconfiguration of the social order is manifested by the ever-emergent category of the joggo nari, that is, the worthy woman. An analysis of these events and processes sheds light on the ongoing creation and transformation of the social in its totalization process.KeywordsBangladeshBecomingGarment kormiGarment workerIdeological world
Joggo nari
Life outside the factoryOpen-ended possibilitiesPublic and privateReady-made garment industrySocial orderTotalizationWorthy woman
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