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- Convenors:
-
Heike Drotbohm
(University of Mainz)
Guido Sprenger (Heidelberg University)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 345
- Sessions:
- Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
Money can serve as a way for expressing social asymmetries and dependencies, but also for communicating solidarity or care. It can act as a source of vulnerability, undermining long-term relations between persons, and at the same time it can express trust within a given society.
Long Abstract:
Money can be understood as an object, a means of exchange, a commodity, a symbol or a fetish. It can serve as a way for expressing social asymmetries and dependencies, but also for communicating solidarity or care. Money can be a source of vulnerability, undermining long-term relations between persons, and at the same time it can express trust within a given society.
In recent decades, the role of money in specific exchange systems has been increasingly discussed. In particular, Bloch and Parry's (1989) distinction of long-term, 'moral' exchange and short-term exchange has been recognised as an important step in understanding the various uses of money.
What is less discussed is the risky interface between contrasting ways money is used and interpreted, and its effects on the relations between individuals or groups. How do different local or global conceptions of money clash? How are social relations depending on money conceived and worked out when different parties assign money to diverging values and moralities in the same social moment? Which kinds of moral conundrums arise when the indefinite obligations of close relations are confronted with the definite obligations of monetary economies? These questions for instance can be applied in the context of transnational migrant communities, where dependencies, pressures and moral asymmetries can be articulated by means of money (or the lack of it).
Another field is the (comparatively well-funded) anthropologist's desire to express mutuality and equality in relation to people from comparatively poor backgrounds.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 29 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
In the 1910th Dutch colonialists invented monetarism in the Alor-Pantar-Archipelago. Therefore, they destroyed the local currency, the kettledrums. Nevertheless, some drums survived as bride-price payment and were used again during the last years. What might be the reason?
Paper long abstract:
In the first half of the 20th century the Dutch colonialists invented monetarism in the Alor-Pantar-Archipelago. Therefore, they destroyed the traditional currency, the kettledrums. Some drums survived as currency, as bride-price payment. Interestingly enough, the custom was forgotten for several decades. Now it is revitalized mainly by Christians, whereas many of their Muslim relatives try to avoid the payment.
To understand why this habit was reinvented, it is important to take a closer look at the male as well as the female discourse on marriage-rules. This has to be compared to cases in point. And of course, Christian and Muslim discourse and examples have to be compared, too. Nevertheless, these comparisons cannot offer a final answer. To understand why the reinvention of bride-price payment has taken place, the discourse on the whole marriage complex has to be compared with other cases where payment initiates an alliance between families, nearby villages, and sometimes even between villages on neighbouring islands.
After the Dutch pacification of the area these peace-building customs lost their importance. Nowadays, the situation is changing again. The mobility of young people is high and often they find a partner outside their village of origin. Many fathers react by following the traditional rules hypercorrectly, and therefore, they try to pay whatever is demanded for the bride.
Bringing all named research-foci together, it might be possible to understand the changes which lead to the revitalisation of these payments when a marriage-alliance is started.
Paper short abstract:
Trends within Israeli society toward privatization, individualism and materialism have transformed the form of wedding gifts from material articles into presents of money. This evolving strategy weakens the gift's social identity and its cultural capital, but display generosity by yielding the power of the giver's taste and enabling the liberty of choice.
Paper long abstract:
Transformations in gift-giving practices at Israeli secular middle-class weddings can throw light on both contemporary Israeli society and on the known paradox embodied in the "gift". Within anthropological literature material gift-objects negate money-gifts, and are related to exchange patterns, barter, the market economy, capitalism etc. Transformation of the gift pattern from object to money is affected by processes that are moving Israeli society toward privatization, individualism and materialism. While thirty years ago, wedding gifts were material objects, today most gifts are cash money or checks, whose value is calculated in correspondence to the status of both guests and hosts: the type of relationship and degree of closeness to the married couple; the history of mutual gift-exchange between them in the past; but mostly in respect to the wedding venue, timing, and the number of guests who share a gift. Objects contain the spirit, social identity, cultural capital and taste of the giver. Money nullifies the object's social identity.
In that sense, wedding gifts can be seen as a mere entrance fee to an obligatory celebration, whose timing, menu, aesthetic character and ceremonial form is dictated by the host, but wedding gifts obey to the general moral obligation to give, and to specific and precise exchange values in the past of the giver and the receiver. Nevertheless, money gifts display generosity by forfeiting the power of the giver's taste and enabling the receiver to exercise liberty of choice.
Paper short abstract:
I propose some considerations on the meaning of money for Ukrainian migrant women working in Italy in the domestic and care sector. The analysis is based on a broad doctoral research, that has been realized both in the Ukraine and in Italy
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I investigate the meaning of money for Ukrainian migrant women, who work in the domestic and care sector in Italy. The analysis is based on a broad doctoral research on Ukrainian migratory practices realized from 2004 to 2007.
The main analytical issues that I discuss are the processes of commodification and de-commodification of social relations. In particular, I discuss two phenomena characterizing the migration process and concerning this specific issue: some forms of social exchange monetization and the remittances earmarking.
During this migration process, it is possible to observe the monetization of some kinds of social exchange previously based on a reciprocity system, named the "blat" in Russian. Thus, solidarity is replaced by individual interest and money : and money acquire a more and more important role in migrants' daily life.
Furthermore, for migrants money acquire different meanings at the material, relational, emotional and social level. Money is the reason for the departure. Indeed, the majority of migrants interviewed are breadwinner mothers, who need money in order to support their children. This is also the justification of their permanence abroad for a long time, in front of a society that blame them for betrayal. At the same time, their families get accustomed to live with a high standard life, guaranteed by remittances. Moreover, remittances are the medium through which these breadwinners mothers voice their love to their children. Finally, money is the medium to improve migrants social status, which has been eroded by the process of proletarianization embedded in migration.
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses perceptions of migrants’ economical obligations towards their family members. In Cape Verde migrants are sometimes accused of being ‘ungrateful’. The use of the concept ‘ungrateful’ shows that ideas concerning reciprocity play an important role. In a moral discourse, the migrants are seen as owing a debt to the non-migrants.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the transnational flow of money, gifts and services from the perspective of Cape Verdean non-migrants. In Cape Verde, remittances have become an institutionalized part of livelihood strategies. Nearly everyone has a close relative abroad, and between one third and two third of households receive remittances. In general, relations between migrants and non-migrants are characterized by an inherent asymmetry. The migrants and the non-migrants experience the relation in different ways, and this relation is often a source of frustration for both sides. Non-migrants in many parts of the world experience vulnerability and a need to make claims on the migrants. The character of these moral claims varies between different social contexts. In Cape Verdean transnational social space, the migrants are expected to prove that they are not ingrôt (ungrateful) to those they have left behind. The use of the concept 'ungrateful' shows that ideas concerning reciprocity play an important role. In a moral discourse, those who have left are seen as owing a debt to those who have stayed. This idea builds on the notion that close relatives are supposed to make sacrifices for each other. When somebody migrates this demand is transformed into an asymmetrical relation, in which the migrant is the giver and the non-migrant the receiver.
Paper short abstract:
In Cameroon, money redistribution is a male duty, implying an emotional dimension and power relationships within a family. These ambiguities are symbolically expressed through specific beliefs in witchcraft, showing the commitment between the emotional dimensions and power within the family.
Paper long abstract:
In Cameroon, men's social duty is to provide for the extended family by redistributing money: people have the right to ask, and the redistribution leader has the duty to give. Money shows emotional commitment with people, especially within the families, and in the relationships between men and women. Moreover, a large redistributive network shows a higher social status of the redistributor.
Nevertheless, giving money also involves a power relation. Money redistribution can be asymmetrical and, through this mechanism, leaders can submit some members of their family. On the other hand, there are many redistributors who are stressed by the continuous requests for money coming from their relatives.
These tensions are linked to different expectations of the parts involved in the money redistribution. They are also symbolically expressed through witchcraft. As Geschiere has shown, witches' networks are conceived as a sort of redistributional networks where a greedy witch-leader redistributor submits other people, mostly members of his/her own family. The most common conception is about a witch that forces members of his own family to share a meal of human flesh, and to kill other people to repay that first meal This brings to an endless number of murders; likewise, giving and taking, involved into money redistribution, are endless.
This conception of witchcraft is rooted into an unequal economical redistribution within the family and shows clearly the ambiguous link between money and the emotional dimension.
Paper short abstract:
This paper follows the heterogeneous, controversial deployments of money in the realm of encounters between foreign tourists, the ethnographer, and Cubans/jineteros (‘tourist-riders’) in Cuba, showing how these deployments contribute to shape various kinds of socialities, agencies and moralities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper follows the heterogeneous deployments of money in the realm of encounters between foreign tourist, the ethnographer, and members of the local population in Cuba, showing how these deployments become entangled and contribute to shape various kinds of socialities, agencies and moralities.
In the course of encounters between tourists and Cubans/jineteros ('tourist-riders'), money intervenes in multiple and contrasting ways in the processes that lead people to qualify their relationships as, for instance, 'economic', 'friendly', 'sexual', or 'charitable'. In this respect, money and its' deployments can help the protagonists of encounters discriminate between different kinds of socialities, agencies and moralities. But far from being always clearly defined and taken for granted, money's roles in the shaping of these relations are often contested and controversial. The value of the currencies circulating in Cuba can itself become a subject of negotiations, leading to different qualifications of money. Tensions between discourses and practices are also likely to emerge, and the ways Cubans/jineteros and tourists manage and/or manipulate these tensions, contributes to silence or foster controversies on money's roles and uses. All these various negotiations provide fertile ground for the proliferation of discourses and ideas on money, which become entangled in lively debates on the moralities of such encounters, and their characterization as mutual, asymmetrical and/or exploitative.
Following money(s) entanglements and disentanglements with, and contribution to, the qualification of different socialities, agencies and moralities, this paper highlights how relations and money constitute each other in the course of touristic encounters in this Caribbean island.
Paper short abstract:
Focusing on the case of the live-in domestic workers we can explore an interesting example of how money buys relations of care and help and how the morality involved in the payment constructs relations of reciprocity or exploitation.
Paper long abstract:
The economic dimension of domestic work has been largely explored and discussed over the last decades, arising how difficult can be to detach its economic value from the moral universe of love and reciprocity within the domestic group.
The wages earned by domestic workers give us the opportunity to explore the division between money and love that sustains the work of household reproduction. Moreover, focusing in the case of live-in domestic workers we can analyse how money is embedded in the moral universe of the family and how money constructs relations of reciprocity or exploitation. By the other side, beyond the contractual relation between the domestic workers and the family for whom they work, the wages are usually one of the main ways to hold the relation of love and care with their own families abroad –which depend of their remittances in most of the cases.
Based on a fieldwork about domestic service in Barcelona (Spain) and Montréal (Canada), together with some significant ethnographic examples, the aim of the paper is to explore the moral universe in which the monetary payment is embedded.