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- Convenors:
-
Sian Lazar
(University of Cambridge)
Ståle Wig (University of Oslo)
Send message to Convenors
- Chair:
-
Eva van Roekel
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
- Discussant:
-
Ståle Wig
(University of Oslo)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Mode:
- Face-to-face
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 23 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
How might we best understand the effects of inflation and currency volatility on everyday economic action? This panel explores monetary disorder as a socio-economic and cultural reality that shapes people’s lives, behaviours, and aspirations in times of crisis, both chronic and exceptional.
Long Abstract:
Amid global recession and economic and political uncertainty, inflation has become a major concern across the world. How might we understand this anthropologically as a form of ‘undoing’ of value in financial, social, and/or symbolic ways? The panel explores what happens when economic volatility has become the status quo, and how, in these everyday economies, people create new structures of economic exchange and alternative ways to store value, finding ways of ‘doing’ and ‘undoing’ amid inflationary crises both chronic and exceptional. What kinds of ad hoc economic decision-making and new strategies for survival and even profit emerge? We recognise that while ordinary people adapt to crisis, they also critically reflect on the economic and political implications of their actions and those of their governments. How does this relate to current economic and political experimentation, both left- and right-wing?
People’s economic, social, political, and cultural lives are moulded by the experience of inflation, providing fertile terrain for anthropological study. We invite papers that explore this terrain through the everyday decisions made by people as producers, consumers, small business-owners, etc., as they assess how to price their goods, invest their earnings, store value for the future, and provision for their families, amidst currency volatility and proliferation. Living with monetary disorder does not mean accepting it, so we also invite papers that document the moral, political, and economic critiques that emerge from these everyday experiences. Finally, we also invite speakers to reflect methodologically on how to conduct an ethnography of inflation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 23 July, 2024, -Douglas Holmes (Binghamton University)
Paper short abstract:
Inflation and deflation are integral to the global monetary regime by which the value of money is tethered to expectations, the bewildering realms of anticipation, expectancy, and planning that impel or impede economic action. This paper examines how inflation can be examined ethnographically.
Paper long abstract:
Inflation and deflation are anticipatory (Keynes 1936). Central banks manage the global monetary regime through a series of protocols which go by the unassuming name of ‘inflation targeting’ (Bernanke et al 1999). Built into this framework are a series of communicative experiments by which the value of money is tethered to the ephemera of expectations, the bewildering realms of anticipation, expectancy, and planning that impel or impede economic action. To understand the operation of expectations requires translating macroeconomics into an anthropological idiom revealing the role of a self-organizing public—an agentive public—whose members are not merely served by policy; they enact it (Holmes 2023).
Pursuing a technical agenda initially predicated on the behavior of abstract macroeconomic aggregates—wages, employment, prices, and output—central bankers revealed a communicative field populated by vast networks of reflexive subjects—that is you and I—whose thoughts, feelings, and actions can be made intelligible ethnographically.
Inflation targeting relies on persuasion, the ability of central bankers to craft communications—based on multiple projections of economic activity and forecasts of price changes—capable of shaping expectations and thereby animating or curtailing the propensities of individuals, households, and firms to produce, consume, borrow, and lend (Yellen 2015).
Inflationary and deflationary forces in the economy are thus managed rhetorically by means of serialized communications which underwrite the persuasive authority of the monetary regime. We, as protagonists, are fully implicated in the staging of this dramas. Our expectancy of price developments in the future are self-fulfilling (Merton 1948).
Daromir Rudnyckyj (University of Victoria)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines community currencies known as LETS. It describes how social pressure can curb inflationary tendencies. The central problem addressed in the paper is whether a sovereign authority is necessary to manage monetary systems and what alternatives to monetary sovereignty might exist.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses social movements that advocate for the creation of community currencies and in so doing seeks to deepen anthropological understanding of what money is in general. The paper describes two community currency systems. First, it considers the Comox Valley Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) which was pioneered in British Columbia, Canada in the 1980s and 1990s before widespread availability of the internet. Second, the paper discusses its contemporary online descendent, Open Money. Both systems enable network members to create currency as they need it out of the promise to repay other network members at some future point in time. In so doing, these systems operationalize the “token theory” of money and call into question the “commodity theory” on which most central bank monetary policy rests. This process does so in abstract terms rather than in empirical ones. There are no formal restrictions that prevent a member of one of these currency networks to create as much money as they want (potentially leading to inflation), yet in practice members of these networks largely avoid overpromising. The paper argues that instead of sovereign decree, the networks rely on social pressure to prevent individuals from making too many “promises to pay.” This raises the question of sovereign power in monetary systems: whether a sovereign authority is necessary to manage monetary systems and what alternatives to monetary sovereignty might exist.
Dolores Señorans (University of Cambridge) Sian Lazar (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
After the election of Milei, Argentina has become an experimental site for inflation-tackling policies. This paper explores how ordinary Argentines are adapting to this new phase of monetary disorder, and how past experiences of inflation inform everyday coping practices and political critiques.
Paper long abstract:
The election of Javier Milei, the chainsaw-wielding anarcho-libertarian, to the Presidency of Argentina, promises to cement Argentina’s status as prime experimental site for inflation-tackling policies. During his opening speech, Milei stated that in the face of the existing ‘monetary disarray’ there is no other alternative than ‘adjustment’ and ‘shock’. Full dollarisation may not ensue as promised during the election campaign, but his regime quickly devalued the official peso by 50% and is promising to cut public spending by 5 percentage points of GDP which entails severely shrinking public sector employment and services for the population. Argentina, however, has a long history of inflationary crisis which dates back to the 1970s, with its worst episode occurring in 1990 when hyperinflation broke out and an annual rate of 5 digits was recorded for the first time in history. Our paper explores the role that inflation plays in Milei’s rise to - and exercise of - political power. We ask: how are ordinary Argentines adapting to this new phase of monetary disorder? What political critiques were important during the campaign and how have they changed since? And how do past experiences of inflation, demonetisation and money pluralism, and public sector cuts inform contemporary practices and critiques? How does everyday political talk reinterpret expert theories on monetary policy? In short, we want to explore the links between vernacular monetary understandings and pragmatics and political critique and contestation.
Eva van Roekel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Paper short abstract:
Venezuela’s economy has witnessed a mind-boggling hyperinflation. The exceptional loss of value of the bolívar has caused unintended processes in people’s everyday lives. Based on fieldwork and memory, the paper explores the lived experiences and cultural meanings attached to money in times of ruin.
Paper long abstract:
In the previous decade, Venezuela’s economy has witnessed a mind-boggling hyperinflation of more than six digits. A mixture of state negligence in the oil industry, bad economic policy, corruption, declining oil prices, and economic sanctions are said to be the causative agents. Although inflation was not uncommon in the previous decades in Venezuela, this exceptional loss of value of the bolívar, the national currency, has caused various unintended processes and experiences in people’s everyday lives. The country has now entirely lost its monetary unity and in each region, Venezuelans use a different combination of US dollars, Brazilian reais, Colombian pesos, Euros, cryptocurrencies, and gold that are now the principal forms of economic exchange and storage (aside from barter). In this paper, I will explore the lived experiences and cultural and historical meanings attached to money in times of ruin. What happens when money become useless? What can the rapid shift to a multi-currency economy tell us about local ideas of autonomy and self-government? What promises and everyday frustrations do people encounter in abandoning their national currency? And finally, what underlying assessments of the authoritarian regime and personhood can we discover in these everyday multi-monetary experiences during hyperinflation? Based on current ethnographic fieldwork on the complex humanitarian crisis and long-gone memories of living in times of economic bonanza at the beginning of twenty-first century in Venezuela, I will delve into the moral, political, and economic critiques of ‘ordinary’ Venezuelans around a shared and deep-felt failure of their nation and moral personhood.
Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (University of Victoria) Melissa Gauthier (University of Victoria)
Paper short abstract:
Cuba’s consumer inflation rate increased by more than 400% in 2023. In thinking through pressure, we argue that Cuban bodies respond to inflation in a compression-oscillatory fashion, like sound waves. This paper shows how Cubans cope with a dense and complex economic system that is failing them.
Paper long abstract:
According to official statistics, Cuba’s consumer inflation rate increased by more than 400% in 2023. The price of food and other essential commodities are continuously on the rise. The black-market dictates exchange rates through internet communication technologies (ICT) such as WhatsApp, and Cubans who fled the country en masse are continuously hunting for the best deal to acquire hard currency through such ICT. Rapid inflation increase is not without its consequences. Recent fieldwork in Santiago de Cuba (2023; 2024) shows that the inflationary prices of basic consumption goods caused by the economic reforms and the responses of the black market creates a system that exacerbates social and racial disparities. Cubans deal with a lot of pressure related to money and aguantar (to endure pressure) has its limits. Cubans have lived under pressure almost permanently, or as Kapcia (2008) would argue, in a “permanent cycle of crises.” They have learned to struggle (luchar), to resolve (resolver), and to invent (inventar) ways to cope with the shortage of products and information, among other things. But how are Cubans responding to the current economic crisis? How do they respond to inflation rates? In thinking through the concept of pressure, we argue that Cuban bodies respond in a compression-oscillatory fashion, like sound waves. Yet this does not suggest that Cubans follow a model of resilience. In providing day to day examples, this paper shows some of the ways in which Cubans cope with an extremely dense and complex economic system that is failing them.
Quirin Rieder (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
Due to its unclear constitutional status, Pakistan’s region Gilgit-Baltistan has been experiencing the country’s extreme inflation through price hikes imposed by federal bureaucrats. In response, everyday acts of price mediation and refusal emerged, alongside a political critique from the periphery.
Paper long abstract:
The high inflation-rate and currency-devaluation that has been taking place in Pakistan especially over the last two years is experienced in a distinct way in the country’s North. Gilgit-Baltistan, the Pakistani part of Kashmir, is not fully recognised as a province and hence administered by the federal government while its population has no right to vote for the national-parliament. Its food and energy prices are to a large extent regulated by the federal government. In the extreme inflation disrupting livelihoods since spring 2022, most inhabitants are therefore blaming a government that they cannot even vote for. However, the impact of inflation on everyday-life in Gilgit-Baltistan also generates what I will call ‘political critique from the periphery’ that carries the potential for unexpected coalitions and shared political subjectivities – enacted through large-scale protests, social-media debates, cooperative-banking, and refusals to adapt one’s prices to a not self-inflicted crisis.
Based on 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork in a small-town in Gilgit-Baltistan, Northern Pakistan, during the country’s constitutional and economic crisis in 2022-23, the paper investigates how people relate everyday negotiations about tea prices and essential foodstuffs to macro-structural discussions around potential IMF-bailouts, loans by the Chinese state, and the spectre of national-default. It argues that against the backdrop of the history of this marginalised yet treasured region (Ali 2019), the soaring inflation reproduces centre-periphery dynamics, while it also increases political consciousness and claims towards more independence of the Pakistani federal-state.
Ali, Nosheen. 2019. “Delusional States: Feeling Rule and Development in Pakistan’s Northern-Frontier”. Cambridge-Univ-Press.
Alexandrine Royer (Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how the economic character of inflation makes it a safe 'apolitical' tool by which local middle-class and foreign residents in Kigali, Rwanda can comfortably comment and share frustrations on government effectiveness, growing inequality and delayed transitions towards adulthood.
Paper long abstract:
‘In Kigali, life is expensive’ was a ubiquitous phrase encountered during my 15 months of fieldwork exploring the tech ecosystem in Rwanda. Official government figures indicate the price of food staples has increased by 35%, but residents estimate it to be much higher. This paper builds on Amri’s (2023) argument that ‘inflation-talk’, disguised as small talk, provides a discursive space to express political and economic disillusion. In Rwanda, discussing politics is fraught with unease. Yet discussions of inflation in Kigali can be part of the everyday because of its outward apolitical nature and indefinite causes. This paper showcases how inflation, couched in economic terms, is a shared instrument through which individuals across social classes comfortably voice frustrations and measure government effectiveness.
This paper further explores how rising inflation in Kigali was experienced among a range of local and foreign workers and their critiques around who gets left behind in this moment of accelerated change. Beyond political discourse, the tangible and felt effects of inflation on households (Hernandez & Luzzi 2023) were part of a longer commentary on Kigali’s push to become a technological hub and the ‘price’ of being ‘modern’. Talk on inflation and the cost of living provided a space in which commentary on class, economic disparities between successful entrepreneurs and those who struggle, global and local inequalities (including gender), purchasing power and moral judgments on wealth (Lazarus 2023) was made both understandable and permissible – and why it was becoming ‘too expensive to adult’.
Harry Pettit (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how a material infrastructure that enables the storage and movement of cash around Beirut - in the context of rapid inflation and currency devaluation - is opening up new forms of extraction and exploitation, but also new forms of resistance and survival.
Paper long abstract:
Academic scholarship is shifting towards a focus on the emergence of the cashless economy, and all the consequences this has for different groups. But Lebanon in recent years has experienced an opposite phenomenon, a sudden surge in the use of cash in the aftermath of an insolvency crisis and theft of savings which has produced a deep distrust of banks. This has led to the rapid construction of a material infrastructure that enables the storage and movement of cash around the economy and country – itself always shifting in the context of rapid inflation and currency devaluation. Focusing on the city of Beirut, I use ethnographic fieldwork to ask how this infrastructure of cash is impacting - and being shaped by - different groups: from migrant workers, petty investors, small-business owners, delivery platforms, digital wallet start-ups, and money lenders. I specifically examine how relations of power between these groups are being reconfigured through the materiality of cash. By following some of these figures on a day-to-day basis as they navigate the cash infrastructure - using both dollars and the rapidly devaluing Lebanese pound, I reveal how Beirut’s cash economy is opening up new forms of (highly transient) extraction and exploitation, but also new forms of resistance and survival.
Steffen Köhn (Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
Amidst a massive inflation surge after Cuba’s ill-timed currency unification, the crypto play-to-earn game Axie Infinity emerged as a financial lifeline, intertwining with the local economy in complex ways. It provided Cubans with economic adaptability, yet also perpetuated global inequalities.
Paper long abstract:
On January 1, 2021, the Cuban government unified the country’s two national currencies, the Cuban Peso and the dollar-pegged Peso Convertible. While this was a central promise of Raúl Castro’s reform course, it was implemented at the worst possible moment, at the height of a global economic recession, leading to an inflationary push of an estimated 500%. What emerged as an unexpected economic lifeline for many tech-savvy young Cubans was play-to-earn crypto video games such as Axie Infinity, in which players breed, battle, and trade digital pets. This game by the Vietnamese company Sky Mavis became a massive phenomenon in the Global South during the pandemic, allowing players to earn hundreds of dollars per month. Earnings were in the in-game cryptocurrency, which Cuban players then exchanged on dedicated Telegram groups for stablecoins, hard currency, or pesos they needed for everyday spending. It became entangled in the local economy in complex ways.
In these Telegram groups, new intermediaries emerged that facilitated trustworthy exchanges between crypto and fiat money between strangers for a fee. Furthermore, because the game required significant initial investments, a parallel economy emerged in which companies and individuals (often from the Global North) granted "scholarships," loaning Axies to players unable to cover the upfront costs, with the stipulation that significant portions of players’ earnings would be shared with the providers. I will explore how the game’s token carved out a space for improvised economic resilience while, at the same time, reproducing historical conditions of global inequality.