Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality,
and to see the links to virtual rooms.
Log in
- Convenors:
-
Gustav Peebles
(University of Stockholm)
Coco Kanters (Leiden University)
Daromir Rudnyckyj (University of Victoria)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Ikuno Naka
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Mode:
- Online
- Sessions:
- Thursday 18 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Short Abstract:
Our roundtable seeks to better integrate the study of monetary policy and monetary activism with a far bigger and more established field of anthropological research concerning the socio-legal conquest of time and space.
Long Abstract:
Our roundtable seeks to build on a range of anthropological studies of money in order to better integrate monetary policies and monetary "activism" into broader discussions within our discipline about structural violence, colonialism, and the disciplining of populations. In so doing, we hope to help demystify the otherwise arcane nature of both monetary policy and monetary history, but also to recognize how anthropological research can contribute to emergent global debates about how to most fairly and most efficiently organize money, while also lifting up voices, ideas, and movements that tend to be silenced by, and within, them. By attempting to dovetail these mostly separate domains of academic research, we can — for example— pry open central bank archives to discover that they are actually archives of colonialism; we can ethnographically study the trade of gold from central bankers to “preppers”; we can consider the ways in which the global movement in “complementary currencies” can serve as local reactions to hegemonic attempts to control financial time and space. After a brief round of provocations from our presenters, our roundtable will aim for presenters and audience alike to crowdsource anthropological theories and research that can best contribute to this ongoing effort to recognize the role that currency plays in the colonization of territory and time alike.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Thursday 18 July, 2024, -Elizabeth Ferry (Brandeis University)
Contribution short abstract:
The material presence of gold seems to matter a lot, even in financial spaces thought of as concerned only with virtual ledgers and communicative practices. In this paper, I peruse how and why gold’s presence in central banks is staged as “really there" through reference to its physical qualities.
Contribution long abstract:
The material presence of gold seems to matter a lot, even in financial spaces that are conventionally thought of as concerned only with numbers, virtual ledgers, economic formulae, and cold hard data. Some of the most important of these institutions are banks that manage the reserves and direct the economies of nations. There is no longer a gold standard, and no currency is fully backed by gold. Yet as of July 2021, central banks held nearly one fifth of the world’s mined gold (about 18 percent) as a “reserve asset” (a financial asset held for possible use to balance payment). Even though most of what a central bank does in the 21st century has nothing to do with gold, it has become necessary over the past ten or fifteen years for banks to create credible performances of gold’s material presence. And there is a smaller puzzle within this larger one, for while central banks, especially in Europe and the United States, are charged with holding the country’s gold reserves, keeping them safe and generally hidden, in order to maintain public trust, they also have to show the gold at key moments, so that people will know it is “really there.” Its “really-there-ness” is staged in ways that foreground gold’s color, mass, luster, and other elemental properties, and links it to certain kinds of human bodies who are seen as responsible stewards—these are in general male, white and middle-aged, suggesting "staging gold" as undergirding a project of racial capitalism.
Eva van Roekel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Contribution short abstract:
Due to hyperinflation, the bolivar has almost ceased to circulate in various regions in Venezuela and people prefer foreign currencies, cryptos, and gold for economic exchange and storage. What can the rapid shift to a multi-currency economy tell us about local ideas of autonomy and self-government?
Contribution long abstract:
In the previous decade, Venezuela’s economy has witnessed a mind-boggling hyperinflation. A mixture of state negligence in the oil industry, bad economic policy, corruption, declining oil prices, and US and EU economic sanctions are said to be the causative agents. Although inflation was not uncommon in the previous decades, this exceptional loss of value of the bolívar, the national currency, has caused various unintended processes in people’s everyday lives. The country has entirely lost its monetary unity. Aside from barter, Venezuelans now use a different combination of US dollars, Brazilian reais, Colombian pesos, Euros, cryptocurrencies, and gold that have become the principal forms of economic exchange and storage. What can the rapid shift to a multi-currency economy tell us about local ideas of autonomy and self-government? In this roundtable, I will particularly focus on the lived experiences of ‘ordinary’ Venezuelans in in the border town of Santa Elena de Uairén near Brazil. In this Amazonian region the bolivar has almost ceased to circulate, and the multicurrency economy largely runs on gold and foreign currencies. Yet, inflation still marks the rhythm of everyday life, as foreign currencies have been ‘infected’ by local inflationary processes and international sanctions. Moreover, in what way does the smuggling of food and fuel, next to gold, constitute the changing values of the different currencies that sustain their regional economy? Often operating in between the licit and illicit, I will also include personal experiences of dealing with hyperinflation, including the role of digital transfers and barter practices.
Steffen Dalsgaard (IT University of Copenhagen)
Contribution short abstract:
"Carbon" in the form of emission permits or credits displays several functions that allow us to compare it to actual currencies. It represents and compares a vast multiplicity of actions, and it both temporalises and territorialises value. Yet what is traded is often criticised for not existing.
Contribution long abstract:
By putting into a place a market regime to govern greenhouse gas emissions, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol in practice created a virtual currency representing human impacts on the climate. Carbon credits or permits nominally represent the global warming potential of 1 ton of carbon dioxide equivalent, and they function as a standard of value for covering and comparing a vast multiplicity of different actions and events under one value form. This "currency" – while materialised in various digital formats including blockchain tokens – has thus come to affect how many states and corporations relate to natural resources as well as to each other. Carbon's regime of accounting reaches both back into time (accumulated emissions, climate debt) as much as into the future (goals and targets for emission reductions), and it territorialises the value of carbon in differentiated landscapes as much as it points to the uneven distribution of climate responsibility held by different nation-states across the North-South divide. While potentially putting a value on every human action in relation to its climate impact, it simultaneously faces accusations that its accounting often cannot guarantee in practice the emission reductions it claims to cover. While carbon is thus the "currency" that values everything while putting a price on nothing, it still has an enormous (colonising and disciplining?) impact on global debates of climate value.
Wesam Hassan (University of Oxford)
Contribution short abstract:
This paper draws on ethnographic research in Turkey in 2021-2022 to examine the rise of cryptocurrency trading at times of crisis.it argues that the transition from material forms of money (such as gold and cash) to digital forms represents a shift in the perception of the materiality of money.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper draws on ethnographic research in Turkey in 2021-2022 to examine the rise of cryptocurrency trading at times of crisis. it argues that the transition from material forms of money (such as gold and cash) to digital forms represents a shift in the perception of the materiality of money between the people while still being driven by the same ideals, coinciding with technological advancements. Money inherently involves accumulation and circulation, and the moral economy of money relies on these hierarchies, whether they are established or perceived. Digital technologies, such as smartphone apps and social media platforms like Telegram and Instagram, have facilitated the social networks required for the circulation of money through speculative activities. However, they have not eliminated the fact that wealthier individuals tend to accumulate even more wealth. Instead, they have altered the means by which people participate in economic and financial circulation through virtual space. Additionally, social media has become an integral part of engaging in speculative activities like cryptocurrency trading, including social media influencers, recognized as such by their followers who share tips and insights on how to speculate. Building credibility in these speculative markets is heavily dependent on amassing a large number of followers, which, in turn, enhances an influencer's reputation and influences participation in the speculative activity.