This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of speci®c products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity-chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a uni®ed and hierarchical system of value.

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It is relevant to systematize the global knowledge generated about heliconia due to its economic importance in tropical floriculture and the cut flower market. The objective was to explore the results generated in scientific research related to the cultivation of heliconias as cut flower in terms of its methodological approach, research axes, and spatial distribution in terms of the contributions by country. A bibliographic search was conducted in Scopus, Web of science and SciELO based on the keywords “heliconia” and “tropical flowers”. Thereafter, a content analysis of the documents was conducted with the Nvivo software using a priori categories in terms of methodological approach, research axes, year, countries, and cultivars or varieties. The results indicate that the scientific contributions are mostly under a quantitative approach (98.1%). The investigations mainly address productive aspects (74.5%), post-harvest aspects (16.1%), market (6.7%) while industry-used products (2.5%) are scarcely addressed. The countries that make the most contributions are: Brazil (54.5%), Colombia (15.4%) and Mexico (10.9%). The most important species are: H. psittacorum, H. bihai, H. spathocircinata, H. rostrata and H. wagneriana. These results suggest conducting research to identify problems from the physiological, environmental, productive, and economic processes, as well as considering the strategies of farmers as a priority. This must be approached from paradigms where social actors (farmers), their development and the impacts of their social tasks on the cultivation of heliconias are considered the main axis.

Financial practices only partially entail money. People and institutions weave their economic lives intermixing pecuniary, social, cultural, geographic, moral, and emotional elements. These elements are often woven together in ways that appear erratic, or that only conform to established models in a single dimension, which leaves the analyst ill-informed concerning the workings of finance in everyday life. Fortunately, conceptual tools to explore the interaction of the multiple dimensions involved are on the rise. In this effort, it is critical to explore such dimensions in motion. People act in particular social milieus, push distinct fundamentals, exclude others, do their best to meet specific goals, and prioritize or overlook certain issues. Such actions are framed in particular exchange “languages,” wherein measures of equivalence are interpreted according to set significations. This brings up the notion of currencies, not only those represented in dollars, pesos, or euros, but also those portraying values in social, symbolic, and/or cultural terms. Currencies flow within specific circuits, involving different means of equivalence that create diverse normative and moral frameworks. Multiple currencies coexist and interplay in everyday life, and people and institutions are obliged to juggle in order to make do. The allusion to juggling of currencies implies that there are a number of different economic and livelihood circuits that people operate in. Some of these circuits involve religion, gender, identity, family, and markets, all of which operate with distinct criteria. Others involve hard cash, or perhaps social and symbolic assets. The act of keeping these multiple circuits in motion at the same time is the juggling of currencies. Juggling currencies is key to success, however that success might be depicted. Placing the lens on borderlines and trans-border crossings is revealing, particularly when the aim is to explore monetary practices and economic lives. It is here that discontinuities, conflicts, and dilemmas become evident. People who are obliged to operate in two officially sanctioned monetary currencies, for example, need to be au fait with different normative frameworks and schemes of value equivalences wherein diverse social categories, expectations, and moralities are mobilized. Juggling is the name of the game.

En este artículo se analizan los dispositivos financieros a los que recurren los pobladores rurales en el occidente de México para sostener sus – generalmente precarias – economías familiares. Con base en información etnográfica sobre la interacción con tenderos se discuten distintos tipos de deuda, ahorro y préstamo, enfatizando la importancia del espacio simbólico y social que se genera en torno a estas transacciones. El argumento central es que los dineros se transforman para adecuarse a una variedad de valores y relaciones sociales y que, en estos procesos, la atribución de identidad juega un papel importante.