Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia (review)

O’Hanlon, Michael

doi:10.1353/cp.2001.0063

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…In many societies, grooms have traditionally assembled bride price with the help of their relatives, who produced valuables or acquired them from their exchange networks (Köngäs Maranda, 1974;Carrier, 1993;Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993;Akin, 1999;Faugère, 2002;Goddard, 2010;Macintyre, 2011;Servy, 2020;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020;Sykes, 2020;Henry & Vávrová, 2020). They thereby indebt themselves to relatives and senior men who control the circulation of valuables such as pigs or shell money (Carrier, 1993;Pflanz-Cook, 1993;Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993Akin, 1999;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020). The couple then 'owes' these donors and must reciprocate by assisting them or sharing resources, and creditors may feel entitled to bully the wife (Köngäs Maranda, 1974;Carrier, 1993;Akin, 1999;Macintyre, 2011;Servy, 2020;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020).…”

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

“…They thereby indebt themselves to relatives and senior men who control the circulation of valuables such as pigs or shell money (Carrier, 1993;Pflanz-Cook, 1993;Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993Akin, 1999;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020). The couple then 'owes' these donors and must reciprocate by assisting them or sharing resources, and creditors may feel entitled to bully the wife (Köngäs Maranda, 1974;Carrier, 1993;Akin, 1999;Macintyre, 2011;Servy, 2020;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020). As debts are repaid, the woman's status increases (Zimmer-Tamakoshi, 1993.…”

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yet the market economy has provided young men with opportunities to build wealth through wage labour, cash cropping and business ventures (Carrier, 1993;Pflanz-Cook, 1993;Akin, 1999;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020). Successful men no longer need to indebt themselves to participate in gift exchange or assemble bride price (Carrier, 1993;Akin, 1999;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020). Some contribute more to their own bride price precisely to avoid indebting themselves to their relatives, or to protect their partners from entitlement dynamics (Macintyre, 2011;Jourdan & Labbé, 2020).…”

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

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Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality

Brandl,

Colleran

2024

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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Many institutions claim that bride price – where the groom's family transfers wealth to the bride's family at marriage – harms women. Due to its long-term engagement with communities that practice bride price, ethnography is well-placed to identify causal mechanisms at play in this issue, and there is a substantial literature on its effects. Here, we condense this literature, drawing out key causal arguments made about brideprice in various Melanesian societies. This reveals a complex, multi-causal picture: rather than being singularly harmful, bride price may involve a mixture of drawbacks and benefits, making it a double-edged sword with contested implications. Bride price may constrain women's options before and during the marriage but also serve as a safety net that enhances their status. Its effects are likely influenced by many other variables, including age, kinship networks, and residence structures. These dynamics have been transformed by conversion to Christianity, the (post-)colonial state, market integration, urbanization, and formal education, often yielding ambiguous outcomes. Rather than reducing it to a collection of datapoints, we show that ethnography can serve as a source of verbal arguments that can be used to challenge reductive narratives about sensitive issues and to formulate hypotheses for testing with quantitative data.

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Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Individualisation Of Exchangementioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality

Brandl,

Colleran

2024

Evolut. Hum. Sci.

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“…Marketplaces – like other exogenous introductions including general purpose money, business, banking systems, cash cropping, cricket and the state – have reshaped indigenous social and economic practices, but these institutions have equally been remade and reinterpreted locally (Akin and Robbins ; Carrier and Carrier ; Cox ; Curry ; Sexton ; Sharp and Busse ; Kildea and Leach 1979). They have been reconfigured in response to locally‐grounded practices and ideas about trade, exchange, sociality, gender, group relations, and emerging ideas about development (Benediktsson ; Brookfield ; Maclean ; Modjeska ; Salisbury ; Sharp ).…”

Section: Marketplaces and Competitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Haggling Highlanders: Marketplaces, Middlemen and Moral Economy in the Papua New Guinean Betel Nut Trade

Sharp

2019

Oceania

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The rise of competitive trade practices represents a significant development in Papua New Guinea's marketplaces. Overt competition and haggling, once conspicuous by their near absence, are now commonplace in the country's betel nut marketplaces, and increasingly visible in many of the large urban fresh food marketplaces. This has emerged with the rise of long‐distance and intermediary trading, and with increasing numbers of people dependent on trade for their livelihood. This paper explores moral economy, and the interactions and negotiations around price between lowland betel nut producers and highland wholesale traders as they occur in marketplaces and in rural production areas. It documents how the moral obligations that arise from trade itself, and entangled with self‐interest, tempers competition and fosters solidarity amongst traders, redirects competition onto their interactions with producers, and in doing so reinforces existing power asymmetries.

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The Devil and Florentino: Specters of Petro-Populism in Venezuela

Kappeler

2024

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Scholarship on the political economy of natural resources in the Global South has often relied on the concept of the “resource curse” to explain the negative features of extractive economies and their alleged tendency to promote rent capture at the expense of national sovereignty and development. Such theories link the behavior of social actors to an excess of “unearned income,” with little reference to the concrete forms of political and cultural mediation that reproduce this structure of growth. This article explores the role of the devil symbol in populist discourse in Venezuela and how this spectral figure comes to mediate subaltern consciousness. Tracing the origins of this image to colonialism and efforts to grasp the dynamics of the modern petrostate, the analysis shows how use of this symbol to mediate the forecast transition from a rentier to a productive economy has given workers in a state enterprise a potent set of signs to articulate opposition to unjust labor conditions. Venezuelan leaders have deployed figures drawn from local folklore to divide society into two competing power blocs. Yet, while these discourses are effective at forging coalitions and justifying specific reallocations of oil wealth, they do not obviate the tensions of this transition, and a counternarrative using these same figures has arisen in response. The article concludes with an analysis of parallels between global theories of the resource curse and local Venezuelan iterations of this discourse as well as a discussion of the role of translation in theories of culture and modernity.

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Money and Modernity: State and Local Currencies in Melanesia (review)

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality

Does bride price harm women? Using ethnography to think about causality

Haggling Highlanders: Marketplaces, Middlemen and Moral Economy in the Papua New Guinean Betel Nut Trade

The Devil and Florentino: Specters of Petro-Populism in Venezuela

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