Pocket calculator: a humdrum ‘obviator’ in Papua New Guinea?

Abstract

This article examines the significance of pockets for controlling money in Highland Papua New Guinea. Contextualizing elaborate ‘systems’ for compartmentalizing monies in separate pockets, I draw upon the connection Highlanders make between transaction and skin. Pockets, I argue, offer opportunities to hide one's wealth reserves while gifting, keeping intentions opaque and leaving interlocutors guessing at the meaning of donors' speech, and forcing recipients to perceive their gift as ample. The article suggests that expectations are deliberately conventionalized in order to be exceeded, drawing parallels with Roy Wagner's notion of obviation. After characterizing Gorokan pockets and their gifting ‘logic’, I analyse how pocket‐users are themselves conventionalized as forthright or selfish in local discourse, based upon the pockets they display and where their clothes come from. Giving people clothing that includes pockets is therefore a way to regain control over their capacity to reveal wealth from their pockets.

Materiality, Symbol, and Complexity in the Anthropology of Money

“…It is piled up to impress. It is also "hidden"-under the bed or in pockets (Pickles, 2013b )-or in ostentatious ways, such as underneath a cloth hiding the hands of traders as they exchange precious goods for money, or its presence not shown but still announced in the Mercedes or the kente cloth, the cement house or the mansion. It is, as we have noted, the quintessential prop in the magician's act.…”

“…(Indeed, according to Hart [ 2009 , p. 140], money's "persuasiveness" follows from "the fl uency of its mediation between infi nite potential and fi nite determination.") Quantity as a quality of money also shapes the pragmatics of its handling, counting, storage, and movement, as well as the possibilities for its social concealment and revelation (Guyer personal communication; see also Pickles, 2013b, Strathern, 1999. " [A]ll currencies objectify quantitative measures in concrete forms," writes Weiss ( 1997 , p. 352).…”

Introduction

“…Articles in this collection build upon recent emphasis on quantity as a central aspect of money (Akin and Robbins 1999;Guyer 2004;Holbraad 2005;Maurer 2008;Pickles 2013), rather than as a side effect of its use as a measure of value and medium of exchange. These contributions focus on exchanges that involve breaking down, calculating, dividing, and recombining sums of money-reconfiguring quantitative and physical heaps-to make new quantities that are qualitatively different.…”

“…We take inspiration from anthropologists (Almeida 1990;Ascher 2002; Boellstorff and Maurer 2015;Eglash 1997;Guyer et al 2010;Mitchell 1980; Mosko and Damon 2005;Passes 2006;Peebles 2012;Saxe 2012;Urton and Llanos 1997), philosophers (Badiou 2008;Bateson 1979;Hacking 2014;Rotman 1993), science historians (Verran 2001), and sociologists (Day et al 2014;Espeland and Sauder 2007;Gerlitz and Lury 2014) who have begun to explore the theoretical boundaries of this emerging quantitative turn. This special issue argues that economic anthropology has a stake in the new quantitative frontier, not only through the study of high finance or quantitative methods with large data sets, but also through studies of diverse ethnographic and historical conceptualizations of money's qualitative quantities.Articles in this collection build upon recent emphasis on quantity as a central aspect of money (Akin and Robbins 1999;Guyer 2004;Holbraad 2005;Maurer 2008;Pickles 2013), rather than as a side effect of its use as a measure of value and medium of exchange. These contributions focus on exchanges that involve breaking down, calculating, dividing, and recombining sums of money-reconfiguring quantitative and physical heaps-to make new quantities that are qualitatively different.…”

Wage‐labour and a double separation in Papua New Guinea and beyond

“…55Pickles (: 520) discusses in another PNG context how the phrase ‘ liklik mani ’ (small [amount of] money) can be used rhetorically to demonstrate that although the amount of money given by one person to another is small, it potentially marks a large proportion of what the donor has available and should thus still be judged as generous. By this reading, the complainant here could also be attempting to stress his father's generosity at a time when the block was still being developed and money might not have been readily available.…”