Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: Money and the morality of exchange
- 2 Misconceiving the grain heap: a critique of the concept of the Indian jajmani system
- 3 On the moral perils of exchange
- 4 Money, men and women
- 5 Cooking money: gender and the symbolic transformation of means of exchange in a Malay fishing community
- 6 Drinking cash: the purification of money through ceremonial exchange in Fiji
- 7 The symbolism of money in Imerina
- 8 Resistance to the present by the past: mediums and money in Zimbabwe
- 9 Precious metals in the Andean moral economy
- 10 The earth and the state: the sources and meanings of money in Northern Potosí, Bolivia
- Index
4 - Money, men and women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction: Money and the morality of exchange
- 2 Misconceiving the grain heap: a critique of the concept of the Indian jajmani system
- 3 On the moral perils of exchange
- 4 Money, men and women
- 5 Cooking money: gender and the symbolic transformation of means of exchange in a Malay fishing community
- 6 Drinking cash: the purification of money through ceremonial exchange in Fiji
- 7 The symbolism of money in Imerina
- 8 Resistance to the present by the past: mediums and money in Zimbabwe
- 9 Precious metals in the Andean moral economy
- 10 The earth and the state: the sources and meanings of money in Northern Potosí, Bolivia
- Index
Summary
One of the themes running through much recent work in economic anthropology has been the utility or otherwise of a distinction between two types of exchange. A recent and succinct definition of this distinction is that given by Chris Gregory. ‘Commodity exchange’, he writes, ‘is an exchange of alienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal independence’, whilst ‘non-commodity’ or ‘gift exchange’ is an ‘exchange of inalienable things between transactors who are in a state of reciprocal dependence’ (Gregory 1982: 12). In many ways, Gregory's distinction is similar to that made by the substantivists between ‘market’ and ‘non-market’ economies, and has its roots in such nineteenthcentury distinctions as that made by Maine between ‘Status’ and ‘Contract’ or Tonnies' distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.
The problem with such a distinction, however, is that although its generality makes possible the generation of ‘grand theory’, its generality also prevents us from recognising that there are significant differences between the various phenomena lumped together under such headings as ‘the gift economy’ or ‘the profit economy’ or whatever. This has been remarked upon by a number of writers. MacCormack, for instance, writes of the ‘somewhat baffling mist of uncertainty’ (1976: 89) which surrounds such terms as ‘reciprocity’, and goes on to distinguish a number of ways in which the term ‘reciprocity’ has been used by anthropologists. Similar problems exist when one starts using the concept of ‘commodity’ or ‘commodity exchange’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Money and the Morality of Exchange , pp. 94 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989
- 13
- Cited by