Money and the Morality of Exchange

by Jonathan P. Parry, Maurice Bloch (Editor)

This collection is concerned with the symbolic representation of money in a range of different societies, and more specifically with the moral evaluation of monetary and commercial exchanges. It focuses on the different cultural meanings surrounding monetary transactions, emphasizing the enormous cultural variation in the way money is symbolized and how this symbolism relates to culturally constructed notions of production, consumption, circulation, and exchange.

Genres: Anthropology, Economics

276 pages, Paperback

First published November 9, 1989

Reviews

[Rasmus Tillander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aika mitään sanomaton kirja. Pääpointtina oli, että rahan asema on kulttuurista riippuvaista. Pari ihan hauskaa etnografista esimerkkiä.

Sivuhuomiona: artikkelikirjojen käyttö tenttimateriaalina pitäisi ehdottomasti kieltää.

[versarbre · Rating 4 out of 5]

A high-quality collection of papers published in 1989. The theoretical target is shared and clear -- regarding the conceptual distinction between gift and money. Various authors, esp. Parry, Fuller, and Bloch, situate that distinction in longer theoretical traditions from Aristotle to Voltaire, and, of course, re-situates Marx and Mauss etc. The ethnographic examinations are rich, solid, and wide-ranging. All papers have substantial materials to speak to the variations of cultural meanings of transaction/exchange, or how people relate to "money" differently. The shared cultural background, as the authors admit, is the "Western" moral uneasiness with money, which attitude, in other cultures, could have been much more relaxed. The collection was out in 1989. I wish someone would examine ethnographers of economic anthropology who are located in metropolitan political-economic centers (such as London) in relation to mainstream economists over the century's broader economic experiments (liberalization in Asia, Latin America, etc.) and their counter-movements (and the post-socialist problem of economy.)

[SDAntoNia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Money & the Morality of Exchange ed. J. Parry & M. Bloch
isbn 0521367743
# 286 pages City: Cambridge
# Publisher: Cambridge University Press (November 24, 1989)

--p. 64 Chapter 3 by Jonathan Parry 'On the moral perils of exchange'
--baptisim of banknotes, contrast betw. gift exch. <-Mauss: interdep. of households, vs. comm. exch. <-Marx: 'recipr. independence of transactors alienation of commodity'
-dana (gifts to Bramah priests) as poison; both for recipient and donor (both respons. for bad actions of recipient of money)
--need for cleansing of money in various cultures











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