1. The Culture of Money &
the Morality of Exchange
Heonik Kwon
(University of Edinburgh)
2. Money in Anthropology
• Premodern versus modern society
• Stateless vs state society
• Community vs Society (F. Tonnies)
• Stone-age economics (M. Sahlins)
• Gift economy vs commodity economy
• Moneyless society vs monetary
economy
7. Two views of Kula
• Malinowski: Kula ring as network of gift
exchange
• Mauss: PNG shells as another form of
money
• Gift economy versus money economy,
or money in the gift
12. Gift & Money
• Money in the gift & the gift in money
(O’Henry)
• The spirit of exchange (Mauss)
• Inalienability
• Embeddedness
• Total social fact
• Parts and whole
13. Parts and Whole
• How different is anthropology from
economics in approaching economy?
• How different is economy in
anthropology from that in economics?
• Economics and kinship
• Economics and religion
• Economics and politics
• Embeddedness of economics in
society (and culture)
16. Weber
• Ghost in the spirit of capitalism:
“The tradition of medieval monastic
asceticism prowls the culture of modern
capitalist economic order.”
17. Simmel
Money in society:
“[Modern] money is a pure instrument
of human relations and freedom.”
Money beyond society:
“[Modern money], by virtue of its
perfect mobility, forms the bond that
combines that combines the largest
extension of the economic sphere with
the growing independence of persons.”
18. Monetary exchange promotes the
parallel process of previously
independent communities becoming
mutually dependent and dependent
persons becoming independent from
traditional communal bondage.
J. Parry and M. Bloch, Money and the Morality
of Exchange (1989)
24. Money’s two sides & the
polarization of modern ideas
• State & Markets
• Political authority & Exchange value
• Politics & Economy
• Sovereignty & Universality
• Keynesians & Monetarists (Keith Hart)
• Statist side & Pro-market side
• German & Anglo-saxon
• Socialism & the free market ideology
25. The end of the Cold War and
Money’s pursuit of “absolute
freedom”
26. Ethnography of the money
world
• Once again the question of
embeddedness (of money in society)
• Mauss’ “total social fact”
• Money in kinship, money in religion,
and money in political life
29. • “War is the most prodigal of all human
activities.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of
Nations
• “There is no enmity in cemeteries.” A
Vietnamese proverb.
39. Money, culture and history
• Weber and the cultural history of
capitalism
• Simmel and the instrumentality of
modern money
• Mauss and the morality of exchange
• Money for the living and money for the
dead
• Two sides of the coin
42. J. Boggs
• Because money and art have no
intrinsic value, they rely on our personal
and collective trust to sustain the value
we assign them. Our relationship to art
is subject to the same societal
conditioning as our relationship to
money.
