Money and the Morality of Exchange by Jonathan Parry, Maurice Bloch

By Jonathan Parry, Maurice Bloch

This assortment is worried with the symbolic illustration of cash in a variety of diversified societies, and extra particularly with the ethical review of economic and advertisement exchanges. It makes a speciality of different cultural meanings surrounding financial transactions, emphasizing the large cultural version within the means funds is symbolized and the way this symbolism pertains to culturally built notions of creation, intake, flow, and trade.

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Sometimes represented as subversive of the most valued social relations, it can also be viewed as an instrument for their maintenance. While in one context life in the manner of money' is the antithesis of the 'Fijian way', in another, money is morally neutral or even positively beneficial. Again the ambiguity is by no means unusual. What the Fijian example also demonstrates therefore is the misleading nature of the assumption that symbolic meanings can be precisely specified. As Levi-Strauss (1958: 147-80) has argued is the case with symbolism in general, the Fijian symbolism of money and yaqona drinking are continually being combined in creative ways to express processes and transformation.

Parry similar pattern of two related but separate transactional orders: on the one hand transactions concerned with the reproduction of the long-term social or cosmic order; on the other, a 'sphere' of short-term transactions concerned with the arena of individual competition. Amongst the Shona, the long-term transactional order is symbolically constructed in terms of an image of an immortal chiefdom which is represented by the spirit mediums who embody the ancestral rulers, who in turn dispense fertility to their descendants in return for obedience, respect and tribute.

In my opinion, it is now time that the notion of a jajmani system, with its distinctive functionalist overtones, was abandoned once and for all. As this assertion could easily be misunderstood, let me stress that I am not disputing the ethnographic evidence, only its interpretation. The evidence certainly shows that, in many Indian villages, there do exist relationships between patrons and clients, or village and servants, of the type labelled 'jajmani' or 'baluta', in which customary payments in kind are made.

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