it thinks, how thought emerges in it, and at what points this thought reinforces or clashes with dominant opinions. In Badiou’s ( 2005: 88 ) words, I demonstrate how Winter Sleep “lets us travel with a particular idea.” Money, Debt, and Symbolic
Search Results
Keith Hart
As I began writing this piece, a blog post in the Guardian (18 May 2010) asked if “the markets” are our new religion, likening them to a “bloodthirsty god” in primitive religion. Financial markets are the outcome of thousands of independent decisions, but the media oft en speak of them as a single all-knowing entity. Almost a decade earlier, Thomas Frank (2001) published One Market under God and many others have made a similar connection. The editors of this journal approached me to comment on the possible interest the financial crisis might hold for anthropologists of religion. That begs the question of what religion is and what money has to do with it. In what follows I stick to a Durkheimian line on the affinity between money and religion. Its relevance to the current economic crisis must wait for another occasion.
Changing Colors of Money
Tips, Commissions, and Ritual in Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Jackie Feldman
The movement of money in Christian pilgrimage is a profound mirror of cultural classifications. By examining tips, commissions, and souvenir purchases in Holy Land pilgrimages, I show how the transfer of monies activates a series of multiple, complex relationships between Jewish guides, Palestinian drivers, and Christian pilgrims. I identify the 'colors'—or moral values—of salaries, tips, and commissions that change hands as 'white', 'black', or 'gray' monies and correlate these colors with particular discourses and degrees of transparency. I then illustrate how prayer, rituals, and the citation of scripture may 'bleach' these monies, transforming tips into 'love offerings' and souvenir purchases into aids to spiritual development or charity to local communities, while fostering relationships and conveying messages across religious and cultural lines. Far from being a universal 'acid' that taints human relationships, pilgrimage monies demonstrate how, through the exchange of goods, people are able to create and maintain spiritual values.
Belarusian Professional Protesters in the Structure of Democracy Promotion
Enacting Politics, Reinforcing Divisions
Alena Minchenia
the police and court actions, singled the professional protesters out from others. It should be noted that financial issues were one of the most controversial themes in the field. On the one hand, references to “Western money” were often used by the
Made in Nigeria
Duress and Upwardly Mobile Youth in the Biography of a Young Entrepreneur in Enugu
Inge Ligtvoet
workshop on a school campus in Enugu, southeast Nigeria. Fame and money, he believes, would ultimately help him achieve his goal of impacting the lives of youth who, like him, have been constrained by their family background and by Nigeria’s harsh
The Ethics of Collective Sponsorship
Virtuous Action and Obligation in Contemporary Tibet
Jane Caple
agree on the best ‘good’, such as whether to fund temple building or to give money to monks. They do not even always agree that religious donation is the best form of giving. At the very least, it must be balanced against other ‘goods’ (e.g., children
Pac'Stão versus the City of Police
Contentious Activism Facing Megaprojects, Authoritarianism, and Violence
Einar Braathen
started to be rolled out in 2007. The total spending reached R$509 billion ($200 billion) by 2010. The money came from the public budgets (60 percent from the federal budget, 40 percent from federated states and municipalities), not from foreign financial
Meike J. de Goede
was told to never speak about the unidentified man who was also in the car. That he had money afterward was because he was told to keep his mouth shut. (interview, Brazzaville, August 2016) Until his death, Matsoua was considered a leader of a
Beyond Economy and Religion
Resources and Socio-cosmic Fields in Odisha, India
Roland Hardenberg
. Cereals have the same characteristics as money. They are a means of payment for help rendered. They are a means of exchange, for example, in markets, where grains are exchanged for many other goods. And, finally, they are a measure of value, since in their
"Our Future Is Already in Jeopardy"
Duress and the Palimpsest of Violence of Two CAR Student Refugees in the DRC
Maria Catherina Wilson Janssens
bordering the CAR] …. It is like housekeeping: if you have $100 and you have to support yourself for months, you know you have to count the money and you can’t support a hundred people on that amount of money; you really have to see how you can get the most