We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
WHY WAMPUM IS MORE MONEY THAN SCHOLARS THINK.
- Authors
SCHMIDT, MARIO
- Abstract
This article analyzes how the circulation of wampum between two different registers of wealth concealed political power relations in seventeenth-century Coastal Algonquian societies and proposes that this occurred in a way similar to capitalist money. It draws attention to a property which is shared by both modern and primitive forms of money: their neglected ability to conceal contradictory moments in socioeconomic systems by bracketing these contradictions through (1) their circulatory movement between different spheres as well as members of society; and (2) their iterative transformation into different material forms. It hence aims at countering the on-going anthropological trend to understand 'primitive' forms of money as fundamentally different from capitalist money.
- Subjects
WAMPUM; POWER (Social sciences); MONETARY reformers; SOCIETIES; SHELL money
- Publication
Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 2014, Vol 39, Issue 2, p20
- ISSN
0355-3930
- Publication type
Article