Chris Vasantkumar HEADS AND TAILS REVISITED
abstract
This research report revisits Keith Hart’s work on the mutual implication of token and commodity theories of money, focusing on his classic Malinowski lecture on the coin’s two sides. Hart associates ‘heads’ with political author- ity and token theories and ‘tails’ with quantitative value, market exchange and commodity theories. Yet, even as he argues for the necessity of a rap- prochement between the intellectual approaches delimited by the coin’s two sides, the coin conceit as he elaborates it is unprepared to deal with the quotidian intermixing of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ one encounters in actual rather than theoretical coinage. Starting from the problems posed by actual coins to the apparent clarities of Hart’s coin, this essay argues that on a material, micro-level the relationships between state power and market exchange on the one hand and ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ on the other are rather more contingent in practice than in theory. On this level, actually-existing forms of Western money are only poorly parsed by the ‘sidedness’ of the coin conceit. The a priori divisions between power and quantification, symbols and amounts, as well as their topological mapping onto discretely divided material surfaces freighted in the virtualism of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ are a poor fit with complex amalgams of numbers, power, states, symbols and exchange we may read off the surfaces of particular coins.
Keywords: anthropology of money, coinage, token and commodity theories, Keith Hart
hirty years ago, in a now classic Malinowski persons in society, a token perhaps. The Lecture on the anthropology of money, other reveals the coin as a thing, capable of TKeith Hart memorably exhorted his listeners to entering into definite relations with other things, as a quantitative ratio independent Look at a coin from your pocket. On one of the persons engaged in any particular side is ‘heads’—the symbol of the political transaction. In this latter respect money is authority which minted the coin; on the like a commodity and its logic is that of other side is ‘tails’—the precise specification anonymous markets. Heads and tails stand of the amount the coin is worth as for social organisation from the top down payment in exchange. One side reminds and from the bottom up, epitomised in us that states underwrite currencies and modern theory by the state and the market that money is originally a relation between respectively. (Hart 1986: 638)
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 26 Chris Vasantkumar
Hart uses this analysis of the Janus-faced- (cf. Dodd 2014: 21). I deal with the contents of ness of money to argue for the rapprochement other pockets in my larger project.1 between token and commodity theories of Instead, starting from the problems posed money in anthropological analysis of economic by actual coins to the apparent clarities of Hart’s formations in the contemporary West. Where coin conceit, this essay argues that on a material, ‘relations between persons and things are micro-level the relationships between state typically fetishized as two contradictory camps, power and market exchange on the one hand thought of as states and markets, abstract actors and ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ on the other are rather in a Manichean universe of good and evil which more contingent in practice than in theory. On only has room for one side of the coin at any this level, I argue, the actually-existing forms time’, Hart argues by contrast, that, ‘it is surely of Western money are only poorly parsed by the case that the coin has two sides and that the ‘sidedness’ of the coin conceit. The a priori what matters is their relationship, the mutual divisions between power and quantification, constitution of politics and markets in a moving symbols and amounts, as well as their social whole’ (ibid.: 647). topological mapping onto discretely divided While Hart’s lecture is justly famous and material surfaces freighted in the virtualism has been profoundly generative for my own of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ are a poor fit with complex work, it is the contention of this essay, that amalgams of numbers, power, states, symbols at a certain point, its contribution is diluted and exchange we may read off the surfaces of by an overemphasis on what one might call particular coins. This is true both to the degree ‘sidedness’, by which I mean an overly presentist that the regalia of state power and quantification and Eurocentrist focus on the coin conceit may be found both on obverse and reverse and itself. One sort of critique of this metaphor to the extent that one can never quite keep the immediately suggests itself—not all monies, two apart in the first place, except via particular Western or otherwise, are or have been coin sorts of modernist practices of purification. shaped (cf. Webb 1982: 455–456). Yet, while One might suggest that I am being cogent, this caveat is not the primary focus of willfully obtuse in insisting on taking Hart this essay. Here, I’m less concerned about the literally, that the usefulness of the coin conceit economic realms elided by, left out of, or roughly and its sidedness lies not in its correspondence translated into the idiom of the coin—the non- to some sort of preexisting reality but in its coins in other realms (the transactions carried heuristic power. There may well be something to out ‘without benefit of states or merchants’ [Hart this line of thinking but its validity, I suggest, is 1986: 649]) than I am about the ways in which ultimately outweighed by the instructiveness of the coin conceit misses certain fundamental particular divergences from the ideal type. For aspects of Western money itself—not least, the Hart’s coin has, arguably, taken on a kind of latter’s own cultural and historical specificity. virtualist authority—wherein in per Carrier and This essay thus does not take up the challenge Miller (1998), theory takes on a kind of power to posed by non-coined monies (whether in the reshape the real it purportedly describes. Actual form of manillas [Bohannan’s famous ‘brass coinage here might be profitably imagined as rods’], cowries, fishhooks or sycee) to received akin to Candea’s (2007: 179–180) notion of the Western notions of money as a utopian ideal ‘arbitrary location’ which he glosses as a heuristic of fungibility, liquidity or interexchangeability device intended as ‘the symmetrical inversion
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 27 Chris Vasantkumar
of the “ideal type”’. In Candea’s formulation, literally’ (ibid.: 371). Desan’s account of coin’s the arbitrary location ‘is the actually existing (re-)creation in medieval England highlights, instance, whose messiness, contingency, and in Hart’s terms, the signal role of heads in the lack of an overarching coherence… serve as a production of tails. “control” for a broader abstract object of study’ Where Desan’s account of how the penny (ibid.: 180). The parallels between the contrast came to be made of silver foregrounds the heads between ideal type and arbitrary location, and in tails, as it were, the vicissitudes of the Carolus that between the apparent nowheres of money peso (or Spanish Piece of Eight) in the Jiangnan and the market and the hard surfaces of actual region of China in the late eighteenth and coins are worthy of some reflection. Exploring nineteenth centuries highlights one potential particular situated divergences from the ideal configuration of the tails in heads. As Hart type of sidedness—wherein power and exchange reminds, heads is commonly taken to symbolize chase each other round the spinning coin in ‘the political authority which minted the coin’ flight like lovers pursuing each other across and as such it ‘stands for social organisation the surfaces of a Grecian urn—is a particularly from the top down’—in a word ‘the state’. Yet, powerful way of revealing the limits of an the closer one looks at the Carolus peso, the important constituent part of contemporary more contingent such relationships appear. approaches to money. Moreover, the particularly close connection Attending to the heads in tails and the between state authority and the production tails in heads highlights the limitations of the of currency that characterizes much of the coin as metaphor by historicizing the mythic contemporary world is revealed to be a recent narratives in which the latter is grounded. In and historically specific phenomenon. For, while this intervention, I take particular inspiration the Carolus peso of 1772 and after does indeed from the work of legal scholar, Christine Desan, bear the sizable proboscis of the Charles the who in a 2010 essay, ‘Coin Reconsidered: the Third of Spain (prior to 1772, it bore not the Political Alchemy of Commodity Money’, image of the monarch but that of the Pillars highlights the crucial, constitutive role of state of Hercules that later migrated to the reverse), power in making precious metals into apparently there was nothing transparent or obvious about ‘natural’ media for exchange. Coin, she suggests, how to read this face for the Chinese merchants was originally ‘a constitutional medium, one amongst whom it circulated (along with slightly that related the government to its participants earlier and slightly later issues) as a de facto and thus helped to configure the world it standard currency. appeared to merely measure’ (Desan 2010: 361). That Spanish coins could serve as local As Desan describes it, the process by which tender in central China is not as unusual or metal came to measure the world was anything unexpected as it might seem to contemporary but natural or inevitable. Rather, ‘metal emerged sensibilities conditioned by now commonplace from [the] obscurity [of the Dark Ages] only associations of standard currencies with national when a political act—one that packaged metal territory. As political economist Eric Helleiner as coin—selected it to perform an essential role. (2003) has effectively demonstrated, national When they made it into money, the people monies are themselves historically quite recent creating coin anointed a metal as the common inventions dating from 1844 in the UK, 1863 medium of their community, liquefying it quite in the United States and even later elsewhere in
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 28 Chris Vasantkumar
Figure 1. Carolus IIII peso, incidentally, the ‘$’ sign derives from the ribbons wrapped around the Pillars of Hercules on the reverse (source: wikimedia.org, image in the public domain).
the world. Prior to their introduction, currencies peso on the one hand, and Spanish imperial tended to travel far beyond the boundaries of power on the other, were only dimly if it all the political entities that produced them, and a perceived. Indeed the local terms for foreign promiscuous mix of complementary currencies, coins in circulation betray the opacity of heads both locally and distantly produced circulated in this context. The vocabulary they used to alongside each other in many, perhaps most describe these faces and the foreign script that settings (see Kuroda 2007, 2008; Guyer 2012). surrounded them drew on images of the spectral, The Spanish peso was, after all, legal tender in spiritual or inhuman rather than on a more the US until 1857 (Irigoin 2009: 230). familiar idiom of rule. What is interesting and perhaps unexpected, however, is the question of what In China, the Carlos III coin was known as 双柱 the Jiangnan Chinese made of the ‘heads’ side the “Double-Pillar” (shuangzhu ) coin, 三工 of the Spanish pesos in circulation. Where Hart or as the “Three-Gong” sangong( ) posits a transparent relationship between heads coin because the Roman numeral III to and political authority (wherein the visage of Chinese eyes appeared as three consecutive 工 the monarch clearly denotes the power of the Gong graphs (gong simply means ‘work’; state authority that coined it), the practicalities it had no semantic value in this context) of usage in Jiangnan in the first half of the (…) Beginning in 1772 the Spanish nineteenth century evince a very different set Crown replaced the double-pillar design of interpretive practices. In everyday usage, on the obverse with a bust of Carlos III, the links between the busts of Charles III and while adding the Pillars of Hercules to the IV on the obverse of various mintings of the Bourbon coat-of-arms on the reverse. This
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 29 Chris Vasantkumar
design was continued in the coins issued that do not quite touch the ‘ghost script’. by Carlos IV(…) In China this coin was On the ‘Small Robe’ coins the ribbons known by a variety of names: the ‘Buddha are about two fractions of an inch from 佛頭 佛面 尼 Head’ (fotou , fomian ) coin the ni graph [probably referring to the (based perhaps more on Carlos’s identity letter ‘R’ in ‘CAROLUS’]. Behind the bust as a foreigner than his resemblance to the there must be four ‘ghost script’ graphs 工 patriarch of the Buddhist religion); the resembling the word Gong . For this 四工 ‘Four-Gong’ (sigong ) coin since the reason the coin is known as the Four-Gong Roman numeral four was written as ‘IIII’; (...) There also are Three-Gong ‘Large Robe’ 花边 the ‘Flower-Border’ (huabian ) coin, coins. All Three-Gong and Four-Gong coins in reference to the raised beaded border must also be ‘Large Robe’ coins. There are around the rim of the coin intended to also One-Gong and Two-Gong coins, but discourage shaving silver off the edge of it is not necessarily the case that they are the coin (…) and the ‘Large Robe’ (dayi ‘Large Robe’ coins. There are also One- 大衣 ) coin to distinguish it from the ‘Small Gong and Two-Gong ‘Small Robe Ghost Robe’ coin [issued by Ferdinand VII a few Head’ coins, so this feature is not definitive. years later] on which a small portion of On all One-Gong and Three-Gong ‘Large the king’s shoulder is shown. (Von Glahn Robe’ coins the nose of the bust must be 2007: 54)2 large and the large tassel design is in front, while on the Two-Gong and Four-Gong Von Glahn also gives us a window onto the ‘Large Robe’ coins the nose must be small question of how Chinese merchants of the and the tassel design at the back. Eighty time dealt with the problem of distinguishing or ninety percent of coins are of these two true coin from false. He reproduces extended types. There are also Four-Gong ‘Large passages from an 1826 printing of a text entitled Robe’ coins with a large, high nose and Classic of Revealing the Secrets of Silver by one the tassel design in the front, but they are Liang Enze. In these excerpts we see in great very rare. The beaded border on this type detail how contemporary Chinese dealt with is especially prominent and clear. The large coins whose surfaces were precisely opaque. nose type is a male ghost, while the small nose type is female ghost. (Quoted in Von How to recognize [the ‘Large Robe’ coin]: Glahn 2007: 59) most coins have a border with numerous letters, though there are some with large Clearly these coins’ users were able to ascertain letters or a rough edge. Any other kind important details about the personages depicted of border is fake. Beneath the bust there on the Carolus pesos and other foreign coins. must be a large robe approximately the They made distinctions of gender, of clothing same size as the bust itself. In the case of and of hair style. Yet, just as clearly, there is ‘Small Robe’ coins, the bust is large and no acknowledgement of awareness of who the robe comparatively small. The tip of these figures actually were or, indeed, of why the floral wreath on the head of all ‘Large or whether that might matter. It is hard not Robe’ coins must touch the beaded border. to be struck by the strangeness of referring Behind the bust there are seven ribbons to foreign figures and writing as ‘ghosts’ gui).(
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 30 Chris Vasantkumar
This is presumably short hand for common from Hart’s coinage. Indeed, this example clearly ways of referring to foreigners at the time highlights what von Glahn terms ‘the power of (yangguizi) that highlighted their otherness. Yet the marketplace (understood here as much a perhaps even more interesting are the efforts social as an economic entity) to determine the at analogizing the visual appearance of Roman value of money’ (ibid.: 77) circulating very far script and numerals with Chinese characters from its place of minting. Despite (or perhaps they were thought to resemble (by which because of) their opacity, for much of the 工工工工 process IIII becomes and R becomes nineteenth century Carolus pesos circulated 尼 ). at a significant premium over silver bullion. In inspecting the ‘heads’ of the pesos, Whether ghostly or not, their markings were nineteenth-century Chinese merchants were taken as dependably indexing their purity: not not gazing on the boasts or visages of Spanish as a result of the authority of the ruler who had imperial power but were checking for the proper had them struck but because of their value in markings of a locally salient standard whose the marketplaces of the Jiangnan region. value arose not from the extension of Spanish In his account of the difficulties faced by or even Qing state power but from what von the Toba, a native people of the Argentinian Glahn, drawing on Kuroda, terms ‘currency Chaco, in understanding the workings of circuits’. Von Glahn identifies at least three of national money, Gaston Gordillo (2002: 19) these operative in eastern China at the time: suggests that ‘the actual use of money requires mastering a historical skill, a capacity to read (1) Jiangnan and the areas immediately its public standard value’ which entails both adjacent to the Yangzi River valley, in numerical and political competencies. We can which only whole coins, undefaced by see from von Glahn’s example the degree to chops, were accepted, with the Carlos IV which the transparency of heads (and indeed peso serving as the monetary standard; (2) its primacy over tails), rather than implicitly the area immediately around Guangzhou, universal as Hart posits it, is instead a where both chopped and broken coins historically and geographically specific element were tolerated at bullion value; and (3) of particular regimes of money’s public standard an intermediate zone between the two, value, an element, moreover, that may well be encompassing the main tea-growing areas situationally inessential to its functioning. We in Hunan, Jiangxi, and Fujian provinces, should not assume, however, either that this sort where chopped coins circulated but broken of disjunctive economic terrain was limited to coins were rejected. (Von Glahn 2007: 68) the non-West or to the travels of Western coins outside the non-Western world, or that this In all of these circuits, Von Glahn suggests that sort of opacity could not also be a property of ‘regional difference reflected different priorities ‘tails’. In a fascinating essay on the 1601 case of and historical patterns in the use of money’. In ‘Mixt Monies’ and its role in mediating between a context where ‘the state—particularly in the ‘nominalist’ and ‘valorist’ legal approaches to Ming-Qing periods—acquiesced to monetary money’s worth (in the former what mattered standards established in the private economy’ was the royally decreed value of the coin in (ibid.: 58), the place of state power in both the terms of the prevailing unit of account, in the uses and media of money looks very different latter, the actual fineness and weight of the
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 31 Chris Vasantkumar
precious metal involved), legal scholar David (ibid.: 153). This is to say, that how particular Fox outlines the striking plurality of the of coins counted in practice had as much or more numismatic landscape in sixteenth century to do with ‘heads’—royal proclamations of their England. official worth as an exercise of state power as it did with ‘tails’—the denomination or market The variety of coins circulating in Tudor value of the precious metal such money objects England was extraordinarily diverse by contained. any modern standard. The extent of the The many-sidedness of this phenomenon variety can gathered by reading a typical demonstrates how challenging it can be to keep proclamation dated 1554 from the reign heads and tails apart in practice. On the one of Philip and Mary. It refers to a new hand, one might see the power of the sovereign’s issue of locally-minted sovereigns, royals, proclamation to monetize as a clear instance of angels, half-angels, shillings, half-shillings heads-in-tails, wherein, as in Desan’s account of and groats though omits reference to the the process by which precious metals came to be pennies that had served as the primary associated with the power of general equivalence, media of exchange in England since the state (or the ‘community’ in Desan’s Anglo-Saxon times. To these there had to somewhat problematic formulation) plays a be added the many foreign-issued coins central role in setting the terms of exchange that circulated in England. In the 1550s, itself. And this reading might be paramount for example, these included Portuguese if this example were linked only to ‘domestic’ crusados (both ‘long-cross’ and ‘short- coinage (or, rather more precisely, if such cross’) and pistolets; French crowns of the proclamations occurred in the familiar context sun; crowns of the Holy Roman emperor; of nationally configured uniform currencies). Yet Spanish double ducats, single ducats, such powers also extended to ‘foreign’ currency double royals, single royals and half- as well. The values of Portuguese, French, Holy royals. The foreign coins listed here were Roman, Spanish and other coins as coin of the proclaimed as legally current in England. English realm were set by royal proclamation as (Fox 2011: 152) well. We are far here from the model of natural This last sentence alludes to the fact that commodity money, so impressively critiqued ‘without the legal exercise of [royal] prerogative, by Desan (2010: 367), in which the ‘market is no coin—locally minted or foreign—would autonomous; there are no competing sovereigns. pass as current and lawful coin of the realm’ It is uniform and aggregative; individuals need (ibid.). It might be accepted on a customary never collide with a concerted public. There basis but there was no law that required it to are therefore no politics.’ By contrast we are be. ‘Their transformation from being a generally in a world where territorial sovereignty and acceptable medium of exchange to the legalis the ‘extensities’ of currency (cf. Gilbert 2005) moneta Angliae depended entirely on the and liquidity only occasionally map onto each Sovereign’s prerogative power to monetise them’, other. ‘Foreign’ coins used for domestic purposes Fox continues. ‘They had to be proclaimed may still bear the visages of other rulers, but current within the realm and assigned a value their fit within the domestic ‘jurisdictionally- expressed in what were called “units of account”’ contained system of reckoning’ (Fox 2011:
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 32 Chris Vasantkumar
154) was conditioned by royal speech rather and conversions across types of currency rather than by their markings, whether those of than universal equivalence within borders ‘foreign’ iconographies of power or numerical serving as the basis for different forms of specifications of quantity. ‘When foreign coins economic practice. The vocabulary of domestic were adopted into the English monetary system’, and foreign placed onto these monetary Fox notes, as the coin of the realm, rather than a practices is at best anachronistic and at worst medium of conventionally acceptable exchange, distorting. Finally, as compared with the later ‘they had to be assigned a legal value in English example from China, the issue here is not so money of account by proclamation’ (ibid.: 155; much the opacity of heads as it is the power emphasis added). of tails and/or other heads to recontextualize political authority, a kind of over-stamping. The fixing of English legal values to Yet how could such an effort proceed if such these coins was what distinguished them revaluation contravened the ‘the precise from the many other foreign coins that specification of the amount’ stamped upon the circulated in England purely as a matter ‘tails’ side of the coin? of social convention. They were required Simple: until quite recently (often but not to pass current in England in discharge exclusively the mid-late nineteenth century for of monetary obligations at the proclaimed European coinage) denominations were not rates, just like the other coins that were marked on coins’ reverse. Many scholars have minted locally under the own Sovereign’s noted this tendency not to specify amounts on authority. The proclaimed values of these the ‘tails’ side of coins, perhaps most famously adopted foreign coins mattered to traders Innes (1914) and his heirs and interpreters conducting purely domestic transaction. (Ingham 2004; Wray 2011). Wray notes that (Ibid.) not stamping coins with their ‘nominal value’ allowed the king or other state authority leeway There are several important points to take with regard to adjusting the value of coinage from this. First, in contrast to the semi-mythic up and down. In the case of modern money as narrative of timeless nationally-configured we know it, the relationship between monetary money, as late as the middle of the nineteenth medium and unit of account is fixed, and the century it was commonplace to have to reckon quantitative denomination stamped on the with conflicting iconographies (and discourses) coin (or bill) operates as a standardized and of monetary value and sovereignty. For various permanent reduction of the relation between the reasons, currency was neither uniform nor two. By contrast, for much of Western history universal. In contrast to the universal-within- the relationship between medium of exchange the-nation-state model now current, currencies and unit of account was not fixed and could be complemented each other in/on multiple levels manipulated by authorities and merchants alike and layers (see Kuroda 2007, 2008)—some to their own benefit. As a result, as Rebecca circulating at rates derived from customary Spang (2015: 12) puts it, ‘coins might be made market practice, others used to discharge official of metals but their semiotic heft far transcended debts at exchange rates set by the sovereign. their material presence’. Per Wray, ‘precious Moreover, the boundaries between foreign and metal coins were always records of IOUs, but domestic look rather un-Westphalian—ratios they were imperfect [because the source of their
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 33 Chris Vasantkumar
interstices? I would suggest that erased in the bargain has been a deeper understanding of both the historical variety of ‘Western’ forms of ‘state’ power and ‘market’ exchange, as well as an awareness of the central importance of the processes of formalization and standardization that lie at the root of contemporary notions of state and market ‘in anything like the forms we would recognize today’ (Graeber 2011: 71). Thus in the larger project of which this essay is a part, I supplement attention to the materiality of particular money objects on the micro-level with an attention to issues on the broader, historical macro-level. On this terrain, I suggest that an overly presentist approach to Figure 2. The ‘tails’ side of a pre-decimal British Half the ideas of ‘states’ and ‘markets’ themselves Crown (worth 2 shillings and sixpence) with nom- has obscured both the historical similarities inalist rather than quantitative markings (source: between Western and non-Western economic wikimedia.org, image in the public domain). worlds and elided the crucial role played by historically and geographically specific processes of formalization and standardization in the value was chronically and mistakenly taken to production of the apparently clear distinction be their precious metal content rather than their between Western and non-Western forms that status as IOUs]. And, boy, have they misled dominates much of the contemporary literature historians and economists!’ ‘Tails’, rather than on the subject. The net result of this has been simply serving as the site of natural or impartial to project contemporary Western forms, not so quantification is deeply configured by state much ethnocentrically onto the non-Western power. other as anachronistically onto Western pasts. Taken together these Chinese and British Doing so both deforms and impoverishes examples indicate the degree to which ‘heads’ our understandings of the rich variety (and isn’t always and everywhere ‘the symbol of the often striking ‘otherness’) of premodern political authority which minted the coin’, nor Western economic forms, obscuring the is ‘tails’ always and everywhere ‘the precise significant connections between such forms and specification of the amount the coin is worth contemporary economic practice ‘in the wild’, as payment in exchange’. Correspondingly, as it were, (both within and beyond ‘the West’) Hart’s account comes a cropper on the mutual and tends to overplay the significance of money interconnection and inter-involvement of what (as one of Bohannan’s [1959: 503] famous the coin conceit would parse as separate sides. and fatuous ‘shatteringly simplifying ideas That is, the apparent clarity of heads and tails of all time’). Where received wisdom would masks the quotidian presence of tails in heads treat states and markets as obvious and trans- and heads in tails. What sorts of hybrid forms historically given, and identify double-sided have been elided by overlooking these cramped money as the primary culprit in the shattering
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 34 Chris Vasantkumar
simplifications of modernity, this essay Fox, David 2011. The Case of Mixt Monies: argues for the necessity of a more historically Confirming Nominalism in the Common Law of nuanced approach to all three subjects and Monetary Obligations. The Cambridge Law Journal 70 (1): 144–174. their interrelations. Instead of proceeding from the clarity of the heads and tails of a virtualist Gilbert, Emily 2005. Common Cents: Situating coin, or starting from states and markets as we Money in Time and Place. Economy and Society 34 (3): 357–388. know them, it proposes a more materialist and inductive approach to heads and tails as a means Gordillo, Gaston 2002. The Dialectic of of opening up received wisdom to an empirically Estrangement: Memory and the Production of Places of Wealth and Poverty in the Argentinean minded critique. Chaco. Cultural Anthropology 17 (1): 3–31.
Graeber, David 2011. Debt. New York: Melville Notes House. Guyer, Jane I. 2012. Soft Currencies, Cash 1 On the cultural relativism of pockets themselves, Economies, New Monies: Past and Present. see Pickles (2013). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the 2 Irigoin (2009: 222) notes other appellations United States of America 109 (7): 2214–2221. including fanmian or, as she puts it, ‘foreign face’ (literally ‘Barbarian Face’). In addition Hart, Keith 1986. Heads or Tails: Two Sides of the to the regionally paramount Carolus pesos, Coin. Man (N.S.) 21 (4): 637–656. contemporary local observers also noted the Helleiner, Eric 2003. The Making of National Money. presence of other foreign coins including those Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. of Dutch and English origin known as ‘Three 三花七星 Flower & Seven Star’ (sanhua qixing ), Ingham, Geoffrey 2004. The Nature of Money. 鬼頭 coins, ‘Ghost Heads’ (guitou ) and ‘Horse- Cambridge: Polity. 馬劍 riding Swordsman’ (Majian ). Innes, A. Mitchell 1914. The credit theory of money. Banking Law Journal, January XXXI: 151–168. REFERENCES Irigoin, Alejandra 2009. The End of a Silver Era: The Consequences of the Breakdown of the Spanish Bohannan, Paul 1959. The Impact of Money On Peso Standard in China and the United States, an African Subsistence Economy. The Journal of 1780s–1850s. Journal of World History 20 (2): 207–243. Economic History 19: 491–503. Kuroda, Akinobu 2007. The Maria Theresa Dollar Carrier, James G. and Daniel Miller (eds.) 1998. in the Early Twentieth-Century Red Sea Region: Virtualism: A New Political Economy. Oxford, Berg. A Complementary Interface Between Multiple Markets. Financial History Review 14 (1): 89–110. Candea, Matei 2007. Arbitrary Locations: In Defence of the Bounded Field-Site. Journal of the Kuroda, Akinobu 2008. Concurrent but Royal Anthropological Institute 13 (1): 167–184. Nonintegrable Currency Circuits: Complementary Relationships among Monies in Modern China Desan, Christine 2010. Coin Reconsidered: The and other Regions. Financial History Review 15 (1): Political Alchemy of Commodity Money. Theoretical 17–36. Inquiries in Law 11 (1): 361–409. Pickles, A. J. 2013. Pocket Calculator: A Humdrum Dodd, Nigel 2014. The Social Life of Money. ‘Obviator’ in Papua New Guinea? Journal of the Royal Princeton: Princeton University Press. Anthropological Institute 19 (3): 510–526.
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 35 Chris Vasantkumar
Spang, Rebecca L. 2015. Stuff and Money in the Wray, L. Randall 2011 Commodity Money Time of the French Revolution. Cambridge: Harvard Coins: Metalism versus Nominalism, Part Two. University Press. Credit Writedowns: Finance, Economics, Markets and Technology. Available at:
Webb, James L. 1982. Toward the Comparative chris vasantkumar Study of Money: A Reconsideration of West African lecturer Currencies and Neoclassical Monetary Concepts. department of anthropology The International Journal of African Historical Studies macquarie university 15 (3): 455–466. [email protected]
suomen antropologi | volume 41 issue 1 spring 2016 36