Representing Value and the Value of Representatio: A Different Look at Money Virginia R. Domingue Department of Cultural Anthropology ‘Dake University Alling joke circulated in Israel inthe fall of 1984. Two men meet some ‘where in the Country. One has just been abroad. The other says: “Those are nice pants. How much did they cast you?"" The friend replies: “Twenty pounds Ster ling.” The first then asks, "“How much is that in Israeli money?" The second replies, "Twenty-five dolars"’—that i, twenty-five U.S. dollars, Officaly, the shekel (and not the dollar) was Israel's cureney and only legal tender. IC was printed by the Isacli government, circulated throueh designated government channels, regulated, bolstered, and devalued from ime to time by branches and instruments ofthe government. The lira, Israel's official currency ‘mil 1980, had already been driven ou ofthe market by governmental action and was no longer an acceptable means of payment or exchange. The Jordanian dinar remained legal tender in the West Bank alongside the Israli shekel. Officially, the U.S, dollar remained foreign currency. Yet in the nearly six years since I had frst gone to Israel, I had participated in dozens of transactions involving the transfer of actual cash dollars and many ‘more calculated in U.S. dollars, though formally paid in official Israeli currency, Thad grown accustomed to handing $100 bills and worrying about whether they were counterfeit. Like most Israelis, had watched ilegal money changers in Is- rael proper develop a thriving business alongside their legal counterparts in the ‘West Bank, and Id gotten used to checking the black-market dollar rate printed daily in all the major Hebrew-language newspapers Israe] had developed galloping inflation, changed its currency from the lira to the shekel in an effort to curb the “psychological” effects of inflation and make accounting calculations easier, contemplated formally dollarizing the economy, and simultaneously shown public outrage atthe very suggestion of de jure dollar ization. Everyone spoke of dollar balaot (literally oor tile dollars) as “real ‘money’” kept in people's homes or safe deposit boxes. knew I had never lived in a situation of galloping inflation or day-to-day use of multiple curencies before lencountered the Israel of the 1980s, Lalso knew that while many Israelis were becoming quite adept at changing currencies, buy- ing commodities forthe express purpose of “preserving value," and movingREPRESENTING VALUE 17 money from home to dollar o index-linked savings schemes in banks oto the ‘Tel Aviv stock exchange and back, many other Israels were still calculating "real value” in terms ofthe relatively long-lived but by then defunct Isr lira. 1 was, both impressed and appalled atthe amount of time and energy average citizens ‘devoted to calculating "real value,” determining “real prices,” and minimizing ‘monetary losses. I could not help bu take “time out” of my official work in Israel to try to make sense of what was happening to money in Israel and what it meant that it kept reminding me ofthe classic anthropological literature on “primitive money. ‘Both Nadel long ago (1937) and Sansom more recently (1976) documented Siwations that bear some similarity tothe Israeli case 1 analyze here—situations {among the Nupe and Pedi, respectively) characterized by a state of monetary lisunifiation in which certain currency ison the rise and another appears to be in the process of disappearing but never quite does, and where the local “tradi tional” money object continues tobe used either in limited domains or with lim- ited functions, suggesting that it persists because itis imbued with the power to perform “essential” socal and political roles, ‘But assumptions inherent in these works about tradition and modernity, eco- ‘nomics (conceived in terms of market needs) and signification (conceived as per- taining to the domain of ritual and symbolism) did litle wo displ the common view that these are problems of ‘‘moderizing" societies of interest to develop- ‘ment economists and traditional ethnologsts but not to the rest of us. They im- plied that as a society modernizes a market-governed economy ruled by narrowly ‘economic principles will become increasingly separated from the world of ritual, symbolism, and tradition, and only in certain bastions of traditional” lite will “primitive money” persist. Both seemed to operate with a Neoclassical economic ‘model that assumed the relative autonomy of the economy as a domain of human life: thei phrasing opposed social and political needs to market needs, and signal values to market values—moch the way mainstream Western economists speak of exogenous factors and economic factors. But ite of this is easily applicable to Israel, even when some of the discut sive and nondiscursive pattems are similar. Israel is not usually considered to be «primitive country, not even a traditional one. Agregate statistics show a rela- tively high evel of schooling, life expectancy rates commensurate with those of ‘Wester Europe, the United States, and Japan, and a GNP that is within the range ‘of the “modem industrialized counties." Military and civilian high-tech indus- tres complement an established and scientifically informed agricultural sector. Resomting to our objectification ofthe traditional and the modern, the primitive ‘and the civilized, the symbolic and the economic would do Title to further our understanding of what hs been going on in Israel or what it means about money more generally. And yet the fact remains that since the mid-1970s Israel has ‘openly operated in a situation of monetary disunifiation in which people are never sue how to valorize Israel's own oficial curency and where, asthe shekel “loses value™ but stays in use, its the nature of its objectification that at times nearly obseses its users, laypeople at least as much as its profesional analysts1 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY Is Israeli money “rea”? Does ithave any ‘real value'"? It cannot be trusted to serve asa store of value, can it til represent valve? ‘The objectification of money is something most of us rarely question, That money, like property, is not & “natural thing" but, rather, a composite of as- sumptions about things isan idea that we may agree with in principle but that our day-to-day experiences do not normally force us to confront. Most of us have ‘come to take a great dal for granted—that we know what is, what its valu is, and what it stands for, that all “modern” societies have it, and that having iis @ sign of, indeed a requirement fr, modernity. As anthropologists, we may be able to add that a wide variety of tangible things serve and have served as money ob: jects around the world and that paper, not to mention plastic, are quite recent inventions. But few of us go beyond the practical uestions—of having itor not having it, saving it, investing it o using it, or determining comparable worth in terms of it ‘And yet tle about money seems to warrant our general willingness to view itas straightforward. We may typically think we know the value of money when ‘we know what we can buy with ita a given time and place, bu are we buying that good or service withthe money we have or with the value it represents? Is there a difference? Over the years, philosophers and economic thinkers from ‘Aquinas (cf. Monroe 1924) to Simmel (1978) have periodically pondered over the apparent ability of designated money objects to measure and store value s- multaneously, frit seemed to many that an object could only function as money ifitcould stand for everything or anything nd, hence, have no value on its own, Likewise, we talk about things—the meaning of things (ef. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981), the socal life of things (Appadurai 1986), the produc- tion and consumption of things—largly in terms oftheir elative values as com- ‘modities, in other words as items whose relative value is publicly mediated by {measured by) money, and in so doing we tend to teat money as something dif- ferent, an object unlike other objects, pethaps even an object whose own value is paradoxically its ability to represent value Indeed, some ofthe central paradoxes of representation and of ou theorizing bout it inhere inthe objectification of money. While we frequently depict rep- resentation as something quite separate from the objec(s) it seeks t represent, ‘we still usually assume that these objects have content, indeed value, apart fom the representation (ef. Heo 1987). We teat the objects as real and the represen- {ation asa distortion—perhaps with aesthetic or socal value but still a distortion (cf. Lumley 1988). And yet in theoretically empowering representation as the ‘mode through which we constitute the world, asin Clifford and Mareus's Writing Culture (1986), we seem to be saying either that we choose to ignore what we objectify as reality or that representation is really objectification and there is, therefore, no such thing as reality apart from our objctfcatons. Wherein lies the “realty” of money? If people question objectfying an object as real money because they question its ability to represent value, does it mean that we objectify realty as the same thing as representation? Or, better yet, are there notin all of this noteworthy assumptions about signification that allow us to conceive of rep-REPRESENTING VALUE 19 resenting and being as different, representing and being as the same, o¢ repre ‘senting as inauthentic and being as real?! These are not the questions economists typically ask, but they are the ques- ‘ions the Israeli case compelled me to ask, After years of living the Israeli expe- rience and analyzing i, it became clear that it was not the “hard facts” econo- ‘mists presumably juggle tat cred out for analysis but, rather, the ways we man- age our apparent need to objectfy some things as “teal” and transform our ob- {estification of others in light of our valorization of the “real.”” The details 1 adduce are specific to Israel but the general phenomenon, 1 would argue, is nt. ‘When the introduction ofa different currency or high rate of inflation ora shift in the relative abundance or status of particular commodities alters the financial status quo for individuals as well as institutions, much of what we otherwise take for granted about money loss its stability and with it our certainty. The question is how we react epistemologically and politically, and what we can lean from it about representation and our objectification of reality ‘The Assumption of Unification Israeli economists tend to examine monetary issues mach like their counter- pars in Western Europe and North America. They have pondered over the causes and pattems of inflation, devaluation, pricing policy, balance of payments def cits, capital markets, income distribution, and government ideology (e.g., Ben Porat 1982; Blejer and Halevi 1980; Halevi 1977, 1983; Liviatan and Levhari 1979; Manski and Goldin 1982; Micha’eli 1981). They have raised the specter of, ‘hyperinflation (ct. Crump 1981) as it came to exist in Hungary in 1945-46 and the Weimar Republic, and they have hinted at its potential politcal conse ‘quences.? They have proposed short-run and long-run strategies for controlling inflation and maintaining, even increasing, the country's rate of economic growth. And when they have looked elsewhere for useful comparisons, they have 'umed to the United States and Westen Europe for models and justification of policies and to a handful of “advanced developing countries” lke Argentina and Brazil for parallel diagnoses (ef. Spechler 1980). ‘Yetthe point about monetary dsunificaion i that it cals ito question much of what we usually take for granted about money as an object—what it is, what its value is, and what i stands for—and thatthe discourse this engenders about “the fake™ and “the real,” difference and similarity itself invites broader terms of comparison about what we objectify as money, is here that the now classic anthropological literature on “primitive money," for example, becomes perhaps unexpectedly relevant—for it evolved around the discovery and evaluation of difference in the ways certain functions ‘we typically tribute to money get performed in significantly different societies Discovering that salt, cowrie shells, shel armbands, and bars of cloth could have some of the functions of what we call money in other societies promoted an in- terest in beginning to decipher what we mean by money, what we allow itt sig nity, and what consequences those varied meanings may have for what we do with20 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY these objects (Baumol and Blinder 1979; Dalton 1965; Davenport 1962; Godelier 1977; Salisbury 1966). Bu the discovery” of diference has, as in other things, amounted to an affirmation of difference ad a coreative afirmation of our own ‘objectification asthe relevant term of reference In comparing and contrasting, certain functions of what we call money ‘emerged a constitutive of “true money"’—serving as means of payment, means of exchange, standards or measure of value, units of account, and repositories of value. Unification of functions came to characterize the ideal, the tree modern ‘money object in the comparative study of money objects. Disunification came to be seen as characteristic of many “primitive or “traditional” economies When debates developed, as between Fith and Polanyi, they were never really about the characteristics of what we objctfy as our own money, though this objectification derived much ofits articulation from the encounter with so- cieties without an exact counterpart. They evolved, instead, around the depiction ‘of objects with at last some ofthese functions in the context of what came to be ‘objectfied as primitive societies. Firth, for example, insisted there was true ‘money in at last some primitive economies; Polanyi prefered distinguishing be- tween kinds of money according to their uses or purposes, rather than ther t= thentcity of correctness. Thus, he wrote freely of “primitive money,” rather than ‘simply of money in primitive economies To Finh, “In any economic system, however primitive, an article can only be regarded as true money when it acts as a definite and common medium of ex- change, as a convenient stepping stone in obtaining one type of goods for an- other.” But he also believed that “in so doing, it serves as a measure of value, allowing the worth of all other articles to be expressed in terms of itself” and tha itis, thereby, a standard of value, with reference to past or future payments, while asa store of value it allows wealth to be condensed and held in reserve™ (1920-880). Thus, he argued, “true money"’—that is, money objects with all the presumed necessary functions—could exist in ‘primitive economies,” though for that to happen there had tobe a pattern of unification ofits possible functions. ‘To Polanyi, it was enough to stress commonalities —similitude in Foucaul- dian terms—without requiring identity, But is analytic terms-—primitive money, special-purpose money, all-purpose money—betrayed a strong evolutionist ori entation that stil objected "modern money" in terms ofthe unification of func- tions. In 1957, for example, he wrote that ‘Wile in modem society the money employed asa means of exchange is endowed with the capacity of performing al the edhe functions as well, i ery society the poston is rather the fevers. One encounter slaves o horses or cate used a an- tard when judging of prestige conveying wealth, or anyway of large amount, while tori sels are solely employed for small amounts.» We might ls find hat hile real slaves area beans of paymeat of bute to foci overlord, cowie bls function sa domestic means of payment or even as a medi of exchange This my ot exclode the se of precious metals for hoarding eats, while such metals may ot others serve as money except pehaps asa standard, abd in exchange fr in ‘ons. [Poany 1957 in Dalton 1968178)REPRESENTING VALUE 21 Polanyi never stopped regarding functional specialization of money objects, the absence of a predeterminate hierarchy oftheir functions, and an economy based ‘on “primitive” or ‘archaie"” modes of production as interdependent. Infact, de- spite the fact that he argued that functional unification was no prerequisite for identifying something as atleast a type of money, he considered "modern" cases ‘of functional dsunifcation to be historical or evolutionary reversions —as when hhe wrote that “since the second quarter ofthe twentieth century ... starting with [Nazi Germany, ‘modern’ money begins to show a definite tendency toward are vertng to disunification” (1968:179; emphasis added), For their part, professional economists have tended to acknowledge some ‘degree of disunfication to be part and parce ofthe monetary systems of “mod fem" economies, though in all cases thereat limits tothe amount of disunifica- tion they are willing to allow in their objectification of money. Baumol and inder, for example, ina elatvely recent textbook on economics define money as “the standard object used in exchanging goods and services" (1979:200) ‘Their definition is clearly functional and assigns primacy tothe role of objects as ‘means of exchange. But much like Firth, they go on to ist other Functions that, the objects in question would then be "bound to take" (1979:200). The wording here implies that some functions presumably coexist both necessarily and logi- cally, while others may be dispensed with under certain conditions. They argue, for example, that the means of exchange inevitably becomes the unit of account, that is, the standard unit for quoting prices. “*How foolish it would be afterall,” they comment quite nonchalantly, “for inhabitants of an idyllic topical island to use coconuts. as money but quot pices i erms of sea shells!" On the other hand, they explain, thse same objects may be used as stores of value but compete with ‘other stores of value Here the problem is a practical one concerning the actual references of ‘money in moder” economy: What sit that does or should get counted as part ‘of the money supply? To many economists, the question must be answered arbi- trarily. In the narrowest sense, the money Supply might be the sum ofall coins ‘and paper money in ctculation, plus all checking account balances held at com mercial banks. A broader definition, however, could easily include several or all ‘savings deposits held at banks. Most economists, though not all, would draw the line shor of short-term government bonds ‘Baumol and Blinder make a point of explaining that each definition is nec- essai arbitrary “and that some liquid assets may be a important as money [as they define it] inthe determination of aggregate demand” (1979204). Theit own aim thatthe objects used as means of exchange are not the only existing stores of value follows from their decision to define money narrowly. Clearly people store value in savings accounts, government bonds, rel estate, and other secu ‘Goodhart (1975) likewise takes the primary definition of money to be mul ‘functional, stating quite unambiguously that “'money ... carries out several, general functions , .. a6 a store of value, unit of account, means of payment, éte., and many specialised functions" (1975:2). And yet here, t00, we se partial