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The Lewis Hemy Morgan Lectures /1997 Presented at The University ofRochester Rochester, New York ...
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The Lewis Hemy Morgan Lectures /1997 Presented at The University ofRochester Rochester, New York
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MARGINAL
JANE I. GUYER
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G A INS
M 0 NET A R Y T RA N SAC T ION S IN ATLANTIC AFRICA
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WITH A FOREWORD BY ANTHONY T. CARTER
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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO AND LONDON
Jane I. Guyer is professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author, most recently, of An African Niche Economy: Farming to
Feed Ibadan and editor ofMoney Matters: Instability, Values, and Social Payments in the Modem History ofWestAfrican Communities.
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The University ofChicago Press, Chicago 60637
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The University ofChicago Press, Ltd., London © 2004 by The University of Chicago
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All rights reserved. Published 2004 Printed in tlle United States ofAmerica 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN (cloth): 0-226-31115-5 ISBN (paper): 0-226-31116-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Guyer, Jane I. Marginal gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa / Jane I. Guyer; foreword by AntllOnyT. Carter. p. cm. - (Lewis Henry Morgan lectnres ; 1997) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-31115-5 (clOtll: aile paper)-ISBN 0-226-31116-3 (pbk:
alk. paper) 1. Money-Africa, West-History. 2. Africa, West-Economic conditions. 3. Africa, West-Social conditions. 4. Economic anthropology - Africa, West. I. Title. II. Series. HG1370 .G89
2004
332.4'967 - dc22 2003014267 @ The paper used in this publication meets the
mininmm requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
To all my colleagues at the Program ofMrican Studies Northwestern University
1994-2001
CONTENTS
Foreword Preface PART I
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xiii
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INTRODUCTORY
Introduction: Diversity, Bewilderment, and the Multiplicity ofMrican Money ~ 2
Conversions: Asymmetrical Transactions
PART II
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PAR T
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PAR T
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SCALES AND TROPES
Calculation: Number and Asymmetry
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27
Rank: People and Money
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68
Quality: Commodities and Price
PER FOR MAN C E SAN D
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83
REP E R T 0 IRE S
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Volatility: A Performance in Modern Nigeria
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Institutions: Repertoires ofFinancial Option
115
Balances: Household Budgets in a meaning to acquire little by little, could refer either to installment bridewealth payments or to tlle offering of material goods as a delay tactic in fulfilling one's exchange commitments, both payable in tugudu. Above all, tugudu offered an enol' into regional trade networks through Hausa demand for peasant cloth; it was traded north along with slaves, ivory, and kola in return for cattle, horses, gowns, dyed cloth, salt, and beads (below, fig. 2.2). Given its multiple uses, one Call see why the Tiv historian Akiga could write, "Cotton was the origin of all wealth among the Tiv." An elder stayed at home "spinning unceasingly, till such time as he had enough to startweavin~'(quoted in Dorward 1976, 586). The complementarities of trade with the south were not so neat. Traders bringing European goods, firearms, and gunpowder from the south preferred to be paid in brass rods, which was their own currency (see Latllam 1971). It was also nonbreakable or perishable on the difficult overland trip to Ogoja on the Cross River. Cattle and horses were traded SOUtll mainly for sacrifice; they would not sllnrive in the tsetse belt as productive or prestige items. Indigenous clOtll was less in demand in the south, where clothing styles were less voluminous. Clearly the Tiv needed to get brass rods from elsewhere in the north in order to acquire firearms from the south. Again the trade in tugudu cloth to the Hausa could mediate the exchange, because the Hausa were willing to pay for cloth in brass rods, which was not their own main currency. They acquired them through their own trade networks.
CHAPTER TWO
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CONVERSIONS
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So two modifications need to be made to the model as extracted from Bohannan's description: one broadens its geographical range, and the other redefines its key concepts in light of that. Whatever moral spheres might have been as a Tiv nmemonic, the economy at the end of the nineteenth century comprised overlapping geographical circuits at an entrep6t between the Sahel and the Atlantic Ocean. Many of tlle items in Tiv exchange were vital components of a regional trade that was certainly yet more active and complex tllan this account can do justice to. The regional view now alters the meaning of conversion because several transactions that lool~ like conveyances within a sphere - clOtll to brass rods, brass rods to firearms and cattle, cattle to bridewealtll - are better thought of as steps toward conversions, just as Thomas (1991,78) pointed out with respect to tlle association between conversions and regional trade in tlle South Pacific. By passing through tlle hands of strangers, across s~atial boundar~e~, a conveyance could be turned into a conversion. Cloth lS the most strilGng case. Cloth could be bought through sale of crops or small livestock and sold for cattle to the Hausa, who used it for currency. Brass rods and cattle acquired through sales of cloth currency opened up two different directions of exchange: brass rods opened up tlle southern routes, and cattle opened tlle routes into tlle northern pastoral economies. (As important an item as gtllS· does not figtrre in Bohalman's scheme at all; this lapse is surely due to the difficulty of reconstructing tlle full riclmess of the past, even in tlle late 1940s.) Conversion involved placing oneself on the right routes, with tlle right goods. Figure 2.2 adds regional trade to the Tiv map of exchange. Should the number of spheres tllen be multiplied from three to many, or should the whole idea be abandoned? The much greater possibility I see here involves two moves. The first is to sever the concept of conversion from a unique reference to spheres of exchange and to "see" it at more jlllctures in transactional pathways. Tiv currency forms symbolized not a closed trallSactional model but all open set of directional transactions that work stepwise toward the constitution of stores of value that had greater longevity and security thall the currencies tllemselves. A conversion adds, subtracts, or otherwise transforms tlle attributes of exchange goods in ways that define the social direction of future trallSactional possibilities. Conversions are the compasses and landmarks on tlle navigational patllways of currency circulation. The most strilcing asymmetlY in our case here is simply directional; we lmow nothing about "real" or symbolic inequalities of value: This comes to tlle second move: to shift me focus from a structural Vlew of "spheres of exchange" to tlle historical constitution of conversions alld wealth creation, under turbulent conditions. What Bourdieu refers to as the "social alchemy" of the "endless reconversion of economic capital into symbolic capital" (1977, 195) will appear at more junctures and be more
Traders to the North
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Tugudu Cloth Slaves, Ivory, Kola
Traders to the South Figure 2.2. Tiv exchange: The historical model of regional trade.
varied thall the spheres model implies. The geographical and temporal reach that particular conversions allow will be subject to "endless" reconstiUltion as currency goods and their circuits change. A picture of"internal" and "external" dynalllics of currency before the colonial conquest can now be hazarded, thanks largely to the assiduous historical work of European scholars. So I turn here to the Equatorial sources. EXTERNALITIES AND LOCAL PROCESSES: THE LIBINZA I have learned so much from studying the sources on the Ubangi-Congo confluence as it was at the turn of tllis century, that I turn to them here. They illustrate particularly clearly tlle stepwise asymmetries of conversions in relati?n to the Congo River trading system. When I was studying the old currencles of Southern Call1eroon, I visited the Royal Museum of Central Mrica at Tervuren, in Belgium, which houses the largest collection of Central Mrican currencies in the world. The collection holds over a hundred metal o?jects, varying in size, shape, and content, all of which have figtrred at one tll11e or another as currencies in the region. To try to locate the pieces on the map, I matched the items with the acquisition records. Some records were frustrating for an anthropologist because they identified the place of purchase rather thall the place of provenallCe. But alllong the records was a magnificent list ofsLxty-eight items that had all been acquired at once in one region, by a colonial officer nanled Van de Weyer, all accorded a local value
CHAPTER TWO
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CONVERSIONS
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in the main currency of the time, the iron kwa) and each designated to an ethnic group (see figs. 2.3 and 2.4). A fine historical ~thnograp~y by Van Leynseele of one of the groups, the Libinza, offers an ~terpretatlon of the otherwise puzzling "message" conveyed by the c~llectlon.. t First a comment on the region as a whole. AlIson Qrnggen.wrote tha the Co~go River basin was characterized by "a jungle of cmrencIes" (1949) of enormous variety and complexity. Some were locally produced, such as the iron nginza made by the Yalcoma (Sanlarin 1989, 150), the .copper croisettes ofKatanga (de Maret 1981), and the varied for~s of raphia cloth that were produced in many different societies (Balandier 1968; M:-C. D upre' 1995) . Others were introduced from Emope, .such . as the. famous . brass wire known as mitakos) plate-like neptunes, al:d Idiosync~atlc 1l1ventions such as de Brazza's geometric tokens and the 1l1dustr.lally produced, anchor-shaped mandjong that G. Dupre (1995) traces to a s1l1gle trader .stationed in the Congo around 1910. Dming the second half of the nu:eteenth century, the pressme from traders trying to penetrate markets WIth
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