Kula!

A Kula ring, as a gift, makes relations and reputations. Through the exchange kula gains value, but only due to their role.  Usually made of necklaces and arm shells, kula’s different type of worthiness disrupts typical economic standards of ‘value’. The difference between value making in kula and normal capitalist standards is substantial enough for many to wish for separate logic for making value. The idea that things and persons are together a gift, creating personal relations because of such, means that ‘things’ do not just have value in use and commodity exchange. Rather, kula has higher value in the social relationships and reputations gained from such a trade.

This idea seems obvious yet I have never gone in depth on how it effects typical standards. Gift giving has been around for quite some time, and gaining credibility is no new feature behind it. But when comparing it to capitalistic ideals, I noticed it would probably change how the whole system is viewed.

Taking it back to the main feature of this book, Matsutake, a type of mushroom, starts and ends its life as a gift. Due to its nature of only growing in only certain conditions and under no human control for recreation, the Matsutake is unpredictable especially compared to corporate rhythm. Business pushes forward as the pulse of progress, “effectively reshaping the world according to its goals and needs” (page 132). On the opposite end the spectrum, Matsutake has no rhythm besides a picker giving to a receiver. If the “economic system is presented to us as a set of abstraction requiring assumptions about participants…” (page 132) then the business world wants nothing to do with kula, as it upsets ‘what is.’

I enjoyed this part in particular: “However, it seems to me that capitalism also has characteristics of a machine, a contraption limited to the sum of its parts… But not just any translation can be accepted into capitalism. The gathering it sponsors is not openended. An army of technicians and managers stand by to remove offending parts…”  What confused me was following this sentence with “This does not mean that the machine has a static form.” When it seems to me this is kinda what she’s trying to prove?

Matsutake: Love and Middlemen

    I am fascinated by the role that matsutake mushrooms play in the world. In Japan they are given as gifts representative of long-term commitment. They are mentioned by Tsing as being involved in business partnerships and families. I noticed that romantic relationships were not mentioned. I wonder if the West has a similar culturally-universal token that represents long-term commitment that is not specific to romantic love (such as wedding bands)?

    Another important note is that the matsutake undergo a strange transition from gift to commodity as they travel overseas. Once they reach the Oregon foragers, they are less commodity again. It is the middle man process that transforms the matsutake. Is it an inherent fact of capitalism that a transportation/middle man process changes the nature of the commodity?

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

There is still a controversy around what Albert Einstein apparently said: “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live.” Though this quote seems dramatic to many people, we do know that the problem of climate change is real. We understand that the extinction of some species, transformation of nature, and more importantly the industrial society (factories, excessive use of oil and gas, and other luxurious commodities bring to us by capitalist society) is one of the primary causes of the climate change. As Anna Tsing says, “Industrial transformation turned out to be a bubble of promise followed by lost livelihoods and damaged landscapes." She highlights a fascinating topic that is very relevant to our biggest problem, climate change, today. She makes an excellent point solely using one product, Matsutake. She describes that how only one commodity can be this powerful to ruin the face of the earth.

What really intrigues me about this reading was Tsing’s approach to ethnography. She mostly focuses on the relationships. She describes how one product can carry so many layers of relationships; the relationship of mushroom with the plant, the plant with land, land with forest, mushroom with human and human with the land. Using the various layers of relationships, she precisely focuses on how these interactions between fungi and trees, between trees and land, trees and forest contribute to changing the landscape that affects the multispecies living in it. She also explicitly states that the earth doesn’t only belong to the human. If they ruin it, they ruin it for other species as well. She demonstrates that knowing about multispecies interactions is a way to understand who we really are.

She refers to mushroom as a “White Gold”. Though she doesn’t explicitly talk about the “Gold Rush”, she speaks of the mass migration for seeking employment. The evolution of Gold Rush is also another story that started by individuals and fell into corporate hands. The evolution started by individuals but, later, it was ruled by corporates, and they got the power to move the mountains through cheap labor. Most people who returned home with no benefit called the evolution myth. However, the myth influenced people in both positive and negative ways. First, it transformed the landscape, which was basically destroying the land and changing the nature in search of gold. Second, it boosted the local economy. What I am trying to say here is that the Gold Rush evolution is another example of what Tsing’s call is “capitalist ruins.”

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste

The first chapter in Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste focused on a critique of modern economists in the frame of the economic crisis of the two thousands. To be honest this reading was very technical and at times I was completely lost in the economics terms and references. Mirowski points to the under-appreciated role of academic economists in the aftermath of the crisis and their confusion and sometimes even mystification about what the reforming actions need to be to stabilize the economy. He compares the 2007 crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930's  and how action was taken to reform the entire banking system to prevent another crisis. Mirowski claims this brainstorming and application of reform has not taken place after the recent crisis. Even economists are seen to refer to the market as an almost mystical being whose reasoning and actions are not something that can be analyzed. Here is where I get confused, he claims a mixing of the neoclassical traditions and the neoliberal economic traditions. How can these traditions be melding together when they are supposedly so separate? Dr. Mirowski illustrates how the entire field of economics is becoming one that is very exclusive and that education taking part in universities is even more exclusive but how does this affect the economic system?

The Culture of Hiding Money

The Culture of Hiding Money

Author: Steven Rhue

Article: Ecologies of Investment: Crisis Histories and Brick Futures in Argentina

            We have all heard the stories from the great depression. The rush on the banks, stacks of money becoming worthless, burning money to keep warm, and the many hardships people endured in this country before it was over. For many it left a lasting impact on their view of money and trust in the banks, many of which I have head of being passed down to children and grandchildren. D’Avellas’s article about the economic crisis in Argentinian details similar stories. Rushing to the bank to take out all of your money before it was gone, and huge downturns in the economy as well as the housing market. However, Those same concerns of trust in the banks arose as well. As a result, both the U.S. Great Depression, and the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, the distrust towards banks changed the ways many saved or “stored” their money. D’Avellas article reports people storing and hiding hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, in all sorts of manners throughout their home. I have heard similar stories from friends and family who have known someone who lived through the depression, and of course the legends of money hidden in walls and buried in the back yard. 

            However in Argentina’s case, it’s not such a Legend, it seems very common place, and the idea of hiding so much money you forget where you’ve hidden stacks of it is remarkable. Again, I have also know others in the states to do similar things.They hide money not just to keep it out of the bank, but just for random occasion of needing it. This practice though, stems from the distrust of the bank and the credit they hold for you. However, in the US, and it seems in Argentina, they are still necessary for basic economic function, so one cannot completely hide their money outside of them. This article made me particularly interested in a study of those who keep their money outside of a bank, how they manage it, and how it impacts their lives. We’ve often discussed how you can’t really just keep stacks of cash around and not use credit, but can you? After reading this article I’d be interested to have another class discussion about it, and perhaps know if others have heard of similar stories from their own families or friends. Can you really trust the banks, or do we have to? 

Neoliberal Barter

The Argentinian financial crisis of the early 2000's created situations not unlike those that I am researching for my project. One aspect of the liberalization of the post-Soviet economy was the increased reliance on (already existing) barter economies. In the Russian sense it was the tightening of the military budget that made it impossible to pay contractors, energy companies, and wages in full with cash that created a cycle in which almost everything was payed in barter. Individuals were paid in food, federal taxes owed utilities were paid in oil, and so on but what is interesting in comparison is how in Russia it is very easy to profit in real money from barter whereas, for example in construction, barter in Argentina included contracts that were still related to foreign currencies. In Russia, an oil company let's say, would pay a middle man in oil which he would then transport out of the country making a fortune due to the price difference and deposit some profit in a foreign bank account while, let's say during a drought, would ship back foodstuffs which the Russian company would make a killing off if trading it locally for more oil. In Argentina, presumably because of the extensive use of the U.S. dollar barter was done with basically quasi-bank notes that circulated in a similar way in the sense of paying salaries and taxes but lacked the profitability of the Russian barter economy.

The Big Short

The Big Short showed a very different culture than the last popular financial movie that I watched, The Wolf of Wall Street. The movie followed the separate stories of individuals and offices that foresaw the collapse of the mortgage market well before it happened. Those that foresaw this collapse were not attempting to defraud anyone, or even partake in shady deals they simply went to the banks and bet against them. It was amazing to me that the banks did not look into the situation after being presented with the bets but that really plays into the idea of being "too big to fail." While I am sure that the movie was fictionalized in some ways the culture of the offices/individuals were really based on honesty, the bank worker who went in to Steve Carrel's office was dishonest to the bank but spoke very plainly to the workers of the firm and saw that there was too much to be made to screw them all over.
Another aspect of this movie was that the individuals who worked for the bank/raters were more concerned with their own wealth/commission than that of the company which really came back to bite in the end. This plays into the shortsightedness of those signing the mortgages who did not understand the terms or even have the intention to pay the mortgage back, not unlike some issues with micro-loans in India.