Federico Neiburg

Sick currencies and public numbers

Focusing on the empirical cases of Brazilian and Argentinean sick currencies (attacked by inflation), this article explore the processes of public denaturalization of currency value, as a contribution to the anthropology of numbers and money. Situated on the border between the anthropology of science (economics) and the anthropology of monetary cultures, the article looks at one of the main devices created by specialists to ‘measure and cure’ inflation (index numbers) as a true cultural device. The aim is to outline the social and cultural meanings of money and index numbers through an analysis of the interconnections between academic and everyday monetary (and number) ideas and practices.

A true coin of their dreams: Imaginary monies in Haiti (The 2010 Sidney Mintz Lecture)

This article examines a singular feature of Haitian monetary practices: the generalized use of a currency that lacks material existence as an object, coin, or banknote—the Haitian dollar. I propose a historical and ethnographic pragmatics of currencies and units of measure to illuminate (a) the dynamic of the daily economic life of Haitian people, mostly of those living in the slums of Port-au-Prince; (b) the geographies of monies and calculation that constitute the highly pluralized Haitian monetary space; and (c) the relational productivity of fictional currencies. Through an ethnographic inquiry into the meanings and uses of such currencies, this article problematizes the relations between materiality and immateriality that cloud our thinking about money, monetary transactions, and calculations.

The real in the real economy

Over the last few decades, and especially following the 2008 crisis and the current period of turbulence and uncertainty, “the real economy” has been transformed into one of the most critical concepts shaping public debates on the present and future of our collective existence. In this special section of Hau, we propose an ethnographic theory of the “real economy” by questioning how assemblages of vernacular and scientific realizations and enactments of the real economy are linked to ideas of truth and moral values; how these multiple and shifting realities become present, and entangle with historically and socially situated lives; and how the formal realizations of the real in the governance of economies engage with the experiential life of ordinary people. In this cooperative exploration of a concept that holds varied and shifting places across different disciplines, and is applied under varying conditions in the world, what comes to the fore is the huge potential of the ethnographic method. The special section, the outcome of a Wenner-Gren Foundation workshop held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2016, will be published in two parts.

The politics of the real economy

In this special section of Hau (part II), we present four texts that allow us to go further with the objective to provoke the real, ethnographically. We explore the empirical and conceptual program involved in the making of an ethnographic theory of the “real economy,” a critical concept shaping contemporary public debates about the present and future of our collective existence. In this cooperative exploration of a concept that holds varied and shifting places, we are particularly interested in questioning how assemblages of vernacular and scientific realizations and enactments of the real economy are linked to concepts of truth and to moral values; how these multiple and shifting realities become present, and entangle with historically and socially situated lives; and how the formal realizations of the real in the governance of economies engage with the experiential life of ordinary people.