Alex Parkinson - Dissertation

8/4/2019 Alex Parkinson - Dissertation

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A Model for an Anthropological Economy:

Beyond the Universal and the Particular

A dissertation submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of

Master of Arts in the Faculty of Humanities

2010

Alexander Parkinson

School of Social Sciences


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List of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Introducing the Eye of Providence Economic Model ........................................................................................... 7

Why the Great Transformation Today? ............................................................................................................... 7

Outlining the Eye of Providence Methodology .................................................................................................. 8

Dialectical Interconnectivity of Components ................................................................................................. 11

Bridging the Intellectual Divide? ......................................................................................................................... 12

Theorising with the Eye of Providence Model ..................................................................................................... 14

Political Economy ...................................................................................................................................................... 14

Local Expressions, Global Forces, and Elite Interests ............................................................................15

An Interpretative Theory of Value ...................................................................................................................... 18

The Problem of Economic Value ..................................................................................................................19

The Values of Price ................................................................................................................................................21Wall Street in an Anthropological Economy ....................................................................................................... 23

The Economy, The Whitehouse, Wall Street, and High Financiers ...................................................23

The Politics of Shareholder Value in a Finance-led Economy .............................................................27

Masters of a Symbolic Universe of Value .....................................................................................................30

Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................33

Migrant Remittances in an Anthropological Economy ................................................................................... 34

What the Economists Say ................................................................................................................................... 34

Remittances and Microeconomics ..................................................................................................................35

Remittances and Macroeconomics .................................................................................................................37

Remittances and the Eye of Providence Model ............................................................................................... 41

Transnational Dynamics of Remittances .....................................................................................................42

Articulations of Value Realms ..........................................................................................................................45

Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................47

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................................... 49

Word count: 17,594

List of Diagrams

The Eye of Providence model10


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ABSTRACT

This paper critiques the privileged place of economic expertise in contemporary societyand introduces the Eye of Providence model - intended for economic anthropology - thatdirectly engages and challenges knowledge from the discipline of economics. The formaland substantive elements of the economy are situated in dialectically embedded

relationships with individuals, institutions, and ruling powers.

I exemplify how an anthropological approach to value is useful when highlighting thelimits of economic knowledge. This is achieved theoretically by blending ideas frompolitical economy with perspectives from interpretive or symbolic anthropology. Theresult is an approach that, on the one hand, pays careful attention to wider systems ofpower, such as those embodied by the term neoliberalism, and how these articulatewith local political contexts. On the other hand, it uses the concept of value or values toprobe the social, political, and cultural dynamics of economic value and to interpretmeaningfully how values shape economic action from the perspective of economicactors.

The model is tested comparatively, firstly with financiers that operate in a formallyinstituted market environment but that are shown to also function throughinstitutionalised culture and forces of political power. Secondly, it is tested on the case ofremittance makers that operate more informally through gift exchanges with their kin.This allows me to contrast the place of economic expertise in a market environment familiar ground for economists with a context that does not sit so comfortably with itsmethods.

I argue for a more humanistic approach to the economy and highlight specific points ofcollaboration with economics. I also emphasise that anthropologists should pay more

attention to the processes through which economics ideologically represents the world,rather than channelling efforts into disproving the universality of economic models.


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No portion of the work referred to in the dissertation has been submitted in support of

an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other

institute of learning.

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

i. Copyright in text of this dissertation rests with the author. Copies (by any process)

either in full, or of extracts, may be made only in accordance with instructions given by

the author. Details may be obtained from the appropriate Graduate Office. This page

must form part of any such copies made. Further copies (by any process) of copies made

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ii. The ownership of any intellectual property rights which may be described in this

dissertation is vested in the University of Manchester, subject to any prior agreement to

the contrary, and may not be made available for use by third parties without the written

permission of the University, which will prescribe the terms and conditions of any such

agreement.

iii. Further information on the conditions under which disclosures and exploitation maytake place is available from the Head of the School of Social Sciences.


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The Author

I obtained a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Corporate Communication from

Manchester Metropolitan University in 2006. This included two years of study at

Indiana-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

I worked as a stockbroker and investment manager in Manchester, UK, from 2006 to

2009, obtaining the Certificate in Investment Securities in 2007 and the Certificate in

Investment Management in 2008 from the Securities and Investment Institute.

In September 2009, I embarked on the Master of Arts (taught) in Social Anthropology at

Manchester University and began specialising in economic anthropology over the

summer of 2010.

With special thanks to Karen Sykes, Mia, David, Jarle, Irene, and Jennifer.

For Mr Alan Cave


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Introduction

The astounding dominance of the discipline of economics over the other social

sciences is all too well known in anthropology. The Economic and Social Research

Council (2009) granted less than one-fifth of the number of research awards to social

anthropology than it did to economics in 2009 and it received just over a quarter of the

number of applications (p. 64). In response to the trend that William Milberg (2009) has

described as intellectual imperialism and in order to problematize the current status

that economists occupy as the high priests of our [Western] culture (Wilk 1996, p. 33),

this paper asks what are the implications of privileging one form of knowledge over

another? What is economic expertise? In what ways and in which places can we study

the economy? How might an anthropological perspective enable a greater

understanding of contemporary economic life? In what ways can it engage

constructively with economics, not only to challenge the axioms upon which the

discipline rests but to provide new insights that connect with its understandings? Given

the centrality of economic thought in modern social and political spheres, in my view,

these are among the big questions of today, for anthropologists and for us all.

In this thesis, I will present a critique of the high value placed on economic

expertise in contemporary Western society and, in doing so, emphasise, and hopefully

enhance, the value of anthropological expertise. To this end, I introduce what I shall

refer to as the Eye of Providence economic model that offers methodological and

theoretical guidance for the subdiscipline of economic anthropology. It is here that

questions about the value of knowledge meet questions about value more generally.

What is at stake in answering these questions is an anthropology of value that

overcomes the current rule of economics as the queen of those social sciences that judge

what is good, which as a matter of no coincidence, also includes judgements made

regarding the disciplines own brand of knowledge. Indeed, by arguing for the

importance of understanding dimensions of power in relation to value, I reveal howcertain interests are served by value structures that pattern such judgements. An

anthropology of value can mark out the limitations of economic expertise embedded

ideologically in our social knowledge and practice by negotiating those areas of life

that currently fall outside of the rubric of the discipline of economics but nonetheless

influence and constitute our economic lives.


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It became apparent to me while developing the overall framework of method

and of theory that I should avoid reiterating the conceptual dichotomy of the

universal and the particular that seems to echo through so many connected debates.

Thus, I believe that we must go beyond simply arguing that the world everywhere is

different and that universal principles do not hold up in reality. Rather than merely

refuting economic expertise, I hope to engage it directly to highlight potential areas of

connection between economic knowledge and anthropological knowledge. In addition to

this, I argue that anthropology should focus on the ways in which economics

(mis)represents the world and should vie for a more humanistic intellectual perspective

on the economy. In the space between economic representation and economic reality

lies a distinct opportunity for anthropological analyses to highlight social, cultural, and

political dynamics that can draw the two disciplines closer together.

The opening section outlines the methodological areas of the Eye of Providence

model, which situates the economy as a set of both ideas and functionings in relation

to individuals, institutions, and ruling powers. To add theoretical direction, the second

part considers how the model relates to political economy and interpretative

approaches to the anthropology of value. I do not suggest that these two theoretical

perspectives are the only ones compatible with my model; however, for the purposes of

this paper, they should be considered part and parcel of the conceptual apparatus.

The remainder of the paper endeavours to emphasise the importance of this specificblend of prescriptions for an anthropological economy theoretical, methodological,

and epistemological in a more concrete fashion and across two very different contexts.

Hence, the third section reinterprets ethnographic research conducted with finance

workers to reveal the influence of culture in a formally instituted environment. The final

part investigates the less-instituted practices of international money transfers

undertaken by remittance-makers to contrast economists understandings with that of

anthropologists. This comparative analysis not only shows anthropologically how

people live economic lives in spaces of divergent degrees of (in)formality. More

importantly, it also enables me to contrast the nature and place of economic expertise

vis--vis anthropological expertise, as well as the place and role of money in each social

setting.


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Introducing the Eye of Providence Economic Model

Why the Great Transformation Today?

The inspiration for my model initially came from Hann and Harts (2009)

rethinking of Polanyi in a contemporary context. Polanyi was principally concerned with

the relationship between the market and society, particularly with tracing how the

former became central to the latter and emphasising the destructive social

consequences that ensue when self-regulating markets form the bases of societies.

Importantly, he showed that this was achieved through political power rather than

natural social evolution, contradicting common belief. He was not opposed to the

utilisation of markets to allocate goods and services from a more marginal position in

society but to the dominant position that self-regulated markets can come to occupy

when the market principle reigns supreme. Hann and Hart (2009) have similar concernstoday, characterising unrestrained markets as engines of inequality and arguing that

the notion of markets as a natural force beyond social regulation serves also to

legitimize [sic] wealth and even to make poverty seem deserved (p. 3). In structuring

my model, I have largely drawn on the idea of the interplay between the market1 and

society,2 as well as Polanyis notion of embeddedness.3

Polanyi believed that the market fundamentalism to which he was opposed

would ultimately lead to a political reaction and a withdrawal to more socially sensitive

economic practices. Certainly, his fears may have been quelled with the rise to

dominance of the U.S. as an economic superpower, enabled through market expansion

(Hart 2000). However, with the global spread of neoliberal ideology since the 1980s,

perpetuated by market fundamentalists epitomised by Reagan and Thatcher, Keynesian

and socialist forms of economic management were dislodged; consequently, a situation

has arisen that Polanyi did not envisage when writing in the 1940s but that has

nonetheless imbued his ideas with a new resurgence (Hann & Hart 2009). There are

1 I take the market to be both an economic idea and a functioning of the economy. I conflate the termsmarket, finance, and economy throughout the paper.2 In the model, I have split society into individuals, institutions, and ruling powers.3 Although it has been argued that embeddedness is not one of Polanyis main concepts and that it wasactually transformed by sociologists into the mainstream of the discipline (Beckert 2009), it is the re-thinking of Polanyis ideas that I am concerned with here, rather than tracing a genealogy of ideas. I hopeto show that Gudemans (2009a) concept of dialectical embeddedness is useful when understandingcontemporary economies.


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parallels between Polanyis description of European societies during The Great

Transformation and the current revival of self-regulating markets through neoliberal

globalisation, as the market is once again considered vital to the functioning of society

(Servet 2009, pp. 72-74). With the focus on market relations, itcertainly seems that a

quest for a better understanding of contemporary economic life4

Hann and Hart (2009) argue that the discipline of economics has mainly

concerned itself with individuals assumed to be economic decision-makers and market

participants. Yet peopleper se do not feature in their calculations; hence, the idea of an

economy with humans has been left for other social scientists to pursue. The baton was

partly carried by sociologists whose interest was invigorated from the late 1970s due to

the perceived rise in the importance of understanding economic concerns in relation to

social integration (Beckert 2009, pp. 38-41). Anthropologists, too, have felt obligated to

address the main views of economists, as economics became the ideological and

practical arm of global capitalism (Hann & Hart 2009, p. 12). The editors (2009) call for

more anthropologists to directly challenge economists at their own game of national and

global economic analysis in order to assess the world economy in whole and by part

and investigate further whether or not capitalist economy rests on human principles of

universal validity (p. 13). The remainder of this section and the one that follows lay the

conceptual groundwork for this type of study by offering a model for economicanthropology. My work is not based on research experience and is thus restricted by the

walls of a library-based study. However, I hope to still set out specific research

objectives, as well as some general questions to be explored.

should begin by riding

this resurgent wave of Polanyian (re)thinking.

Outlining the Eye of Providence Methodology

The model, as outlined in figure 1 below, has within its triangular enclosure a

component for economy that encompasses both economic ideasper se and the actual

functionings of an economy that occur out there in the world. The world of ideas, for

instance, would consist of neoclassic theories ranging from hypotheses of efficient

markets to notions of individual rationality but also more socially sensitive concepts,

4 I use the term economic life to incorporate the perspectives of production, distribution, exchange, andconsumption.


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such as the domestic moral economy. The physical functionings are the substance of the

market. They would, for example, consist of the actual buying and selling that occurs in a

marketplace, such as that on the London Stock Exchange, as well as activity in the

housing market, which is perhaps more loosely enacted through the market principle

than through a physical marketplace. I have situated the economy within this enclosed

area to illustrate the dialectical embeddedness (discussed below) with the other

components at each of the three points of the triangle.

The top point of the model the pyramids tip represents the ruling powers

and their rulings and interests. It may, for instance, reflect modern capitalist state

agendas to protect the economy from inflation through monetary policy. The component

of the model that points to institutions and their knowledges and practices does

not simply signify economic phenomena relating to organisations or to economic

institutions themselves but also includes institutions, such as the household or family.

Finally, the point of the model that incorporates individuals and their thoughts and

actions highlights the importance of considering peoples economic agency and the

meaning that they attach to their economic lives. In accordance to the Polanyian

rethinking that I have outlined above, these four main elements of the framework

represent the fundamental perspectives from which I believe social scientists should try

to understand economic life.

I have named my economic model the Eye of Providence for two reasons. Firstly,its structure resembles the symbol of the Eye of Providence, which is probably most

ubiquitously represented on the Great Seal of the U.S. one dollar bill and that has the

words Annuit Coeptis God favours our undertakings placed above it. Taken

together, these signs are said to refer to the many divine interventions for the American

cause (U.S. Department of State 2003, pp. 6 & 15). Given that the all-seeing eye can be

interpreted as God watching over all of humanity, it is rather fitting with a central tenet

of this paper; namely, that the economy, or the eye, has become so important to modern

capitalist societies that we can think of this Great Transformation as an apotheosis. The

state may intervene but it acts only in the divine name of a Capitalist Democratic

Economy. Therefore, my second motive for labelling my model this way is to invoke the

metaphor of the eye. I use it interchangeably with the economy in order to


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emphasise the piety towards, and the power emanating from, the associated ideas and

functionings.

Figure 1 The Eye of Providence Economic Model:

* The borders on each component are intentionally dashed to emphasise the crossover

between the concepts.

** All connections are dialectical.

*** Economic ideas discussed in this essay are mapped onto the sub-component box in

the following order: 1. Market economy; 2. Marketplace; 3. Domestic Moral Economy; 4.

Remittances. I have ordered the examples in every sub-component box of the model

correspondingly.

***

*

**

RulingsMonetary policy

De-regulation

Confer chiefly title

Force state

governments to act

InterestsControl inflation

Reduce trade barriers

Increase chiefly power

Encourage investment

of remittances

IndividualsInstitutions

Ruling Power

Economy

IdeasA market economy

Marketplace

Domestic Moral Economy

Remittance phenomenon

FunctioningsCapitalist transactions

Banking deals

Cycling gift system

Total remittances

KnowledgesEconomic reports

Analyst reports

Services rendered

Kinship ties

PracticesIMF policy pressure

Raise capital

Serve chief and kin

Remit to kin

ActionsSell labour

Buy stock

Share food with kin

Migrate and remit

ThoughtsAccumulate money

Make a profit

Value sharing

Value family


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Dialectical Interconnectivity of Components

Having outlined the main components of the framework, I now depict the

relationship between the parts. Polanyi emphasises how the economy became

disembedded from existing social relations as the Western world made the transition to

industrial society. Neoclassic economists would happily leave things there, perceiving

any embeddedness as a flaw to the ideal functioning of the economy. Even the New

Institutional Economists overlook the a priori relationships that constitute actors,

despite observing the emergence and form of economic institutions (Gudeman 2009a,

pp. 32-34). To rectify this, Gudeman (2009a) argues for a dialectical approach to society

and the market as both embedded and disembedded and considers the two different

value realms that surround each. On the one hand, people are only connected through

market trade by alienating and impersonal contracts. On the other, there is a mutual

economic base of shared interests and holdings of people who are themselves products

of others within the base. Gudeman (2009a) argues that this division is a continuing

dialectic in all economies, where it assumes different historical forms and degrees of

tension (p. 37). Mutuality is essential to the existence of all economies, even those that

have become submerged in the market, but it is also undermined by the very market

practices and models that it supports, while this dependency link is itself erased. This is

exemplified when companies mystify downsizing by presenting themselves as

communities to the employees on which they depend, while the downsizing itself

undermines mutuality and holds wages down, despite the rhetoric of increased

productivity (Gudeman 2009a, pp. 28 & 29). My model supports the illumination of such

dynamics.

We could posit further that the relationship between all four elements of the

model is characterised by dialectical mutual constitution. Berger and Luckman (1966)

depict the social order as an ongoing human production where action becomes

patterned and the patterning eventually becomes habitually typified into institutions(pp. 69-78). This world is then objective and antecedent to individuals, as the product

acts back upon the producers in a dialectical relationship whereby: Society is a human

product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product (p. 79). Once this first-

order of social institutionalisation has been established, it must be made plausible by a

second-order process of legitimisation, for which Berger and Luckman (1966) identify


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four distinct and ascending levels (pp. 110-122). Reinterpreted for a neoliberal capitalist

economy, one could say that these are: incipient transmission of a vocabulary of self-

interest, such as you have to think of yourself in business; basic theoretical

propositions that explain sets of meanings, such as the economic proverb a rising tide

lifts all boats; explicit theories of an institutional sector with a separate stock of

knowledge, such as economics; and finally, at the highest level, the symbolic universe

that amalgamates discrete provinces of meaning and encompasses the institutional

order, such as a universe of value.

Bridging the Intellectual Divide?

As I alluded to in the introduction, a great intellectual split can be discerned when

considering the history of economic anthropology. Having outlined my model, I can now

explore this a little further. The divide was perhaps most pronounced when it

manifested as the opposing force between the two schools of thought that comprised

The Great Debate. I do not revisit the formalist-substantivist debate but invoke it only

to demonstrate the models capacity to draw together these divergent views. Wilk

(1996) believes that the debates disengagement derives from each partys starting

point, which he claims made the perspectives mutually exclusive. The formalists begin

with individuals, considered to be rational self-interested maximizers, while the

substantivists start at the level of societies, the institutions of which they say act as

structures for economic life (pp. 1-13). Thus, the methodology of the former view

assumes the universality of the individual and the latter implies the particularity of each

social context.

The roots of the intellectual dichotomy at the heart of the formalist-substantivist

debate run much deeper and farther back. Carrier (2009a) traces the universal-

particular divide back respectively to the individual contract posited by Spencer and the

social contextualisation of Durkheim. The divide continued to the primitive acquisitive

tendency that Malinowski identified in the Trobrianders against the social and historical

context of self-interest that Mauss argued for (pp. 20-22). Disputes between those that

saw a world of ideas and those who tried to understand things as they are date back

even to the time of Plato and Aristotle (Blavatsky 1939). I assume that in reality the

divide is more of an intellectual continuum than a dichotomous split and that there are

truths in either view that are worth exploring. This leaves me with one caveat and one


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challenge. Firstly, I must avoid the pitfalls of adhering too strongly to either perspective;

namely, by positing that everything is like this or that everything is different.

Secondly, I should aspire, where possible, to productively reconcile this age-old

epistemological separation. Indeed, my model is designed to encourage adherence to

these prescriptions.


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Theorising with the Eye of Providence Model

The Eye of Providence economic model, as outlined so far, is more methodological

in that it highlights four conceptual areas where researchers might examine the

economy. Although it does include some theoretical discussion, such as dialectics and

embeddedness, it is necessary to further elaborate the theoretical account in line with

the aspirations of the paper. Navigating through the notions of the universal and the

particular, of representation and reality, and of anthropological and economic expertise,

will take more than conceptual cartography. We also need a theoretical compass to

direct our way. As I mentioned at the outset, in developing an anthropological theory of

value, I have chosen to invoke political economy and interpretive approaches to value,

which are key themes from Hann and Harts (2009) edited volume, because they

generally differ with respect to their orientations to society and to the individual. The

theoretical apparatus of political economy lends itself to studies of the ruling powers

and institutions, whereas interpretative value theory is generally more applicable to

the element for individuals. These complementary perspectives, though, are not

exclusive to the stated domains, allowing me to interweave the theoretical analysis and

open up the economic realm in a unified fashion. I now introduce the two lines of

investigation that constitute the final parts of my model and that I will later apply to the

cases of finance workers and remittance makers.

Political Economy

At the societal level, I have opted for a view of political economy, rather than say

emphasising a Durkheimian functional approach, to allow for a political slant when

connecting with economics (Wilk 1996, p. 83). This may seem at odds with Steiners

(2009) criticism of Polanyi vis--vis the Durkheimians for not attending to the

functioning of the market, assuming market mentality to be obsolete, and for endorsing

rather than challenging its economic assumptions (pp. 68-71). Indeed, Steiners (2009)

stress on [a] more accurate study of the interplay between economic thought,

institutions, and the economy does seem to superimpose comfortably onto the

framework of my model (p. 71). Moreover, his discussion of the importance of the

teaching of economics, which is powerfully employed to extend the market, and on how

economic knowledge is embodied by market tools and apparatus, such as the use of


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economic models in contemporary financial markets, seems to link well with the

dialectical interconnectivity of the model (pp. 68-71). While this approach may also fit

my model, I develop a more Marxist stance on this occasion to emphasise the political

and power dimensions of economic life rather than simply observing the functional

aspects of an economy, as if it were a component of something that derives from a

unified structure (Wilk 1996, pp. 83-93). Nevertheless, by dealing with economic ideas

and functionings directly, I clearly do not ignore Steiners (2009) concerns.

Local Expressions, Global Forces, and Elite Interests

I begin with a less extreme case of political power, which nonetheless shows that

investigating the dynamic relationship between political powers and economic forms is

vital if we wish to comprehend the latter. Even in situations where the connection may

ostensibly be trivial, power is prevalent. Carrier (2009b) augments this point when he

compares our current moment of neoliberalism to Polanyis notion of the self-regulating

market growing free and expanding to other areas of life, as money itself becomes the

measure and value of individuals. He argues that neoliberalism permeates many aspects

of life that are not ostensibly economic; thus, in order to understand these phenomena,

we must attend to economic beliefs, motivations, institutions, and practices (pp. 240-

242). To exemplify this, Carrier (2009b) discusses his research of environmental

conservation in Jamaica. In a political economic milieu where the heavily indebted

government, owing to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had no money for

conservation, activists had to appeal to the commercial advantages of protecting the

coastal areas through an emphasis on tourism. This was not simply a consequence of the

self-regulating market model but an outcome of the way the environmental activists had

to operate through extending the market principle to commodify the coastal land and

local labour force. Nevertheless, the market reach was largely realised as park

management eventually became reduced to the financial bottom line and a goodenvironment came to mean a profitable space for attracting tourists, a profitable

space, that is, for large overseas corporations (Carrier 2009b, pp. 242-255).

I revisit this case briefly below but for now wish to note that it raises an

important point about how ethnographers should think about engaging with political

economy, since it essentially represents a local expression of global and national forces.


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Marcus and Fischer (1986) call for ethnographic fieldwork to represent external

systems[through] their thoroughly local definition and penetration, and [that] are

formative of the symbols and shared meanings within the most intimate life-worlds of

ethnographic subjects (p. 39). However, it is not sufficient to simply reveal these

expressionsper se, as we must also consider the broader scale of political economy. For

Marcus and Fischer (1986), these political economic forces should be the object of study

for anthropology, even if this macrosystem perspective entails traversing multiple field

sites (pp. 90-95).5

David Harvey (2005) offers a particularly Marxist view of these broader

processes, interpreting neoliberalism a sweeping abstraction that he invokes to

describe a plethora of different actions as a political project that creates the conditions

for elites to accumulate capital. Combining his arguments with Carriers (2009b)

research in Jamaica, we could posit that the neoliberal ideology forcefully circulated

through the IMF allowed it to continue charging crippling interest payments to an

indebted country and force the reduction of trade barriers and capital flows to allow

foreign tourism corporations and investors to gain capital opportunistically within the

countrys borders. From Harveys (2005) standpoint, the unlikelihood of Jamaica simplydefaulting on its debt and its inability to negotiate more socially-friendly terms would be

attributed to neoliberal reforms that made the borrower take the losses on defaults (p.

29), the precedent set by the New York fiscal crisis that favoured a good business

climate over social well-being (p. 48), and the full authority given to the IMF in cases of

default, whereby it will always protect financial firms (p. 73). Indeed, when the

Jamaican government accepted stringent fiscal controls in order to obtain a U.S.$240

million IMF loan in 1978, those opposed to the move predicted lower wages for

Jamaican workers and higher profits for multinationals (Bolles 1983, p. 138). The

calamitous consequences of this from the Jamaican perspective are perhaps most

passionately communicated in Stephanie Blacks documentary Life and Debt(2001).

By connecting economic forms and individuals to the forces of

institutions and ruling powers that shape them, my model notably advocates the kind of

research that the authors envisage. But what might this type of macrosystem view be

and how can it complement an understanding of local economic forms?

5 At the time of their writing, this was perhaps a more innovative statement than if it were made now. Thenotion of a multi-sited ethnography has indeed become part of the mainstream in anthropology.


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While Harvey (2005) offers a rather radical perspective of political economy, it is

nonetheless instructive in showing the importance of attending to the ways in which

external influences can forcefully shape a given locale. This is particularly crucial even if

we only partially accept Harveys (2005) depiction of the uneven spread of

neoliberalism around the globe. Graebers (2009) depiction of our current era as the

empire of debt does seem to echo these concerns. It is characterised, he says, by

electronic consumer transactions, national economies driven by consumer debt, and

financialisation that is increasingly detached from direct relations to commerce or

production. Not only are we seemingly devoid of the social controls in place to curtail

debt but this age has also witnessed the establishment of the first effective planetary

administrative system, operating through the IMF, the World Bank, corporations, and

other financial institutions, largely in order to protect the interests of creditors against

debtors (p. 130). I am not suggesting that neoliberalism is the only broad systemic

force to be reckoned with, nor am I ignoring alternative views of it that de-emphasise its

homogenising and hegemonic character (Ong 2006). I have merely chosen to utilise the

abstraction because it exemplifies my point about external forces. However, since it is

usually employed to encompass notions of market fundamentalism and processes of

global spread, tracing the influences of neoliberal ruling powers that operate through

neoliberal institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF may be a decent

starting-point when thinking about external influences on economic forms, especiallythose that we would usually refer to as capitalist.

The dynamics of political economy can also be fathomed by unpacking economic

ideas themselves. Graeber (2009) emphasises this point when he argues that drawing

boundaries or making models is problematic since what we call social or economic

systems are, in reality, an endless interweaving of dyadic relations that often operate

according to completely different principles (p. 131). He argues that the market:

is a model created by isolating certain principles within a complex system [] and thencreating a totalizing model within which the books all balance and all debts and

credits ultimately cancel one another out (pp. 131-132).

If markets, like societies, are ideological gestures that do not exist out there in the

world but rather are a specific way in which a society represents itself, it is important to

look at whose interests a particular model is serving and question the types of value that


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are being realised. As Graeber (2009) illustrates, a market sells a house, where as the

market justifies capitalist principles (p. 132), such as the commodification of Jamaica or

of humans and nature more broadly.

If we accept Graebers (2009) argument, it indicates that anthropologists must

attempt to understand more than the functioning of a market and probe the influences

and interests of political powers and their effects on that facet of the economy. This may

even entail challenging the raison d'tre of existing ideas about the latter. In short, it

means asking whythis is happening, rather than justwhatis going on. My point is that it

would be insufficient, for instance, to argue abstractly that defaults on subprime

mortgages can be understood as what Stuart Kirsch (2006) might refer to as

unrequited reciprocity rather than, say, failed market exchange. We also require a

better comprehension of the positioning of different actors in such practices, the

institutional context that enabled the loans to take place, and the states neoliberal

agenda that promoted less regulation. In our empire of debt, it was quite acceptable

for greedy opportunistic creditors to loan money to people who could not afford to pay

it back. In sum, we must aspire to interpret the interplay between the local and the

external political influences on economic actors and institutions, as well as the internal

political dynamics that constitute economic ideas themselves. This is a holistic ambition

that may not be truly achievable in modern ethnography; however, it is a step towards a

better understanding of the forces that shape economic life and a further opportunityfor interdisciplinary dialogue.

An Interpretative Theory of Value

Leaving things there would do no justice to the dialectical relationships that I

have depicted above. Economic life would simply be a socio-political product and the

inherent meanings would be left unexamined. If the previous section brought the

individual into the picture as an activist within a Jamaican political economic system,this part tries to reveal the picture as seen from the individual. This allows us to enter

the world of minds and presents the possibility of revealing a more Weberian view of

economics as something that is embedded deeply in culture and belief, rather than vice-

versa with a Marxist take (Wilk 1996, p. 110). To achieve this, I probe the meaning of

value(s) in different contexts to effectively map out a symbolic structure of meaning,


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thus, extending the concept of an anthropological theory of value and its connection to

forms of economic life. By meshing symbolic anthropology with the dynamics of political

economy, the Eye of Providence model should hopefully encourage [a]n interpretative

anthropology [that is] fully accountable to its historical and political-economy

implications (Marcus & Fischer 1986, p. 86).

The Problem of Economic Value

Developing a symbolic theory of value takes us far beyond thinking about value

in the purely rational economic terms of labour, scarcity, and utility, and considers

instead how value is determined through relations between different groups. In doing

so, it becomes apparent that there are alternatives to our current world configuration,

which was manufactured by economists and based on relations of self-interest (Servet

2009, pp. 87-89). Economic theories of value were developed through the myth of value

as natural and isolated from politics and where exchange counterparts in the market

could have complete freedom to make choices, maintain an equal standing to one

another, and have the ability to act with full rationality. Servet (2009) argues that these

theories were:

objective [since] they rationalized the relationship between a person (conceived of as

by nature an egotistical individual) and a world of things where others exist only

through competition for access to those things (pp. 89).

This conflicts with the notion of humanity as having the potential for solidarity,

interdependence as a community, and being obligated to future societies. Classical

economists, positing their world of self-interest, could not resolve this problem, which

Polanyi made explicit, of recognising both the needs of the individual and of society (pp.

89-90). This is something that I hope an anthropological theory of value will achieve.

To understand the problems surrounding past and current theories of value(s),

we must venture much deeper than these logics of exchange. For instance, what kinds ofexpertise do we miss by assuming a narrow view of value? Graeber (2005) maintains

that contemporary economists have limited the focus of their discipline to the

production of mathematical models of resource allocation for profit or consumer

preferences; consequently, questions of value, which were central to economics at the

birth of the discipline, have been sidelined and left for anthropologists and other


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scholars to explore. Moreover, he highlights that it was questions of value that set

neoclassic economists apart from their predecessors, as the meaning of value

transcended the physical altogether, and became simply a subjective measure of desire

(p. 440). From here on, the price and value of objects became increasingly

indistinguishable from one another. Adam Smith developed the labour theory of value to

explain the difference between the exchange value and use value of objects. Ricardo

identified the problem of depressed wages. Marx critiqued the wage system,

characterising it as destructive of all that is worthwhile and meaningful. However, this

kind of intellectual insight was swept aside by the marginalist revolution that redefined

economics as a discipline devoted to studying the formation of price (pp. 441-443).

I kindly ask for the readers patience here, as one may recognise that I am

traversing material to which some scholars dedicate an entire career. My point is,

however, that there was a fundamental change, a paradigm shift perhaps, that makes

this whole process work. Was this shift in economic expertise simply down to myopia? I

suspect probably not. Maybe it can be better viewed as a constructive distinction that

was produced largely through political power when making the shift in perspective

away from the theorists mentioned above, one that followed on historical changes in the

key economic activities of men and women; that is, the movement from mid-nineteenth

century U.K. production to consumption at the turn of the following century. While the

underlying dynamics of the change are important because they allow us to see howeconomic ideas change vis--vis economic functionings, so too is the state of the present

situation. Significantly, a contemporary study of value would typically surpass what we

would usually refer to as economics, for it leads us into moral, aesthetic and symbolic

territory that is very hard to reduce to rational calculation and science (Graeber 2005,

p. 453). Grasping the particular is not a calculative act but judging the universal is.

So how else can we theorise about value(s)? When questioning the existence of

an anthropological theory of value, Graeber (2005) outlines three uses of the term:

values in the socio-philosophical sense, value in the economic usage, and value in

the Saussurean linguistic sense. If one considers these terms to essentially be instances

of the same thing, it implies a common foundation for the three meanings, a symbolic

system of value that defines the world in terms of what is important, meaningful,

desirable or worthwhile in it (Graeber 2005, p. 439). In the sections below, I will


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attempt to delineate such a system by analysing different usages of value(s). With

regards to the latter of the three usages, the Saussauran approach to value as meaningful

difference, I specifically investigate Graebers (2005) claim that it may be able to

mediate understandings between individuals and systems. Moreover, Graeber (2005)

invokes Dumonts notion of classic structuralist ideas as values that are hierarchical and

able to become inverted at different levels. This may be especially pertinent to this

paper since, as he argues, Dumont believed Western society is no longer hierarchical,

not because Westerners value equality but because the supreme value is now the

individual, which has allowed the market, as a sphere of individual self-realisation, to

become the highest sphere (pp. 447-50).

The Values of Price

If value is conflated with price in our current economic world, then perhaps it

will pay to also scratch below the surface of commodity prices to reveal the social

processes behind them and popular understandings of them. Guyers (2009) work on

price provides a suitable account with which to close this section because it

amalgamates an expanded notion of value with an awareness of the concealment of

political power. She shows how, in the twenty-first century, economic actors are

increasingly aware that composite elements constitute prices, rather than simply

assuming prices to be singular wholes. As shrewd consumers, we are now reminded ofthe fabrications of prices, such as those encompassed by currency exchanges. The

outcome, Guyer (2009) claims, is a moral economy of transparently composite prices,

which nevertheless retain the mystery of their components (p. 205). Thus, she argues

that we should investigate the components encompassed by prices that are diffusely

hidden amongst the traditional elements (pp. 203-205).

Guyer (2009) demonstrates this through a case where the price of gasoline in the

U.S. rose sharply by a dollar and rocked the projections of budgets from households to

corporations. Forced to explain the rise, petroleum companies claimed that despite the

rise in the nominal price of oil, there was a steady proportional return and they

distinguished between crude oil costs, taxes, refining costs and profits, and distribution

and marketing. They did not include profit on capital as a composite category, which

made costs of finance imperceptible; thus, the public representation of price was as


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proportions of the retail price that was itself based on market actors from producers to

retailers. Furthermore, financial speculation on the commodity through futures

contracts, driving up the price, was the composite component that was eventually

determined to be the impetus behind the rise, which itself created further incentives to

invest in oil. However, these factors, and indeed the great resulting profits made from

investment banks, can only constitute part of the market price of crude from the view

presented to consumers. Risk management and consulting costs, from which the great

benefactors seem to be investment banks, are diffusely hidden (pp. 208-210).

Guyers (2009) analysis may be useful here not only because it suggests that

values are composite and allows us to investigate them as such. It also portrays a case

where companies produced socially important economic expertise by (mis)representing

the very factors that they were supposed to explain. Beyond the singular numerical

aspects of numbers lies an array of social dynamics that affect their composition. If our

task involves working with economic numbers or with theories that imply that

numbers are wholes then Guyer (2009) shows that an understanding of their

composite structure and how it is negotiated is crucial if we are to probe the concealed

interests, motivations, and forces that are masked by these public ideologies of price. So

it is not just economic models that we must unpack but also the numbers that are fed

into them. If numbers cannot simply be taken at economic face value, this presents a

clear point-of-entry for anthropology to interpret their associated social, cultural, andpolitical aspects.


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Wall Street in an Anthropological Economy

Having set out the conceptual framework of this paper, I now reinterpret Karen

Hos (2009) monograph of high finance6

on Wall Street through the lens of the Eye of

Providence model and pursue the theoretical approaches of value and political economy.

Ho (2009) offers a unique view of Wall Street, having initially worked there as a

management consultant and later through probing her network of financial and

economic actors when conducting fieldwork. Her ethnography allows us to understand

an aspect of capitalism from the perspective of financial market actors and institutions

that possess a considerable degree of economic and political agency. With this influence

in mind, a broader view can also be attained of the effects on both the trends in the

economy and in the structure of corporate America. For Ho (2009), the divorce of what

is in the best interests of corporations from that of employees is a new feature of

capitalism, whereby long-term social institutions have transformed into short-term

liquid spaces under the dictates of Wall Street. Thus, we can investigate how people

actually use and produce economic ideas and functionings not only on-the-ground but

on a Street that is a well-instituted environment and an icon of modern market

capitalism.

The Economy, The Whitehouse, Wall Street, and High Financiers

If we accept the notion of the market being disembedded from society, it implies

that the labour market in high finance operates freely from stringent social ties, a

meritocracy that is based on individuals competing fairly and equally for such highly

remunerative and prestigious places in todays society; however, such an assumption

would amount to a grave neglect of the organisational mutuality that governs this

process. As Ho (2009) shows, Wall Street institutions and elite universities maintain

huge feeder relationships that naturalise banking careers as the main destinations for

top graduates of any discipline. The investment banks actually operate a quota systemfor the schools, with a huge bias to recruiting students from Harvard and Princeton.

Candidates are actively poached from these two schools regardless of whether they can

demonstrate technical banking ability, whereas candidates from other universities lack

6 As with the market, I consider finance and financial markets to be both an idea and a functioning ofthe economy.


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the socio-cultural capital and must prove themselves otherwise. Moreover, that

intelligence is not considered a quality of a person but a currency that proves a persons

worth attests to the mutual ties that underlie the dealings in this currency (pp. 39-72).

On the one side, investment bankers are recruited and constructed through

embedded ties of mutuality and are patterned into Wall Streets culture of smartness,

hard work, and compensation. Furthermore, these connections also influence the

success that one may have once hired, as there are better opportunities to meet with

directors who themselves graduated from these elite schools. This is exemplified by the

case of a talented black woman who left banking because she felt alienated for having

attended a non-elite school (pp. 61 & 62). Despite the culture of hard work where green

is supposedly the only colour, Ho (2009) shows how ethnicity greatly determines career

paths. African-Americans generally assumed roles that required less networking and

harder work, while Asians normally ended up in technical or product-focused positions.

The privileged client-facing roles with the large bonuses were mostly earmarked for

white upper-class males (pp. 106-121). Such filtering could not take place without pre-

existing social ties and dispositions being transposed as conduits onto the supposedly

neutral marketplace. Peoples way on the Street is largely already paved by social

relations and institutions, although it does seem that money can still buy status for those

that can afford an elite education.

On the other side, one could argue for the disembeddedness of the actions ofthese market actors given that their greed almost reduced the Street to rubble in the

latest crisis, never mind helping to engender a global recession. Meanwhile, the bonuses

that bankers collected were still astronomically large and unfair (p. 225). The labour

force might recruit through strong ties of mutuality but, once operational, bankers were

only able to accrue such high levels of risk and large amounts of wealth by functioning as

disembedded from concern for society at large. This was largely enabled through acts of

deregulation by the ruling power7

7 A contrast can be made with this Western view to Hertzs (1998) monograph of stock market traders inShanghai. She shows that the traders interpret the market in political terms, thus in China, you cannotlook at economics without looking at politics (p. 26). The market is more overtly embedded in the rulingsand interests of the ruling power. In Hos (2009) book, the lines between what constitutes the rulingpowers and the financial institutions are much fuzzier.

that instantiated a greater degree of

disembeddedness. Ho (2009) alludes to this process by mentioning the rollback of the

Glass-Steagall act in the late 1990s that allowed deposit-taking banks and casino banks


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to operate as one (p. 7). She also mentions how the takeover movement of the 1980s

could only occur through deregulation and favouring of private ownership (p. 136).

While Ho (2009) purports that a finance capital-led version of capitalismis not so

much about disembedding as it is about power relations (p. 34), I would note that

disembedding describes a process, where as power relations suggest how this process

may have been enacted. Whatever the case, my model clearly highlights the need to

attend to both the cause, as the political power through institutions, and effect, as shifts

in the dialectical embeddedness.

The dialectical mutual constitution of the elements of the model can also be

discerned from Hos (2009) monograph. This is perhaps most evident in her illustration

of the interplay between economic ideas and functionings and institutions knowledge

and practices. A major theme of her book is how the institutions of Wall Street have

incredible influence over those of corporate America through encouraging their

downsizing and realigning them to the short-term. This does not engender productive

growth but short-term mortgaged productivity that leads to broader economic booms

and busts (p. 293). Economic and financial expertise is used by one group in society to

realign social relations throughout the country. This is achieved by both acting out and

perpetuating particular ideas about the way in which the economy should function. If we

also consider that investment bankers are paid huge sums for their services, an image of

economic expertise as a prized asset that can be exchanged for wealth usually in themoney form begins to emerge.

More specifically, through her focus on employment, Ho (2009) analyses the

nexus of investment banking culture and strategy and the intersections with

corporations, markets, and economies (pp. 213-215). On the one side, employment

decisions bear a relation to, but do not mirror, the stock market, and shareholder value

(p. 227). While Wall Street prides itself on reacting much more quickly to market

movements than other corporations (p. 229), these corporations are also pressured

from the cultural dynamics of Wall Street to adopt downsizing as the general model for

workplaces (p. 247). Any tension deriving from bankers self-concern or concern for

others was reconciled by them resorting to market externalisations as economic ideas

to rationalise the prevalence of rampant downsizing. In this case, it was not the

company intentionally promoting itself as a community that mystified downsizing but


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the institutional culture and individual beliefs of bankers. Like some sort of religious

doctrine, people actually refer to economic ideas when justifying the undermining of

mutuality and of themselves. Moreover, that investment banks actually get enrolled in

their own hype, and the market trends that they help to engender, further attests to

notion of the creation acting back upon the creators (pp. 318-324).

For Ho (2009), this fetishization of the invisible hand obscures what happens on

the other side of the dialectic; to wit, the role of investment banks in constructing

unstable financial markets and jobs (pp. 234 & 235). Threatened with job cuts even

during boom times, perhaps to protect the bonus pools of elites (p. 240), bankers are

compelled to extract whatever they can out of the present regardless of the cost to

society (p. 233). In addition to past crises, Ho (2009) discusses the substantial role of

investment banks in engendering the subprime boom and the disastrous social

consequences that came with the bust. Through generating a global market for

mortgages by creating various sophisticated instruments, hyping them, and peddling

them around the globe to investors (pp. 297-302), Wall Street eventually created a

global web of risk that they themselves could not decipher (p. 321). Future ideas about

economies and present functionings of economies are shaped by the collective agency of

those acting within, and dually transforming, the institution of investment banking.

Hos (2009) ethnography is intriguing because it shows that the economic actors

within the well-instituted hub of the worlds financial markets actually operate largelythrough culture. Hence, she argues that we should look behind abstracted notions of

the market since bankers appeals to naturalized market cycles must also be

understood as particular cultural self-representations borne out of everyday Wall Street

work life, not reification of market dominance (p. 242). She re-imagines the market as a

space of human values, emotions, and institutional standards, a site of everyday

practices as opposed to an abstract concept. Wall Street has not simply reconstructed

the world to its image of shareholder value but has actualised a model that is [in fact]

the bankers cultural model of themselves as coeval and identified with the market (p.

252, italics in original). In this case, the market principle has become submerged into the

organisational structure of investment banking compensation schemes (p. 260), while

also expressed through the culture of Wall Street whose members are socialised into

this elite world of market-centricity, short-termism, and rampant-insecurity. The high


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financiers of Wall Street are humans with culture, not just machines with calculators. Ho

(2009) emphasises the importance of anthropological insight in examining these forces.

This cultural understanding is clearly beyond the repertoire of neoclassical

economics. In fact, the notion of economic cycles being produced by Wall Street would

not fit into any of the economic models of market cycles that I have come across, since

there is no place in them for the human factor. When I became qualified as a

stockbroker and investment manager, I was taught how to conduct a combination of

technical and fundamental analysis8

but was never shown where to look on the graph to

watch for the excesses of Wall Street culture. I spent three years looking at charts of

share prices and share indexes to try and establish where the prices were going but

ignored the actions of Wall Street that allegedly caused the whole market to bottom out.

Nonetheless, Ho (2009) does not explore the huge implications of her argument for the

economy and for economics from the perspective of her informants. It would have been

fascinating if she had elicited their take on her theory by perhaps asking whether they

considered economic and financial market models and formulas to be relevant,

fascinating to also consider that she did not decide to pursue this research. Asking

investments bankers what they thought about the relationship between the actions of

Wall Street and the economy at large could have yielded interesting results. The same

could also be said for their views on the notion of a jobless recovery.

The Politics of Shareholder Value in a Finance-led Economy

Having discussed the ethnography from the different methodological

perspectives of the model, I can now turn to the first of the theoretical approaches. In

keeping with the Marxist stance that I have highlighted for political economy, I read Hos

(2009) ethnography as an account of financial hegemony and competition over access to

the new modes of production in the age of neoliberal financialisation. The distance

between the ideal of shareholder value and the particular version of it that investmentbankers perform reiterates the need to look beyond the models themselves to the

interests that are being served, as I mentioned above. Ho (2009) unpacks the notion of

shareholder value to show that it is part of a wider scheme on Wall Street to promote its

8 For an accurate and accessible explanation of these two financial strategies see (Janssen, Langager, and

Murphy 2010).


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benefits to the economy at large, perpetuated by an origin myth where investment

banks provided the capital to allow corporate America to grow. These self-serving

narratives (discussed in more detail below) re-signify the business landscape in a

manner that promotes inequality and prevents a more democratic approach to business

in the U.S. (pp. 26-30).

During her fieldwork, Ho (2009) maintains that shareholder value was beginning

to engulf U.S. culture as the central reasoning and explanation for the restructuring of

firms, shifting concepts of inequality and wealth, and the condition of the U.S. economy

at large. To understand this phenomenon, Ho (2009) unpacks the ethnographic present,

which leads her to the takeover movement in the 1980s when Wall Street hardened its

grip over corporate America. Essentially, this entailed supplanting existing values in

the plural sociological sense and establishing values that are more market-oriented.

The shift was from the old concept of the firm as a social institution, valued for its

permanency and role in the community, to the new notion of the corporation as a

network of liquid investors, now measured by efficiency, liquidity, and short-term

profits. While one could interpret this as an instance of the market undermining the

mutuality upon which it rests, as Gudeman (2009a) might posit, for Hos (2009)

informants, the championing of shareholder value was mission-driven and considered

economically and morally the correct thing to do. Even when increasing shareholder

value means cutting jobs, the tension is averted because the company has becomedefined by its owners and not its employees (pp. 122-129). The dependency link of the

market to society is rendered imperceptible.

I would suspect that bankers would instead perceive this unfortunate scenario as

a necessary evolutionary progression from stakeholder value-orientations to

shareholder value-orientations. I am referring to the contrast of values that can be

discerned between the stakeholder economies of Japan and Western Europe, where

company profits go to long-serving employees, with the shareholder economies of the

U.K. and U.S., where profits go to the owners of the companies shares. Thus, the former

rewards for loyalty and the latter for individual gain. The institutional loyalties of the

stakeholder economies create social attachments to firms, which surpasses a mere

economic relationship. This loyalty is reciprocated from the companies, who in turn

offer more than simply a market rate wage. There is a greater inherent valuation for


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group ties, as rewards are given for occupancy and role within the firm, rather than

individual achievement and ability (Blim 2005, pp. 314-316). Ostensibly, the economists

and financiers of today have learned well from their counterparts of the marginalist

revolution. Just as values, such as these, were abandoned for price back then, today the

composites of shareholder value were packaged together and represented in one

economic usage of the term as a market valued share price that ignores and conceals

any conflicting values.

The benefits of this configuration for the few can be discerned when Ho (2009)

calls forth the case of Safeway to show the real purpose of creating shareholder value in

these contexts. The company had been operating competitively with plans for growth

until a leveraged buyout (LBO) led to massive downsizing, lower wages, and a reduction

in capital improvement plans. Essentially, this enacted a significant transfer of wealth

from the firm to top company executives, investment banks, and the private equity firm,

while the company itself was saddled with a monumental amount of debt. Thus, Ho

(2009) argues that takeovers should be understood as power struggles over cultural

values and practices that are hierarchical and diverging. Contrary to the worldview of

her informants, who believed that Wall Street unlocked value and improved efficiency in

corporate America, Ho (2009) argues that the takeover movement of the 1980s and the

mergers and acquisitions prevalent in the 1990s were really about high financiers

capitalising on the downturn of the previous decade to align corporate values to those ofthe stock market and Wall Street. To counter the perceived inefficiencies of managerial

capitalism, managers were made into shareholders through LBOs so that the interests of

the firm became their interests (pp. 129-153).

These revolutions in the name of shareholder value often, paradoxically, caused a

long term decline in the value of the target company, as Ho (2009) illustrates with the

example of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler. Hence, she argues that shareholder value must

be viewed as a political tactic to monopolise control over corporations and to support

the demands of short-term financial profiteering. Moreover, the way that her informants

explain this tension, as advocates of shareholder value, highlights the representational

power of economic ideas and their utility as political tools. Although some informants

were more hesitant over the benefits of shareholder value, downsizing, and efficiency,

none robustly challenged their assumptions and resorted instead to neoclassic


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rationalisations (pp. 153-168). This interpretation of events sits rather comfortably with

the Marxist analysis of political economy changes that I outlined above. Elites created

the conditions for financial accumulation through the financialisation of corporate

America and by perpetuating neoclassic ideologies that became so pervasive that the

very actors who currently carry the flag for shareholder value do not recognise their

contributions to these unequal transfers of wealth. In this view, we also begin to see why

economic expertise is perhaps such a valued service, since it allows an enormous

amount of wealth to be transferred to those who access it.

From the standpoint of investment bankers, the use of the share price as the

primary measure of a company was about restoring the correct harmony between

control and ownership of firms. Here, shareholder value enables investment bankers to

package their values into a single number and fight for elite interests by forcing market-

centric short-term decisions on corporations. Ho (2009) purports that part of the

discursive power of the market derives from these abstract, flexible representations and

allows Wall Street to maintain its current position as producer of U.S. hegemony (pp. 35-

38). As she argues, Wall Street also maintains its own hegemony through [t]he culture

of smartness [which] begets global spread, justifies global financial influence,

naturalizes imperialist practices, and produces financial dominance (p. 72). If the ruling

powers and institutions have cultivated the market economy to their benefit, then how

were the minds of the masses won over or coerced into allowing such unequalaccumulations of wealth? Combining these transformations with an interpretative

theory of value may throw light upon these questions, as we travel deeper into the realm

of the human economic mind.

Masters of a Symbolic Universe of Value

The manner in which investment banks and their worldview of shareholder value

became institutionalised and then legitimated resonates clearly with the levels oflegitimacy that Berger and Luckman (1966) outline. The explicit theories of an

institutional sector, in this case comprised of economists and financiers, brewed its own

stock of knowledge to support shareholder value through what Ho (2009) shows to be

a crude reinterpretation of the historical relationships between corporate America, the

stock market, and investors, but also on decontexualized extrapolations (and new


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adaptations) from neoclassic and classic economic thought (p. 169). Accordingly, to

denaturalise bankers worldview of shareholder value, Ho (2009) contests the myth

upon which its legitimacy rests whereby the shareholder was situated as the original

fund provider and controller of corporations. She points out that corporations raised

funds predominantly through bonds issues for most of the twentieth-century and

funded the vast majority of their capital expenditure from internal resources up until the

early 1970s (pp. 179 & 202), while it was actually corporations that financed the growth

of the stock market (p. 343). Although shareholder value is in reality a socially

constructed justification for institutional practice, the manner in which bankers selected

axioms to fit their worldview indicates how it was able to reach and maintain such a

high level of legitimacy.

None of these changes could have taken place if they did not occur within a

symbolic universe of value, a fourth level of legitimacy that also suggests the existence of

a system of meaning that Graeber (2005) alludes to. There are numerous indications

that such a phenomenon exists. Firstly, this universe is characterised by Dumontian

hierarchy, which is perhaps best exemplified when Ho (2009) recounts an interview

with an analyst that moved from investment bank Morgan Stanley to Pepsi Corporation.

Her informant describes Wall Street as a fighter plane when making decisions in

comparison to other corporations. As Ho (2009) points out, this implies a value

hierarchy where Wall Streets quick adaptation and flexibility are favoured over slowand rigid firms, bankers are superior to the average worker, and liquidity is preferred to

illiquidity (pp. 243-248). The values in a sociological sense of trust, commitment, and

loyalty are abandoned for shareholder value that, in spite of the single number

represented on the stock exchange, is a composite that includes notions of liquidity,

flexibility, and short-termism. This notably contains and conceals the dimensions of

power that my discussion in the previous section crystallised.

Secondly, the hierarchy above implies that there are different segregations or

spheres of value encompassed by the modern universe. Ho (2009) offers us a vignette of

these realms when she shows that the stock market was historically constructed to

separate control from ownership in order to create liquidity. This contradicts general

beliefs about corporate history that saw control returned to the shareholder, who in

reality never had it. Ho (2009) finds this alarming since the stock price is used as a


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measure of corporate success and value yet the value realm of liquidity which affects

the share price is ill suited to the operations of the firm, while the share price itself is

not historically or culturally connected to the practices of the company. Against Wall

Streets claims, stocks are not merely representations since they belong to a divergent

social construction that functions apart from corporations (pp. 183-188). For instance, a

retail company could be making lots of sales and performing well but this would not

prevent general market fear operating in a different value sphere from depressing

the price and attracting pressure from investors, which might lead to downsizing.

Thirdly, these segmented hierarchies of value may be imagined to have varying

degrees of attachment to a broader social order. Dumont (1986) claims that in the non-

modern view, the values of the right hand and left hand which he invokes to exemplify

an idea and a pair of values is rooted in relation to the whole body or a higher level of

existence (pp. 248-250). In the modern view, determining the values of the pair would

only entail a look at each of the hands. Applying this to shareholder value suggests the

possibility of alternative configurations. Rather than determining share price based

solely on cash flows and the like, market mechanisms could be established that increase

share value in relation to some broader social measure, such as contributions to

charitable causes or the level of carbon emissions. This may be a step to fixing the

modern formation that has arisen from the break between the element and the whole.

Certainly, Dumonts (1986) claim that [t]he whole has become a heap resonates withour current economic crisis (pp. 262 & 263).

Fourthly, if as Dumont (1986) argues, the scientific is replacing the moral in our

contemporary consciousness, then Hos (2009) informants have used the scientific, or

the economic, to directly realign and then justify what should be considered moral.

The more that shareholder value gains legitimacy and begins to take on the form of an

ideology if indeed it has not already the previous hierarchical universe[becomes]

fanned out into a collection of flat views of this kind (Dumont 1986, p. 249). At that

point, there is no inversion of values at different levels since everything is measured

against share price. Whatever the context, we do not even make the value judgement

over left or right. Finally, we need not look beyond the very structure of the phrase

shareholder value, which clearly denotes the superiority of the shareholder by placing

the word first. It makes the inversion, valued shareholders, conceptually harder to


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imagine. Hence, there can be no value in who the shareholders are, long-term or short-

term, nurturing or predatory, forgiving or relentless. It seems that the masters of the

universe, as the name implies, are capable of manipulating and oscillating these value

structures by asserting a particular type of economic expertise into configurations

that best suit their financial and monetary interests.

Summary

I have tried to show how the Eye of Providence model is useful when interpreting

existing ethnographic research on powerful market actors and institutions. I chose to

examine a single ethnography in significant detail because it largely conforms to my

framework. This has enabled me to think through the key perspectives of this paper in

specific relation to the economic lives of investment bankers. Wall Street is a place

where people go to make money as individuals; money is central to peoples being on

the Street and is also the key product that the financial institutions are structured to

manufacture. This is all made possible through the rendering of instituted financial and

economic expertise that has essentially liquidated social relations both individual and

institutional on the Street and far beyond.

Whether or not one chooses to accept the hegemonic view of the institutions and

the ruling powers, it is hard to doubt that they play a significant role in perpetuating the

worldview of shareholder value; thus, these elements of the framework cannot be leftunattended. The concept of value that I have been developing appears to have universal

applicability ostensibly due to its interpretive flexibility yet the manifestations of it

appear to assume endless forms. On the one hand, there appears to be a realm of value

out there informing bankers decisions and guiding their preferences towards

shareholder value. Institutional and political influences played an instrumental role in

crafting these values. On the other, one could argue that all bankers are really just acting

out of universal self-interested rationality. While the universal-particular debate

continues into the section below, I have verified that interpretive value theory can speak of

both individuals and of societies in the same breath, while political economy unearths the

dynamics that motivate them.


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Migrant Remittances in an Anthropological Economy

I began this paper by drawing on theories about the relation of the market to

society and later critiqued an ethnography that offers a view of this relationship from

the market itself, or at least from the perspective of very influential market actors. In

addition to the cultural influences, investment banking is very much an institutionalised

arena for economic rationality. Investment bankers were shown to largely talk in its

language and think in its logic. But what happens when we step away from market

institutions and toward economic life that flourishes in an entirely different social

sphere? To address this question, I turn the optic to the case of international cash

transfers that are sent by migrant workers to recipients who have remained in their

origin country. The migrant-remittance phenomenon is perhaps the most significant9

and for some potentially the most important10

example of economic activity that

operates to principles other than those that we might consider to come under the rubric

of the market economy. Assuming that remittances are less of a formally

institutionalised economic function, I suspect that the transferring agents are much

more distant from the discipline of economics than financiers. Thus, I first examine how

economists try to build expert knowledge about the remittance phenomenon, since it

entails dealing with peoples actions that operate outside the disciplines comfort zone. I

then contrast this with an anthropological perspective through the conceptual

framework of this paper.

What the Economists Say

I begin with a summary and critique ofRapoport and Docquiers (2005)

discussion of migrant-remittance economics.11

9 Against other international flows, even just the recordedtransfers were estimated to be only second toForeign Direct Investment and were much more resilient during the global downturn (Ratha, Mohapatra& Silwal 2010, p. 3).

To introduce remittances, the authors

point out that since the 1980s, there has been increasing acknowledgement in

microeconomics of the familial and strategic motives behind remittances, while in

macroeconomics there has been a shift of focus from the short-run effects of transfers to

their long-run role in development and reducing inequality (p. 4). The authors recognise

10 Given the development potential of $316 billion+.11 The work was prepared for an independent non-profit organisation that researches labour and waslater published in a handbook for economics. See Rapoport and Docquier (2006).


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that poor data quality circumscribes the macro analyses of remittances and that the

difficulty in discriminating between competing microeconomic theories makes their

study more challenging; however, they argue for further investigation since remittances

often significantly increase GNP, are a major source of foreign exchange, and constitute a

large portion of GDP in many of the developing countries to which they are sent (p. 5).

Moreover, they emphasise that the method of conducting household surveys from

various countries has revealed that a signi

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Alex Parkinson - Dissertation