Holbraad, M;
(2017)
Money and the Morality of Commensuration: Currencies of Poverty in Post-Soviet Cuba.
Social Analysis
, 62
(4)
pp. 81-97.
10.3167/sa.2017.610406.
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Abstract
Based on ethnographic research in Havana over the past two decades, this article examines how Cubans’ experience of poverty, or ‘need’, is linked to the increasing dollarization of the Cuban economy. Dollars, I argue, are not just the emblem of a new moral disorder, but also its main catalyst, inasmuch as they expand the realm of ‘need’, as defined by a socialist paradigm of consumption rooted in the era before the introduction of the dollar, by stripping it of its (socialist) moral essence through acts of quantitative commensuration. This account of Cubans’ experience of poverty since the end of the Soviet era, I suggest, provides more general insights about the power of the money form itself as a catalyst of moral transformation
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Money and the Morality of Commensuration: Currencies of Poverty in Post-Soviet Cuba |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3167/sa.2017.610406 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/sa.2017.610406 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Commensuration; Cuba; dual currency; money; morality; poverty; quantification; socialism |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10042795 |
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