Relative to the number of anthropologists who study things like art, religion, family, music, medicine, politics, etc., the number who study economics and markets is tiny. This is a shame. Markets, wherever you are, are social exchanges where culture(s) intersect and collide, where the commerical realms of cultural systems come forth to trade.
Sure, there is a crassness about markets that can be a turn off, now doubt about it. But a brief example to make my point…
Market Day in Aix en Provence
Today we took the bus down to Aix for Saturday market day. In addition to the abundance of local Provencal foods- olives, eggplant, squash, peppers, melons, lavendar, apricots, nuts, breads, nuts, grapes and wine- you can find fabrics from all over the world. Vendors from Ivory Coast and Ghana selling beautiful batik and tie dye fabrics, from which local families here will cut and sew into clothing here in the hot summer months.
Down the way, at another stall, are groups of vendors from North Africa, where they sell spices from a different world. But it is this world, really. This is accomplished through markets. Culture comes out for show and trade!
Financial Markets
In many ways this is a far cry from the totally fetishized love of money and myriad financial instruments that are traded daily on places like Wall Street and the City in London. But are they really different?
I would suggest that what is on display in places like Wall Street is a certain version of a Western, Protestant cultural system, one that just happens to be absolutely and totally obsessed with things financial. Similar and different at the same time, I understand.
The problem with such a one-sided (even lopsided) cultural tunnel vision, is what happens when all the magic and vodoo on which our cultural system rests falls apart? Like right now? We have, unfortunately, little to fall back on. Maybe a new sale at Wal Mart, or a presidential election to distract us for a few months. But it is ever-fleeting, isn’t it.
Meanwhile, here in Provence, even amidst the techno-clatter of an Internet Cafe in Aix (where I am writing this note), the market down the street carries on in the same way that it has since the Romans lived here some 2,000 years ago. Same location, same products, same haggling…These things are priceless, and timeless. No derivatives, no spot futures here…
When financial markets in France fall down, they have these (very simple) things to fall back on…
I’m envious.
The Butcher
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