The Wodani of Irian Jaya describe shell money as an immortal person, endowed with a human anatomy. In the context of matrimonial and homicide compensations, shell money pays for the different parts and organs of the person, thus symbolically transforming the bride or the victim into a composite body. Each part is ascribed to one or the other parent's procreative agency. The patrilineal organs are compensated for with the most valued shells. By fragmenting the person into hierarchized elements, the payment does not produce individual pieces but social components, distributed among patrilineal clan members in monetary form. In payments, shells are said to be eaten by their recipients, so that the clan depleted by the loss of a daughter or a son is symbolically reconstituted. The clan is represented by payments as a totality made out of persons' parts, as a pool of patrilineal organs. Deconstructing persons to form a social whole and recycling elements of this whole to produce the person, shell money is an instrument of social reproduction at the same time as it is the symbol of the perpetuity of the clan body. [shell money, bridewealth, symbolic exchange, Irian Jaya, New Guinea]
Ce recueil réuni par Michel Aglietta et André Orléan se fonde sur une critique de la théorie économique orthodoxe, ou plutôt sur une critique de son impuissance à théoriser la monnaie. Les différentes contributions participent d'une ambition commune, celle de réintroduire la dimension sociologique qui fait défaut à la théorie classique de la valeur et sans laquelle on se trouve en peine de pouvoir rendre compte du fait monétaire, non seulement dans ses expressions anciennes ou exotiques, mais aussi dans l'économie de marché. Il faut souligner la cohérence de ce livre important, fruit d'un long travail ayant associé plusieurs disciplines allant de l'anthropologie, de l'histoire et de l'économie jusqu'à la psychanalyse. Cet effort collectif a permis à chacun des auteurs d'envisager le médium monétaire dans sa signification la plus large, sans être limité par les particularités de tel ou tel système, et en particulier du système marchand moderne.
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