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Periodical issue Periodical issue Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Jane Guyer's 'Marginal gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa'
Editor:Geschiere, PeterISNI
Year:2007
Periodical:African Studies Review (ISSN 1555-2462)
Volume:50
Issue:2
Period:September
Pages:37-202
Language:English
Geographic terms:Africa
Nigeria
South Africa
Ghana
Subjects:economic anthropology
money
About person:Jane Isabel Mason GuyerISNI
External link:https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/11868
Abstract:This special issue is the condensation of an author-meets-critics double panel on Jane Guyer's book 'Marginal gains: monetary transactions in Atlantic Africa' (2004), organized for the African Studies Association meeting in Washington, D.C., in November 2005. The first three contributions elaborate upon various historical trends in relation to Guyer's interpretations. Sara Berry develops the central idea from 'Marginal gains' that economic values are situational, not only in Africa but elsewhere as well. James Ferguson analyses official plans for instituting a 'Basic Income Grant' in South Africa. Peter Geschiere discusses variations within West Africa that make any binary contrast of economics in 'Africa' versus 'the West' highly problematic. The next two contributions, by Akanmu G. Adebayo and Karin Barber, focus on developments in southern Nigeria, the locus of several examples central to Guyer's argumentation. Adebayo offers a comparison between the development of rank and currency devaluation among the Yoruba and the Akan (Ghana), Barber elaborates on Guyer's idea of 'the productivity of the interface'. The last four texts concern more general aspects of Guyer's approach: Bill Maurer focuses on off-shore financing and notably the Grey Money Amnesty in South Africa; Christopher Udry and Hyungi Woo deal with households and the social organization of consumption in southern Ghana; Janet Roitman elaborates upon Guyer's 'polysemic' notion of gain; and Helen Verran approaches Guyer's work in terms of recent efforts by philosophers of science to arrive at more differentiated theories of values than those of market economics. The issue closes with a response by Jane Guyer. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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