Abstract
ABSTRACTIn highland Papua New Guinea wealth distribution after a windfall is typically concealed by the donor. This trend was made easier by the introduction of state-issued currency, such that wealth reckoning and especially distribution preferences are often shrouded in mystery. The researcher set out to learn how denomination structures those money transfers by employing a semi-structured interview method centered around hypothetical distributions based on everyday encounters. Across four tailored ‘scenarios,’ fifteen Papua New Guinean participants dwelt on who to give money to, why, and under what conditions. Observations are made about the driving forces in distribution practices, the pecuniary conception of certain relationships’ importance, and relationships that turn on local conceptions of how to capitalize on the way money operates, thus demonstrating the utility of a culturally sensitive quantitative methodology.
Highlights
Social studies of money are a vibrant and growing field of interdisciplinary inquiry, one that reinscribes money with the social relations it is often perceived to lack
This paper investigates hidden distribution practices with an eye towards a structuring factor affecting the cultural malleability of money: uneven access to denominations
Some results of the skelim gem may be highly generalizable distributive necessities that follow from the materiality of denominations, the metric system that currently governs where denominations fall on the spectrum of PNG money, and the standard formula used by states to control the relative amounts of denominations in circulation (Sargent and Velde 2002)
Summary
Social studies of money are a vibrant and growing field of interdisciplinary inquiry, one that reinscribes money with the social relations it is often perceived to lack (see Dodd 2014, Nelms and Maurer 2014, Holbraad 2017). The article pushes experiments with enumeration to the forefront of its description, foregrounding how field methods can occupy the numerical while continuing to champion human specificity (see Verran 2001, Pickles 2009, Stafford 2009) In this way I hope to complement anthropological investigations of number that derive their analytical purchase from mythical exegesis or historical documentation The game gave me a range of prompts and problems, at which point I could ask questions in order to get at the principles and/or pragmatics people brought to bear upon their distribution practices It was both very quantitative and involved a good deal of reflective discussion that invited participants to become self-analysts in understanding the challenges that denominations pose. I begin with a description of the continuing importance and complexity of distribution practices in this part of Papua New Guinea and the competing imperatives that enliven it
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