Capitalist transformations and the social aesthetics of money

money, mountains and "1000 houses"

Jens M. Zickgraf

pp. 71-97

in: John Clammer, Ananta K. Giri (eds), The aesthetics of development, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Declared as an abstract value, "modern money" has been treated as both the epitome of modernity and the universal scapegoat for capitalist transformations. Such money, it was perhaps largely claimed by those who were in a privileged position of control and possession, could not but alienate society, render all values impersonal and comparable, and thus undermine the integrity of all culture and identity. By contrast, and though still explorative in nature, this essay suggests that we conceive of money not as an alienable thing in the first place but as a perceptible and creative appearance, situated in time and space, and grounded in human agencies, values and manipulations. The case of the South Indian Nilgiri Hills and particularly of the local Badagas is used to illustrate how we may focus far more specifically, on the memories, transformations, deeds and social aesthetics through which money is valued, transacted, experienced and brought into being—historically, spatially as well as in contemporary social, cultural and material life.