This chapter examines the capacity of paper money to realize different notions of value as a phenomenon of exchange. It first compares burning money with kula and potlatch and considers how paper money differs from “spirit money,” or spirit favors that include forms of “real money.” It then discusses social economy and how it relates to the way value is produced, along with Karl Marx's concept of commodity and money fetish. It suggests that the Chinese custom of burning paper money may be viewed as a fetishization of a protracted historical formation based on agrarian forces and relations of production. It describes the money-burning custom as a sacrificial offering that upheld this agrarian formation by the very people whose sacrifice of labor power made the whole thing possible.
Hawaii Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.