Looking at Money in America

Bibliographic Data

ID2361701
AuthorsRuben George Oliven (0000-0003-3556-6955, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume18
Issue1
Pages35-59
Publication date1998-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCritique of Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0308275x9801800102
OpenAlexW2171617852
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited13

■ This article discusses meanings of money in America and is based on an ethnography carried out in the United States by a Brazilian anthropologist who studied banks, investment companies, health insurance, service clubs, com pulsive spenders, restaurants, shops, scholarly and non-scholarly articles, finan cial magazines, books on personal finance, proverbs, expressions, etc. Money is looked at in relation to love, death, blood, semen, food, God, Catholicism and Protestantism. The author tries to compare attitudes towards money in the United States with those existing in Brazil. In North American society money, which can be regarded as a total social fact, is considered less polluting than in Brazil where it is seen as something potentially dirty, perhaps because of the huge social and economic inequalities existing in that country. In summing up the author asks if Brazil is following the North American path or whether its cultural specificities will work as counter-balancing checks

Economics · Ethnography · Investment (military · Political science · Politics · Protestantism · Relation (database · Sociology · Anthropology · Economic Theory and Policy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law

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