L'argent et la coutume : Maré (Nouvelle-Calédonie)
Institution:
Paris, EHESSDisciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
In order to understand systems of production and problems of local development, the loyalty islands' province and the cirad asked for a research in social anthropology. Starting from this initial demand, my fieldwork leads to an anthropological problematic centered on the interweaving of money, custom and kinship. The gap between speeches and practices was indeed amazing. On the one hand, there were etic and emic speeches which present the 'marean soeiety' as fuled by an ancestral custom - viewed as the symbol of kanak and marean identities and as the opposite of money, viewed as the symbol of european identity and of the french colonial presence. And, on the other hand, in the daily life and in ritual practices money was used to make (do) custom and custom was a mean to save up money by catching a part of the state's rent and of kinship's resources. This interweaving between money, kinship and custom leads to challenge some anthropological theories which draw a hard opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange - money versus gift - and to analyse money as a social construction.
Abstract FR:
A partir d'une demande initiale de la province des iles loyaute et du cirad centree sur les systemes de production et le developpement, les enquetes de terrain - quinze mois repartis en trois sejours -_m'ont conduite a construire une problematique anthropologique centree sur l'imbrication de l'argent, la parente et la coutume. En effet, alors que tes discours, tant emiques qu'etiques, presentent la "societe mareenne" comme regie par une coutume ancestrale - consideree comme le symbole des identites mareenne et kanak et comme l'antithese de l'argent, considere comme le symbole de l'identite europeenne et de la presence coloniale francaise -, dans les pratiques, tant quotidiennes que ceremonielles, l'argent sert a faire la coutume et la coutume permet d'economiser. Et ce, en captant non seulement une partie de la rente de l'etat mais egalement une partie des ressources de sa parente. Cette etroite imbrication entre argent, parente et coutume a notamment conduit a remettre en question les theories anthropologiques qui opposent echanges marchands et non marchands - l'argent au don - et a analyser l'argent comme une construction sociale.