EXPENDING MULTIPLICITY: MONEY IN CUBAN
IFÁ CULTS
Martin Holbraad
University College London
Countering the assumption that money acts as an agent of abstraction and ‘disembedment’,
anthropologists tend to draw money into analogies with other objects of exchange,
downplaying its uniquely quantitative nature.This article seeks to disentangle the association,
implicit in this tendency, of quantity with abstraction. Focusing on the peculiar
character of money as a ‘purely multiple’ object, the aim is to account for ‘embeddedness’
without bracketing quantity: what does quantity look like when it is not viewed as
an abstract denominator? The question is explored with reference to Ifá, an Afro-Cuban
diviner cult that takes monetary transactions as a cosmological premise.
A central contribution of the anthropological literature on money has been
to refute the assumption that money is best understood as what Anthony
Giddens has called a ‘disembedding mechanism’ (1991: 18). While from
Aristotle onwards social theorists have tended to portray money as a catalyst
that abstracts economic transactions from other orders of social relations,
anthropologists have for a number of years been pointing to contexts and
senses in which the opposite may be the case. Far from necessarily aiding an
ineluctable differentiation of economic activities from moral, religious, aesthetic,
or political ones (the process of ‘disembedment’, deemed famously
by Polanyi as integral to the development of modern market economies –
Polanyi 1957, cf. Carrier 1998), it is evident that money often features in
ethnographic contexts where these domains are fused. The supposition that
money needs to be associated with developed market economies had begun
to be unsettled with classic debates about whether certain tribal groups did
or did not ‘have’ money (Bohannan & Bohannan 1968; Counts & Counts
1970; Dalton 1967; Douglas 1967; Einzig 1948; Firth 1929; Malinowski 1921;
cf. Godelier 1977; Hodges 1988: 96-124). Similarly, early studies of the effects
of colonial currencies in tribal contexts suggested that while Western currencies
did have ‘corrosive’ effects – insofar as, in Mary Douglas’s words, they
‘seeped into’ orders of exchange that were previously kept separate – some of
the more socially significant or prestigious fields of exchange remained
immune to monetization (Douglas 1963: 61-4, see also Barth 1967; Bohannan
1959; Firth 1959: 146-54). Warnings against seeing money as an obvious
agent of ‘disembedment’ took a more radical turn in the 1980s. Partly as a
reaction to Marxist-inspired arguments on the role of money in processes of
© Royal Anthropological Institute 2005.
J. Roy. anthrop. Inst. (N.S.) 11, 231-254
‘commoditization’ (particularly Kopytoff 1986; Taussig 1980), a number of
critical studies exemplified the ways in which money may actually serve to
bind economic concerns to the social (moral, political, religious, etc.) fabric
in which they are embedded (Hart 1986; Parry & Bloch 1989; Strathern 1988:
76-86; Zelizer 1989). Most influentially, Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry
mobilized diverse ethnographic evidence in their introduction to an edited
volume on Money and the morality of exchange to show that, far from dissipating
social relations, money often plays a key role in their long-term reproduction
(Bloch & Parry 1989). Indeed, if the notion of an increasingly
commoditized world has gained ground since the 1980s – spurred by a flurry
of research on topics such as ‘globalization’, ‘modernity’, and the anthropology
of ‘the state’ (Akin & Robbins 1999; Comaroff & Comaroff 1999; Foster
2002; Geschiere 1992; Radin 1996;Verdery 1995; cf. Englund & Leach 2000)
– assent to Bloch and Parry’s message that the category of ‘money’ needs
thoroughly to be ‘relativized’ has also been abundant (Humphrey 1995; Leach
in press; P.J. Stewart & Strathern 2002; Weiss 1996), not least with regard
to money in modern Western economies (Helgason & Pálsson 1997; Knorr
Cetina & Preda 2000; Zelizer 1997; for a stimulating synthesis, see Hart in
press).
While very much in sympathy with attempts to disengage discussions of
money from assumptions about abstraction and commoditization, the present
article is also motivated by one of the main shortcomings of the trend.1
For
what is remarkable about this literature is its insistence on what one may call
‘qualitative’ aspects of money – the sensual qualities of precious metals or
crispy banknotes, the fact that money might be cooked or drunk or purified,
as well as gifted or bartered, that portions of it may be ‘earmarked’, and so
on. It is as if the move away from abstraction must a fortiori carry with it a
suspicion of quantity.The underlying syllogism seems to be this: if disembedment
involves the increasing abstraction of economic transactions, and money
is supposed to facilitate this by virtue of its own abstract character as a quantitative
denominator of value, then attempts to qualify notions of disembedment
must somehow downplay the quantitative character of money in favour
of its many ‘thing-like’ qualities.
Without wishing to return to the checklists anthropologists used to debate
when deciding which objects qualify as ‘money’, I do proceed from the
premise that what most obviously distinguishes money from other things
people exchange is its quantitative character (cf. Crump 1981). For reasons
that will become apparent, I take quantity in a minimal sense: the form of
money as a plural aggregate of particles or, as one might say, its multiplicity.
So if quantity – multiplicity – is money’s trademark quality, the question is
this. How might one account for ‘embeddedness’ in a way that does not render
money analogous to other objects of exchange by bracketing its quantitative
character? In particular, how might this be achieved without conceding that
money must serve as a catalyst for abstraction? Or, in other words, what does
quantity look like when it is not viewed as an abstract denominator?
My central point will be that quantity has more advantages than just
abstraction and serves to distinguish money from other objects of exchange
when the possibility of abstraction is effectively suppressed. Crucially, I will
argue, the multiplicity of money renders it supremely suited as a medium of
232 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
exchange, where ‘medium’ is understood as a synonym of ‘environment’ as
well as ‘object’. That is, by virtue of its pliable partibility – its multiplicity –
money serves as the logical ‘ground’ on which the ‘figures’ of exchange
(objects, sacrifices, favours, etc.) can, literally, move in exchange. So ‘encompassed’,
money is different from other objects of exchange not only in that
its multiplicity makes it more fluid, but also in that its fluidity renders it a
premise, as well as an object, of exchange.
The case is made with reference to Cuban Ifá, a diviner cult that I have
been studying ethnographically in Havana since 1998.Two points on strategy
are warranted here. First, in the argument that follows, the relationship
between theory (namely regarding the multiplicity of money) and ethnography
(namely on money in Cuban Ifá cults) is not one of generalization. The
point is hardly that Cuban Ifá provides empirical evidence that the fluidity of
monetary quantification is more important than hitherto acknowledged theoretically;
in itself, Ifá is far too parochial to carry such an inductive argument.
Rather, the strategy is that of a thought experiment (cf. Gell 1999: 34).
To the extent that the role of money in Ifá contradicts ordinary assumptions
about the role of money in general (such as its ‘disembedding’ tendencies),
might we think of money in a new way that takes into account such ethnographic
possibilities? In other words, the objective of the exercise is to generate
a new analytical vantage point.Whether this perspective is useful beyond
the study of Ifá economy is an open question, but it is at least interesting
insofar as the analytical perspective on offer is internally coherent.
This relates to a second point, regarding the nature of the ethnographic
account that follows. Readers who are familiar with contemporary Cuban
economy may be surprised that the socio-economic upheavals of recent years,
following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, do not feature more prominently
here. For example, almost no mention is made of the palpably significant
effects exerted on the life of the cult by the introduction of the US dollar as
legal tender on the island in 1993.2
Indeed, while I have written on the
importance of these contextual changes elsewhere (Holbraad 2004), the focus
here is on the normative logic of Ifá economy, which, as practitioners themselves
so often point out, may be contradicted in practice. This is because it
is at the level of ‘logic’ – or, if you like, of economic cosmology – that Ifá
most clearly presents these distinctive economic features which provide the
scope for thought experimentation. Indeed, as we shall see, practitioners
themselves pit the logic of monetary transaction in Ifá against the economic
contingencies that constrain these transactions, as – so to speak – ‘ought’
against ‘is’.
Money in Ifá
Like Santería, the best-known Afro-Cuban religious tradition, Ifá has evolved
on the basis of elements brought to Cuba primarily during the nineteenth
century by for the most partYoruba-speaking slaves from West Africa (Brandon
1993; Brown 2003). While Ifá shares with Santería an extremely rich mythical
and devotional universe, full initiates of Ifá (babalawos, sing. babalawo) tend
to consider themselves superior to practitioners of Santería (santeros), partly
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 233
because Ifá follows on from Santería as a further and more selective grade of
initiation (i.e. Santería initiation is a prerequisite for Ifá) open only to heterosexual
men who fulfil certain conditions. The most significant of these is
that neophytes be chosen (‘called’) to initiation by the oracle of Ifá (Holbraad
in press).The regulative role of the oracle in this matter (as in all) corresponds
to the exalted position that Orula, the patron deity of divination, occupies
within the cult of Ifá. Indeed, what distinguishes babalawos from initiates of
Santería is that at their initiation they alone ‘receive Orula’, the idol deemed
to be the diviner deity who from then on demands their daily adoration and
whose ‘secrets’ they are supposed to study for life. Crucially, initiation enables
the neophyte to learn how to use his deity in order to divine. While many
initiates use these skills only for their own well-being and protection, others
go on to become dedicated diviners, using their oracle for the benefit of
clients, among whom they command respect. Indeed, the prestige of the babalawos
is rather enhanced by the fact that initiation is an extremely costly and
arduous affair, as we shall see. Nevertheless, throughout its history in Cuba
and up until today, Ifá has largely been practised by marginal groups, particularly
in inner-city barrios of Havana, Matanzas, and Cárdenas. From the point
of view of a mainstream Cuban mindset, Ifá is still associated with the black
segment of the population (despite the fact that many well-known babalawos
today are white), and its history has been bound up with persecution until
very recently (Hagedorn 2001; Wirtz 2004).
There are four main ways in which monetary transactions enter the practice
of Ifá in Cuba. First, the reasons for which clients solicit babalawos’ divinatory
services more often than not have to do with their worries about
personal financial circumstances. In principle, every major decision involving
money – a change of job, a deal in the black market, remittances of dollars
from family abroad, and so on – must be sanctioned from the gods through
a divinatory séance where the babalawo can interrogate Orula on matters of
concern to the client. Out of eighteen séances for which I have comprehensive
data, seven were brought to the diviner on these kinds of grounds, while
five touched heavily on financial concerns during the course of the session.
I say ‘touched on’ because questions about finances are actually enshrined in
the liturgical order of the séance, money (owo) or its lack being one of the
main forms that good or bad fortune (iré or osobbo) may take. So it is not at
all rare for a client to go to the babalawo with a different worry in mind – a
health problem perhaps – and end up being advised on her3
financial arrangements
also.
To illustrate the importance of financial concerns for those who consult
the oracle, take the case of Antonio,4
an acquaintance of mine, who over three
months visited a babalawo no less than six times, trying to find out about (and
influence through magic) events relating to a credit card that his Italian wife
was supposed to send him from abroad. Commenting on his case, his godfather
joked: ‘This one has gone mad or something! He is going to end up
owing so much for [divination and magic] payments that even his foreign
credit card won’t save him’.
This brings us to the second way in which monetary transactions can be
said to be central to Ifá, namely that babalawos’ services are paid for. Indeed
it is feasible to view the totality of Ifá ‘services’ – understood both in an
234 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
economic and a ritual sense – relative to an aggregate of exchanges, whereby
money tends to move upward in the religious hierarchy. From the point of
view of the consumers of these services (clients, neophytes, etc.), interaction
with babalawos involves a moving escalator of expenses, starting with smallish
consultation fees and ending with full initiation, which is extremely costly (cf.
Holbraad 2004). Two types of expenses can be distinguished: payments that
are made directly to babalawos for their services (derechos, lit. ‘rights’) and
expenditures involved in purchasing ritual paraphernalia and offerings, ingredients
for which are sold on the market.
Take ordinary divinatory consultations as an example.To start off the séance,
the client is obliged to hand over a relatively small fee to the babalawo,5
having
first crossed herself with the money (see below). In consultations conducted
with an ordinary divining-chain (opuele), babalawos will often begin by wrapping
the paper notes around the middle of the divining-chain until the first
main divinatory configuration (oddu, signo) is cast,6
after which the fee is placed
on a divining-mat (coins are placed there from the start, next to a heap of
cowry shells, which, as one babalawo explained, represent ‘payment for the consultation
even if the client has no money to pay’). Using his divining-chain,
the babalawo first ascertains whether the consultee is iré or osobbo (loosely,
whether he has good or bad fortune), and then proceeds to find out which
particular deities are responsible for the client’s current fortunes, whether an
offering is in order, and, if so, what it should be. Each deity has preferences
for particular offerings, so the questions are framed accordingly, ‘hasta que lo
coja’ (i.e. until the deity assents to a proposed offering). So, for example, say a
client is told that she is currently iré thanks to the protection of Obatalá (maferefún
Obatalá), the oricha of peace and wisdom. And say that Obatalá ‘asks for’
a meringue and some white flowers. The consultee is then obliged to go to
the market as soon as possible (which often means as soon as she can afford
it) to buy the eggs and sugar for the meringue and the flowers.‘Todo es dinero’,
as a friend, exasperated by a run of séances indicating osobbo (bad fortune) and
corresponding ebbós (exorcistic offerings), put it: ‘everything is money’.
Although eggs and flowers are not trifling expenditures for most Cubans,
the amounts involved in such everyday oracular requests pale into insignificance
when compared to the costly process of initiation itself. Indeed, when
I first started investigating Ifá practice, I was impressed by the fact that often
practitioners were rather hesitant to consult babalawos about matters which
were obviously concerning them. ‘I don’t want to know’ was a friend’s reaction
when I asked him why he would not seek Orula’s advice about a serious
health complaint. My tendency at the time was to interpret such apprehensions
as a confirmation of people’s faith in divinatory verdicts. Later, however,
I realized that these hesitations have as much to do with money as they do
with knowledge. For it is understood that the more serious the problem facing
the client, the more elaborate the magical remedy, with a likely divinatory
prescription being that the client should himself undergo initiation (cf.
Holbraad in press). Orula’s ‘call’ to initiation involves the potential neophyte
in a series of exponentially rising expenditures, associated with various stages
of initiation and the corresponding ritual expenditures. Just the first step of
initiation (receiving the Warrior deities) normally costs around 300-400 pesos
($15-20),7
which corresponds to over a month’s average salary. Initiation to
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 235
Ifá costs a minimum of 20,000 pesos ($1,000), but can easily come to cost
double that amount or more.The salience of expenditure as an issue for cult
practitioners is illustrated by an anecdote told to me by Javier Alfonso Isase,
an elderly babalawo with whom I worked closely:
Our religion used to be for slaves and now it is for the rich. Recently I was buying
coffee there in front and I heard someone saying that Santería is an exploitation (una
explotación). I asked him: ‘Are you a santero yourself?’ No, you just talk from what you
hear. These days it takes a lot of money to make a santo, and the [initiates] get the least
of it. I agree that Santería is an exploitation. But it is not us doing the exploiting. It is
the traders who sell the animals, the chopin [dollar supermarkets], and the food is very
expensive … Above all when we do an Ifá we live it up, we do a ceremony for a king.
We have to prepare three full dinners for all the babalawos, and beer for everyone throughout
the week, and that is very expensive these days … Before, the neophyte would buy
thirty cases of beer. Now he does it with ten, which he has to manage for the whole
week. And the food for the babalawos is necessary because they won’t turn up just to be
left starving … Before, to the youngest babalawos they’d give 20 pesos, to the slightly more
senior ones 30, and to the most senior ones 50 pesos. But now even the young ones
need 100 pesos as a minimum for the week … Certainly, if you don’t have a good income
it is hard to be initiated.
Elsewhere I have discussed the implications of Javier’s worries about
‘exploitation’, poverty, and the character of Santería and Ifá after dollarization
in the 1990s (Holbraad 2004). Here my focus is on the question of prices and
their position in Ifá cosmology. For while Javier acknowledges that babalawos’
charges are thoroughly marketized, keeping in pace with an increasing cost of
living, the premise of his defence is that these charges are made in accordance
with ritual propriety. Indeed, however sensitive to market conditions, as servants
of Orula, babalawos are always subject to divine intervention, as it were.
In the long term, they are bound for life to the detailed prescriptions and
prohibitions ordained during their personal itá, a lengthy divination carried
out for each babalawo as part of his initiation, whereby the oracle allocates
him one of 256 possible signos, which from then on is taken to characterize
his personality (much like star signs do in Western astrology). Given the
salience of money to Ifá, it is not surprising that these prescriptions often have
to do with money and pricing. Javier’s own signo, for example, is Oggunda
Teturá,8
which is a ‘poor man’s signo’.This, he often explained, prevented him
from using Ifá to become rich, and consequently he strove to keep his services
cheap.
Orula’s influence on pricing is also felt in the short term, through divinatory
séances that babalawos habitually perform for themselves every morning
for the coming day. An extreme example is Miguelito Febles, one of the most
notorious and influential babalawos of past generations (cf. Brown 2003: 88-
92), of whom it is said that one day he had obeyed (at great personal cost)
Orula’s auroral prescription that the next man to enter his house should be
initiated entirely for free, beers and all. Indeed, related to this is the fact that
haggling with a babalawo is generally considered a faux pas in Ifá practice.What
babalawos charge is, after all, a ‘right’ conferred upon them as priests of Orula
by divine sanction.
Divine influence over the prices that babalawos charge for their services is
fascinatingly encoded in the form of the price itself, though this is empha-
236 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
sized less in everyday practice. Jesus Guanche points out that in the beginning
of the twentieth century, when a consultation would cost 1.05 peso,
it was explained that the 5 kilos (cents) were ‘for Orula’ while the 1 peso
represented the babalawo’s own ‘right’ (1983: 383-4). Rafael Robaina (pers.
comm.), another leading Cuban expert on Ifá, explains that while raising
the price successively during the century, individual babalawos maintained the
ratio of 1 peso to 5 kilos: 2.10, 3.15, 5.25, and so on. Indeed today when
prices are quoted or written down this convention is observed, though when
money actually changes hands the kilos tend to be dropped for reasons of
convenience.
The encompassment of babalawos’ professional services by Orula’s divine
sanction is also captured by the notion of ‘working Ifá’ (trabajar Ifá), which
refers to babalawos’ prerogative to use their skills for the benefit of paying
clients. Although there is no obligation to dispense services in this way, babalawos
commonly remark that Orula ‘calls’ his devotees to work (Orula llama al
trabajo).The case of Elpidio, a recently initiated babalawo whom I got to know
in Matanzas, illustrates the point.‘I have my Ifá and take care of it, but he has
not called me to work yet’, he told me. Months later I heard from his uncle,
a well-established babalawo in Havana, that the state grocery-point that Elpidio
managed had been robbed, and that he was being charged by the local state
authorities for the lost produce – a devastating state of affairs for him. Interestingly,
Elpidio had recently consulted the oracle and Orula had warned him
to avoid safekeeping things for others.Apparently on the night of the robbery
Elpidio was hiding a carton of (probably stolen) Marlboros behind the counter
for a friend.Talking to me, his uncle attributed the shop’s robbery to Elpidio’s
‘disobedience’ and added that this was a good occasion for him to start
‘working his Ifá’.
Such ideas about divine influence accord with practitioners’ more general
understanding of the merits of initiation and Ifá ‘work’ as an investment for
the future. As they frequently emphasize, initiation boosts one’s chances of
success and happiness in all sorts of ways because ‘it gives you aché’. Much
like Polynesian mana, aché is a nebulous concept-cum-substance, often translated
rather vaguely as ‘power’, ‘capacity’, ‘luck’, or ‘positive energy’ (see
Cabrera 2000 [1954]: 99, 103, 301). However, health and financial success are
usually singled out as the obvious senses in which initiation ‘gives aché’.
Indeed, when illustrating the benefits involved, practitioners are as likely to
switch to the idiom iré and osobbo (good and bad fortune). Commenting on
his godfather’s increased affluence in recent years, one babalawo explained: ‘all
those beautiful things that you see in his home, all that iré, … all is because
of Orula’. Indeed, a maxim-like phrase that one often hears among babalawos
is that ‘with Ifá comes good fortune’ (con Ifá entra el iré), and iré here is understood
to mean first and foremost financial fortune (cf. Wedel 2004: 64-7).
This brings us to a third area of interest in examining the monetary dimension
of Ifá practice, one which relates to the fact that in Ifá cosmology deities
and humans interact, not least through exchange. As already mentioned, the
orichas have ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’, and it is up to humans to solicit their favour
by catering to them.This is done through two types of offering: addimú, which
are usually explained as smaller thanks-giving offerings, often made to enhance
one’s iré; and ebbó, which have a more drastic effect on the orichas, and are
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 237
often used to influence particular events. The most effective means of pleasing
deities is to ‘feed’ them with the blood of their favourite animals (dar les
a comer). All major Ifá ceremonies involve sacrifices, and the quality of each
animal is judged principally on the amount of blood it sheds on the consecrated
stones (otán), which ‘are’ the deity, as practitioners explain (Bascom
1950; cf. Holbraad, in press). Animal sacrifices are the most expensive offerings,
and Ifá practitioners are invariably well versed in the prices of livestock
sold in various legal and illegal establishments throughout Havana.‘Everything
is money’, as my exasperated friend said.
Money itself – notes and coins – is also offered ritually to the orichas.This
is done primarily when initiates put their idol-deities on display, which in Ifá
happens on ‘the day of Orula’ (4 October),9
and on the babalawo’s own ‘birthday’,
that is, the anniversary of his initiation. On these occasions, visitors to
the babalawo’s house (and particularly his godchildren [ahijados], i.e. practitioners
over whose initiation he has officiated) are expected to pay their
respect to his Orula idol-deity by placing money in a basket in front of him.
Amounts offered are usually modest (often a few peso coins), though devotees
may seek to make a good impression by offering larger amounts, or even
US dollars. Furthermore, on a more everyday basis, magical remedies (ebbós)
prepared for various purposes often should include a number of coins (opolopo
owó, cf. Bolívar Aróstegui 1994) – details are included in the various recipes
that babalawos pass to each other.
That money should be offered to the orichas directly in this way is perhaps
not unrelated to a fourth point regarding money in Ifá, namely that Ifá
mythology is full of references to the orichas’ own interest in money. Examples
appear below, but in general one may note that plenty of myths depict
the orichas or other divine creatures earning, spending, hoarding, wasting, stealing,
and so on. Every conceivable use of, or attitude to, money finds its mythical
archetype, so to speak, in the corpus of myths (patakines) that babalawos
spend a lifetime learning and interpreting. Both during divination and in more
informal contexts, babalawos are continually referring to such myths and bringing
them to bear on everyday events, which so often have to do with financial
worries.
The logic of divine encompassment
By way of summary, we may note that the four monetary dimensions of Ifá,
so to speak, meet at a rather familiar vanishing point in anthropology, namely
the idea of an ‘embedded’ economy (Mauss 1954; Polanyi 1959).The picture
of Ifá sketched here is one where monetary transactions – however selfinterested
– are encompassed and sustained by divine influence. This is quite
clear with respect to transactions that take place within the constraints of Ifá
rituals themselves (i.e. involving exchanges between humans and gods, etc.),
since the deities themselves ordain these, not least during divination. However,
the subjugation of monetary exchange by the influence of the orichas extends
to all aspects of practitioners’ lives, for, as Elpidio with his unlucky Marlboros
would attest, even the most everyday transactions are subject to divine inter-
238 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
vention. Hence the frequent séances on matters financial as well as the hope
that initiation itself will lead to prosperity.
The deities’ sovereign role over even mundane monetary exchanges is
illustrated by one of the many Ifá myths that address economic concerns:
Once there was a man who had a ram who could talk.10
Everyone who saw it was
amazed, so the man decided to tour from town to town, charging people in the markets
for listening to his animal talk.What he didn’t know was that hidden inside the ram was
Changó11
who was doing the talking. At some time Changó appeared to the man
and asked for the ram as addimú (offering). The man refused, not wanting to lose his
source of income. Angered, Changó killed the animal himself and the man was left with
nothing.
Note that the myth presents the encompassment of monetary exchange
(namely charging at the market) by divine influence (namely Changó’s) as a
state of affairs that is far from self-evident, for the story turns on the opposition
of two alternative perspectives. First we are given the man’s perspective,
which is straightforwardly entrepreneurial: faced with a choice between
sacrificing his ram (incurring the corresponding opportunity cost) in return
for Changó’s favour, or marketing the ram for further gain, the man opts for
the latter. His choice involves calculating the relative value of each alternative
(Changó’s favour < ram’s future returns). From this perspective, then, commensuration
is the name of the game: two alternatives are measured with
reference to a third element, namely the quantitative scale provided by money
itself (see Fig. 1).
The significance of triangulation will be discussed in due course. Note here,
however, that in the myth it is precisely the sovereignty of money in such
triangular comparisons that gets disrupted by the deity. By killing the ram
anyway, Changó displays the futility of trying to calculate the worth of divine
protection. Had the man not attempted such a calculation, presumably he
would have been rewarded. The story, then, coaches the listener away from
the man’s perspective, and towards that of Changó, for, by factoring in
Changó’s anger, we arrive at an inversion of the triangular prototype of
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 239
Changó’s favour ram’s returns
money
<
(ratio)
Figure 1. The man’s perspective.
monetary calculation: the sovereignty of money is substituted for by that of
Changó himself (see Fig. 2). Rather than the analytic comparisons involved
in calculation, we have now a synthetic fusion whereby the ram’s future
returns and Changó’s favour are revealed to be identical. Indeed, the tragic
irony of the story is clear: even unawares, our fortunes – understood financially
as well as existentially – are under the orichas’ sway.
The myth’s message, that divine encompassment is not self-evident, has
implications in terms of what philosophers would call ‘modality’ (i.e. regarding
notions like possibility, necessity, and actuality). Consider the modal properties
of the two triangles above. In the first one (Fig. 1) we have a choice
between distinct and alternative possibilities, which become the object of
comparison. The man, after all, feels that he could sacrifice the ram. In the
inverted triangle (Fig. 2) Changó himself discards the very possibility of
choice. The futility of the man’s calculation, following Changó’s willy-nilly
claim, is tantamount to the futility of representing alternative courses of action
at all. Tragic irony indeed: whatever the man might ‘think’ he ‘could’ do, the
ram must of necessity be sacrificed because Changó ordains so. The possibilities
computed were never really open.
Indeed, the supremacy of the oracle as an instrument for regulating such
matters in the daily life of the cult reproduces the logic of the myth, though
the tragic ironic element is absent, the point of oracles being that they give
access to truth.As I have argued elsewhere, babalawos’ normative insistence that
in principle their oracle is infallible implies, from a logical point of view,
that oracular verdicts deal in necessary rather than contingent truths
(Holbraad 2003). So, analytically speaking, the obligations that oracles are
deemed to impose have to be imagined in a rather counter-intuitive way.
Just like Changó in the myth, the oracles do not, as one might ordinarily
assume, oblige people to act in a certain way in the face of alternative possibilities
(namely do this rather than what you ‘could have’ done). This would
be tantamount to claiming that oracles present contingent truths (namely
while this is what you should do, it ‘could have’ been otherwise). Rather, inasmuch
as oracles present necessary truths, their version of obligation is one that
240 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
Changó
(time of mythical
narration)
Changó’s favour ram’s returns
Figure 2. Changó’s perspective.
cancels the very possibility of choice – the possibility of possibility, if you like:
this is what you should do because, contrary to what you might have thought,
there is nothing else you ‘could’ do (Holbraad in press). In this sense, the
deities’ encompassing remit over practitioners’ finances – exemplified in the
myth of the ram – is in perfect logical accordance with its own divinatory
execution in cult practice.
I want to argue that the modal character of encompassment has far-reaching
consequences for understanding the role of money itself in this context.
This point is less obvious, partly because, as explained below, both theorists
and consumers themselves tend to posit money as an object of exchange that
is so special precisely because it allows people to commensurate alternative
possibilities – in this case possible values – just as the man of the myth tried
to do. On this view, it would seem that if oracles oblige people by eclipsing
possibility with necessity, then money must in some sense be incongruent
with, or even resistant to, divinatory encompassment. As we have seen,
however, the ethnographic evidence suggests otherwise. So it would seem that
some analytical work is required to resolve the seeming paradox that a cult
as thoroughly regulated by divination as Ifá should nevertheless be permeated
by money.
Calculation and the immanence of expenditure
As noted in the introductory remarks, the idea that money is distinguished
by its commensurating capacity has become part and parcel with a tendency
to view monetized ‘economies’ as relatively autonomous domains. For
example, Marx’s historicist argument about the increasing alienation of
exchange from the moral order of production through labour is tied up with
the idea that the objects of exchange (commodities) become abstracted from
the social bonds that bring them about insofar as their value is reckoned in
terms of their potential for exchange rather than use. Money, for Marx, is
integral to this transformation in that it allows for such reckoning, serving as
a ‘universal measure of value’ (its ‘first chief function’ – Marx 1990 [1867]:
188). Simmel places a similar emphasis on abstraction (though for him this
also has positive connotations since, as a catalyst for abstract commensuration,
money enhances individual freedom and contributes to the foundation of
societal trust – cf. Bloch & Parry 1989: 4-7; Frankel 1977: 24-5; Hart 2001:
262-3). ‘As a visible object,’ he writes, ‘money is the substance that embodies
abstract economic value … Money is a specific realization of what is common
to economic objects …’ (Simmel 1978 [1900]: 120).
As noted earlier, the assumption that money must necessarily act as the
‘embodiment of abstraction’ (made by neither Marx nor Simmel, incidentally)
has come under consistent fire from anthropologists. Indeed, if the turning
point in the debate was Bloch and Parry’s demonstration that connections
between money and abstraction are ethnographically contingent, the extent
of Western analysts’ ethnocentric ‘fetishization’ of abstraction (Bloch & Parry
1989: 3) was subsequently exposed by Marilyn Strathern (1992) in her contribution
to Humphrey and Hugh-Jones’s seminal edited volume on barter.
Her argument is worth examining here because it lays out in precise terms
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 241
the role of quantitative thinking in analysts’ imaginings of exchange in general,
and monetary transactions in particular.
Following Chris Gregory’s influential analysis of gift exchange in Melanesia
(which included a consideration of the role of money as a ‘gift’ rather than
as a ‘commodity’ – Gregory 1982), Strathern’s task in the article is to show
how premises that underlie Western monetary calculation have been allowed
to inform analyses of all forms of exchange, such as Melanesian barter and
gift exchange. The crucial element of this implicitly ‘monetarist’ logic (her
term) is the priority that it gives to quantitative over qualitative relations.This,
she argues, is a concomitant of ‘the magic of reification’ (Strathern 1992: 172),
a peculiarly Western ontological position which sees exchange as a mutual
swap of discrete and already valuable objects. According to this ‘barter model
of value’ (Strathern 1992: 169), the exchangeability of things (pigs, time,
labour, money, etc.) follows ‘naturally’, as it were, from the priority given to
their individual identity, which allows them to be abstracted as ‘units’, seen as
valuable insofar as they can be counted. On this view, rather than being treated
as one among others of a thing’s qualities, quantity is transcendentalized and
hence comes to be understood as encompassing all other qualities (value,
labour, colour, or whatever), which are thereby digitalised and made commensurable
through enumeration. The exchangeability of things is thus built
into their discrete fabric, and exchange simply makes value visible in the form
of a ratio relating quantities of things ‘against’ each other. In the case of barter
the ratio established relates objects (e.g. pigs for shells), whereas in gift
exchange the ratio is supposed to hold between subjects (my prestige against
yours, say). Barter, then, tends to be viewed as a proto-commodity situation
that leads teleologically to a monetized economy, where money serves to
objectify value in the form of the price.
Referring to Melanesian exchange, Strathern shows up the limitations of
this kind of emphasis on the abstract operations of quantification. Looking at
barter and gift-giving, she argues that, for the Melanesians involved, exchange
turns not on establishing a quantitative equivalence between the objects
exchanged, but rather on transactors’ ability to coerce each other into viewing
the objects as qualitatively ‘substitutable’ (Strathern 1992: 171; cf. Strathern
2000). Indeed, the fact that Strathern treats money on a par with barter and
gifts when lining up her critical examples suggests that for her a monetarist
logic of quantification does analytic violence to Melanesian monetary transactions
as well. For example, she cites Healey’s study of Maring trade, pointing
out that haggling is absent, with traders accepting banknotes only in
standard amounts, and customers paying for each item they buy separately
rather than summing prices up (cf. Healey 1985). Such practices would suggest
that quantitative scales should not always be assumed to occupy the transcendental
position with which Westerners invest them.As Jadran Mimica puts
it, speaking of the Iqwaye’s attitude to banknotes, ‘What matters to them …
is not the abstract quantity as such but the exact and concrete material properties
of the exchanged quantities’ (Mimica 1988: 20, original emphases).
Strathern’s Melanesian material clearly resonates with the case of Ifá: for
example, the absence of haggling, the standard differentiation of babalawos’ fees
in terms of divine and human components, and so on. Indeed the continuity
between gift, barter, and monetary exchange implied by her argument is
242 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
enticing in that the multifarious uses of money in Ifá arguably defy such categories
(e.g. when practitioners solicit the deities’ protection by offering them
money, are they ‘gifting’,‘paying’,‘sacrificing’, or what?). Nevertheless, the revision
of assumptions about money that Strathern culls from her ethnographic
thought experiment is potentially overdrawn. For while she may not intend
the guiding contrast of her article – between the relative priorities of quantitative
commensuration and qualitative substitution – to be distributed ‘culturally’
(‘we think quantitatively while they think qualitatively’), the contrast
is certainly presented as an analytic antinomy: ‘we give logical priority to
quantity but, to make sense of certain ethnography, we should prioritize
quality instead’ – anthropological analysis as substitutive exchange, as it were
(cf. Gell 1999; Pottage 2001).12
The Ifá myth of the talking ram suggests a
third possibility: that commensuration and substitution might be articulated
together in the form of money itself, so that, rather than an analytic antinomy,
their contrasting demands may present a properly ethnographic paradox
– a condition with which transactors themselves must reckon.13
Some formal
considerations may be helpful here.
The quantitativist view sees money, with its digital denominations, as transcendental
with respect to the valuables it measures. Standing behind them it
renders other valuables commensurable, taking the position of a third element
with which two others can be compared quantitatively, hence establishing a
ratio between them. The digital character of money as a measure of value
allows it to be implicated in modal ‘as if’ scenarios, whereby a given sum of
money is imagined as potentially convertible into all the different things it
could buy. Gazing at my pound, I get carried away and start thinking that it
could buy me 2 Kit Kats, or 1 bus ticket, or $1.85, or whatever. From the
point of view of its quantity, my pound enters into triangular comparisons
whereby different goods are commensurated: 2 Kit Kats = 1 bus ticket, etc.
(see Fig. 3).
Crucial here is the logical work that this triangular relationship performs.
Consider a comparison. Imagine a world in which only two goods were for
sale, say a bunch of plantains and a bottle of oil. Also imagine that this world
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 243
transcendental
money
Kit Kat bus ticket<
(ratio)
Figure 3. Monetarism (‘as if’ comparisons).
was mad enough to have two currencies: pesos and dollars. Now imagine that
for some reason the plantains were only available for pesos (e.g. for 6) and
the oil only for dollars ($2.15), and that pesos and dollars could not buy one
another, so that triangulation would be effectively precluded. In such a world
money is quantitative, but it is not transcendental, for pesos and dollars are no
more a measure of the value of plantains and oil than plantains and oil are a
measure for pesos and dollars (2.15 for 1 or whatever). In other words, to
point out the quantity of $2.15, for example, does not say anything more
about that entity than would a qualitative statement, namely that it buys you
a bottle of oil.
Now, arguably this world sounds more outlandish than it is.This is because
abstract thought (both lay and scientific) easily represents money in its own
image, as it were, privileging its digital aspect (the fact that money can be
divided and iterated in principle) to such an extent that it obscures the temporally
bound moments when money is actually deployed – the moment of
its consumption in a particular purchase. For the point is that the moment I
decide actually to spend my money, the ‘as if’ scenarios necessarily recede.
One scenario has been chosen regardless of the opportunity costs, and my
pound is now important not because it could buy anything that has that price,
but because it will buy me something in particular. In theory money might
be able to buy many different things, but in practice it only buys one thing
at a time. The moment of consumption, then, eclipses the purview of possible
worlds with a concrete exchange, and thus immanently strips money of
its transcendental character. At the moment of expenditure, then, money is
not deployed as a digital criterion of value, but is rather integrated as a temporal
entity in its own right by the one-to-one gravity, so to speak, that the
entity being purchased exerts on it. Spending is not only the consumption of
money as a determinate quantity, but also its consummation as an integral and
uniquely qualitative entity.
These considerations allow us to see why the peculiar connection between
divination and money in Ifá is not really paradoxical, or no more paradoxical
than money is itself. For, in effect, divine demand curtails exactly the triangular
‘as if’ comparisons that render money transcendental (should I buy
the hen that Orula asks for or should I use the money to buy a chicken for
the house?). In this sense, money, as means of expenditure as well as calculation,
lends itself to divine encompassment (and is hence ‘embedded’) by reproducing
the logic of divinatory obligation in its own dual form: expenditure
eclipses the possibility of calculation, just like obligation eclipses the possibility
of choice.14
Money and the mobility of exchange
At this point the argument may appear to have an air of overkill.To say that
oracles are able to regulate monetary transactions only by curtailing the potential
of money for abstract calculation seems tantamount to saying that in Ifá
money is stripped of the one attribute that distinguishes it from other objects
of exchange. On this view, candles, flowers, or animal blood are just like
money, for they too are integral and uniquely qualitative entities that can be
244 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
earmarked by oracles for consumption. This would, though, be a misunderstanding
– one that arguably underlies much of the anthropological critique
of assumptions about abstraction, as I argued in my introductory comments.15
In obviating calculation, oracles do not strip money of its peculiarly quantitative
quality. They just ‘dumb quantity down’ as one among other qualities
of money (however special), thus eclipsing its otherwise transcendental position.
Indeed, I want to argue that in Ifá the pervasive use of (and concern
with) money is owed to its quantitative character.As I propose to show, quantity
confers more advantages to money than just the possibility of commensuration,
and these advantages render money particularly suited as a medium
of exchange in the encompassed space of divinatory regulation.
Babalawos explain the merits of money with reference to the best-known
origin myth of money in Ifá (the ‘birth’ of money, as they put it16
), linked
with the divinatory oddu Oragún,17
who is the last in the hierarchy of the
principal oddu and associated with darkness and suffering.
Oragún was once in the marketplace (la plaza), when he noticed Obara Meyi18
going
about his business. Obara had arrived at the market with two empty sacks – nothing
else. Soon he approached a trader at his stall and proposed that he exchange some of his
goods for one of the empty sacks. ‘Why should I do that?’, asked the trader incredulously.
Obara explained that with the empty bag he could transport his goods better.The
trader agreed to swap. Armed with the goods, Obara went up to another trader and
managed to agree another advantageous deal, and then another, and so on. In this way
Obara’s wealth grew fast.Watching all this, Oragún could not help admiring Obara’s skills.
But it occurred to him that too much time was wasted in the market with all these
cumbersome swaps. So he decided to go to Olofin19
and propose to him to let people
buy and sell things for money, rather than having to swap them all the time. Olofin was
sceptical,‘What do people need money for? Things work fine as it is’. Oragún said,‘Let’s
do this: give them money to use, and if there really is no sense in it you retire it immediately
and banish me for ever. But if I am right, you will see that people will begin to
believe more in money than they believe in you’. Not one to swallow his pride, Olofin
accepted the challenge, and gave the people cowries to exchange with. As Oragún had
said, people’s obsession with making money became so great that they began to disrespect
Olofin himself. It is for this reason that Ifá says that money is cursed (el dinero está
maldito).
The fact that Oragún was inspired to invent money while watching Obara
Meyi’s deft but slow barter deals at the marketplace may suggest that the myth
should be read as a dramatization of the familiar model that depicts money
as the telos of barter.20
Is, however, a trite lesson in evolutionary political
economy really the point here? Perhaps the explicit theme of speed is more
telling. After all, notions of abstract calculation – basic to the teleology of
the ‘barter theory of value’, as Strathern explained – are conspicuously absent
from the myth. Oragún only invents cowries as a medium of exchange in
view of the ‘cumbersome’ character of Obara Meyi’s swaps with the traders.
And the capacity of money to ease and quicken transactions is not as such
related to its role as a scale of value. At issue here is the technology of expenditure
(how best to ‘buy and sell things’), so, like Olofin, we are invited to
think of money in its ‘encompassed’ guise, and to consider its relative advantages
over swapping.
The advantages of money can be gleaned by attending to its chief distinguishing
feature, namely its quantitative nature as a purely multiple object.
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 245
Swaps were cumbersome, as Oragún observed, because trading partners had
to persuade one another that their goods were worth swapping – a judgement
that depends on the qualitative attributes of what is on offer (using a
sack for transport, etc.). With money, however, quantity is the only relevant
quality. If exchange involves the substitution of one whole object for another,
money is the perfect medium just because its multiplicity renders it partible;
divided at any appropriate point, digital series of cowries (today, pesos or
dollars) still constitute substitutable ‘wholes’, for no quality other than quantity
distinguishes them from the series from which they are detached – no
‘structure’ other than multiplicity.21
So, unlike a sack or any other object
whose equivalence to another good is constrained by its own qualitative
nature, money quickens the bargain, so to speak, since its ‘equivalence’ depends
only on the qualities of what it buys, which money mirrors just by integrating
itself as a sum of the ‘right amount’.22
Rather than a haphazard negotiation
over disparate qualities (e.g. the sack’s ease of transport, size, comfort, or
whatever), purchasing becomes a simple quantitative operation (6 pesos for
plantains, $2.15 for oil).
With this point about the eases of partibility comes a more radical concomitant
that gives a stronger sense of why Oragún saw such revolutionary
potential in money – one with which even Olofin could be challenged
to a bet. After all, the partibility of money does not explain why people
might become obsessed with making it, as Oragún suggests. Why might
instituting money as a means of exchange render it willy-nilly an end worth
pursuing in its own right? I would suggest that a shift from means to end is
implicit in the very notion of monetary expenditure. If money is an object
(and hence means) of exchange due to its partibility, it actually follows that
it must first be deemed an end in its own right. As we saw, the partibility of
money – its capacity to be divided into wholes – presupposes the idea of a
series from which sums might be partitioned. So, unlike swapping, which is
based on the notion of efficient whole-for-whole substitutions, as Strathern
has described (see note 15), monetary purchases are meant, as a matter of
logical principle, to leave a residue – the whole that is left over once the
expenditure has been extracted. In other words, the partibility of money as
an object of exchange is premised on its perviousness as a resource; as a
collection of particles (1 cowry + 1 cowry + 1 cowry + …), money constitutes
a pool out of which ‘parts’ can be extracted for a given purchase.
Obtaining goods is no longer a matter of persuading vendors to substitute
one’s own for them, but, rather more simply, one of having enough money
to afford to ‘part with’ some of it for the sake of a purchase. So if having
gains logical priority over spending, then money is an end before it can serve
as a means.
This suggests a figure/ground reversal that presents the role of money as
more than just an especially flexible substitute for other objects of exchange
(i.e. those that are swapped), for with money the ordinary image of exchange
as a substitution of one object for another (as in Fig. 4) can be turned inside
out. If exchange can be imagined as a substitution (a sum for an object,‘figure’
for ‘figure’), it can also be thought of as a displacement, a dent in the ‘ground’
from which the sum is detached – as figure – when it is expended (‘expended’).
Or, as we say, a ‘drain on resources’ (see Fig. 5).
246 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
Of course, all exchange implies displacement in this sense – to obtain something
I have to give up another thing.The point, however, is that, rather like
Archimedes’ bathwater and unlike sacks and such, money is able to register
displacement – indeed, to act as its catalyst – by virtue of its pervious form.
Its purely multiple constitution allows it to facilitate the movement of
exchange insofar as, at the moment of expenditure, it can be displaced at just
the ‘right’ amount. So one may think of money as a ‘medium’ of exchange
in more than the customary sense. Not only is it an ‘object’ that gets
exchanged, but also it provides an ‘environment’ that allows exchange to get
going. One might say that in this sense money is a condition for itself.
Conclusion: money and its potential
The argument of this article can be summarized with reference to one of the
most striking leitmotifs in the anthropological literature on money, namely
the relationship between money and religious ‘potency’ or ‘magic’. Certainly
the observation, first associated with the classic anthropological debate about
mana, that in a number of societies (including early Judaic ones – Crump
1981: 285) money is deemed to have divine potency resonates with the
ethnography presented here (Durkheim 1995 [1912]: 215, 421; Mauss 2001
[1972]; cf. Lambek 2001). As we have seen, this is not only a matter of the
explicit connections that babalawos make between money and divine power,
in ritual procedure as well as by reference to myth and cosmological principles
such as aché and iré. The ‘structural’ role, so to speak, of money as a catalyst
for every aspect of cult practice (fees for babalawos’ services of divination,
magic and initiation, sacrifices to the gods, etc.) makes for a system of worship
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 247
money
(immanent)
bus ticket
Figure 4. Moment of consumption (integration).
money as partible object
(figure)
money as pervious resource
(ground)
bus ticket
Figure 5. Expenditure as displacement (the movement of exchange).
that is literally animated by monetary expenditure. Of course, one might
imagine money as being auxiliary to the life of the cult, a contingent result
of modern economic circumstances with no cosmological significance.Worse,
one could imagine – as do ‘rationalists’ of various colours, including Cubans
in positions of authority – that the monetary underpinnings of the cult are
an index of its ‘exploitative’ character (recalling Javier’s defence above), or even
that money is an alien element that serves to ‘commodify’ worship. Such prejudiced
positions would, however, ignore the way in which divinatory regulation
– the major premise of Ifá practice,‘embeds’ money as an integral element
of worship precisely by curtailing the abstract operations that ‘exploitation’
and ‘commoditization’ would involve. Reproducing in its own dual form the
logic of the oracles that regulate it, money is rendered an agent of expenditure
rather than calculation. And since, as we saw, monetary expenditure furnishes
a uniquely fluent format for exchange, and exchange is the form that
all major acts of worship take, money becomes a premise for Ifá practice, and
thus a proper part of its cosmology.
Indeed, in allowing us to explore the peculiar characteristics of money in
its ‘encompassed’ guise as an agent of expenditure, the logic of divinatory regulation
speaks directly to the anthropological literature on the religious
‘potency’ of money. Although the literature is too vast to be reviewed here,
it may be fair to say that the peculiarly ‘mystical’ power of money has tended
to be explained by appeal to its capacity for abstraction,23
at least since Marx,
who saw ‘fetishist’ notions of money as the result of misattributing the creative
powers of human labour onto money itself because of its capacity to
extract surplus value by translating (measuring) use-values into exchangevalues
(Marx 1990 [1867]: 163-69). This is so for David Graeber (2001, cf.
1996), who has mobilized arguments about the source of money’s value in a
penetrating synthesis of the anthropology of value in general. His central claim
about money – in contrast to other valuables like the heirlooms of Maussian
discussions of gifting – is that it tends to be regarded as powerful (and is
therefore valued) due to its ‘capacity to turn into many other things’, since
‘[m]oney is the potential for future specificity’ (2001: 114, see also note 12
on Strathern). Hence, he argues, the frequent associations of the potency of
money with its invisibility while it is withdrawn from circulation and hoarded
as a resource. By contrast, Ifá suggests an analysis of mystical potency that turns
on oracles’ ability to cancel money’s capacity to turn into ‘many other things’.
So while Graeber is right to connect the power of money with its invisibility
as a resource, the present analysis predicates invisibility (and thus power
too) on the unique character of money as an instrument of expenditure rather
than calculation. As a multiplicity, money purchases things by dividing itself
from what is indeed an invisible resource to the extent that it stands as
‘ground’ to the ‘figures’ of expenditure (namely the sum expended and the
goods it buys). And therein lies the peculiar power of money in contrast
to other objects of exchange: like a hidden premise, it provides a motile
medium within which exchange – the most important of acts in Ifá – can
be consummated.
None of this is to deny, however, that money has the potential for abstraction.
Divinatory encompassment is, as we saw, not self-evident; it needs to be
248 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
achieved through the strictures of oracular regulation. So while the monetary
premise of Ifá worship is manifestly not a matter of, say, commoditization, the
potential for money to escape the demands of the deities is still there. Indeed,
in the origin-myth of money, Oragún – harbinger of bad things – knows that
in money he is instituting a mixed blessing: ‘you will see that people will
begin to believe more in money than they believe in you’, he warns Olofin.
In fact, when asked why they get clients to cross themselves with consultation
fees before handing them over, babalawos invariably pit money against
Olofin (the divine regulator par excellence) with reference to the story of his
bet with Oragún;‘Olofin cursed money’, they say.This notion, I would argue,
amounts to a recognition of the tragic counterpart to the (ironic) myth of
the talking ram – the man ignores Changó and thus gets his animal killed.
For while the logic of divine encompassment may preclude the possibility of
using money to calculate alternative purchases in the ‘as if’ mode, it cannot
preclude the possibility that this logic itself may be ignored. Oracles may
oblige, but, other than with threats of calamity and tragedy, they cannot oblige
obligatorily, so to speak. Any practitioner who has chosen on occasion to take
a chicken demanded by Orula and used it instead to feed his family would
attest to this.
NOTES
The article is based on my original Ph.D. fieldwork in Havana (1998-2000), funded by a
studentship from the Economic and Social Research Council, as well as a field trip in 2004,
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. I am grateful to both bodies for their
support, as well as to the Centro de Antropología for hosting me in Havana. The paper has
benefited from seminar presentations of earlier versions at the Centre of Latin American Studies
at Cambridge, the Department of Anthropology at University College London, and the Institute
of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford. I am particularly grateful to Javierito
Alfonso, Victor Betancourt, Maurice Bloch, Caroline Humphrey, Morten Pedersen, Rafael
Robaina, and Marilyn Strathern for reading and commenting on drafts. I also thank Keith Hart,
Stephan Palmié, and two anonymous assessors who, as readers for JRAI, offered highly stimulating
comments.
1
Indeed, the trend in recent years has been to see abstraction not as an inherent characteristic
of money, but rather as a corollary of specific social practices, be they scientific/
epistemological (cf. Callon 1998; Carrier & Miller 1998; Gudeman 1986) or political/
ideological (Dilley 1992; Gregory 1997: 233-96; Papataxiarchis 1999; M. Stewart 1994).
2
Although the US dollar was withdrawn from (legal) circulation in Cuba in November 2004,
the economy continues to be dual, with ‘convertible pesos’, pegged 1 : 1 to the US dollar, being
used alongside the ‘national currency’ of Cuban pesos.
3
While only heterosexual men may be initiated into Ifá as babalawos, their clientele is
predominantly female.
4
Unless surnames are given, pseudonyms are used throughout.
5
During my fieldwork in 1998-2000 the fee for Cuban clients was usually 3 or 5 pesos –
roughly 15-25 cents of a US dollar. Foreigners were expected to pay many times more (cf.
Hagedorn 2001). Presently, as dollars become ever more consolidated as a medium of everyday
transaction, Cubans too are increasingly willing and expected to pay babalawos in dollars,
according to their ability.
6
Ifá divination involves two alternative methods, both of which are designed to yield one
out of 256 possible divinatory configurations, referred to in Yoruba as oddu or in Spanish as
signos (lit.‘signs’, see Bascom 1991 [1969]; Holbraad 2003). For more everyday purposes (mainly
the ad hoc consultation of clients) a consecrated divining-chain is used. In more ceremonious
MARTIN HOLBRAAD 249
divinations (those conducted as part of larger rituals such as initiation) the oddu are cast by the
use of sixteen consecrated kola nuts, deemed to be Orula himself (hence these ceremonies are
described as ‘bajadas de Orula’ – lit. descents of Orula).
7
All prices are from 1998-2000 and the peso-dollar exchange rate is taken at 20 : 1, as it
stood then.
8
Each of the 256 signos has its own name. As a rule, babalawos call each other by the name
of their signos, so effectively one’s signo also becomes one’s name (Bascom 1966; Holbraad
in press).
9
Each oricha has his or her own saint’s day (día del santo), an occasion for elaborate ceremonies
in his or her honour.This is perhaps the most obvious sense in which Santería and Ifá
are ‘syncretic’ cults, since saint’s days are celebrated according to the Catholic calendar (e.g.
since Orula is identified with St Francis of Assisi he is celebrated on St Francis’s day – 4
October).
10
In Ifá, particular myths are associated with each of the 256 divinatory signos, and are often
referred to as ‘paths’ of the signo (caminos del signo, cf. Holbraad 2003). This myth is associated
with the signo Ofún Tempolá.
11
A virile and popular oricha, Changó is the patron of the thunder.
12
I am not sure whether Strathern’s more recent work on money in Papua New Guinea
tempers this (see 1999: 89-116). Her informants’ focus on quantitative features, such as the
‘partibility’ of money, which forces them to contemplate ‘too many’ possible purchases (1999:
96), may suggest that abstract calculations of value are after all important in Melanesia. However,
Strathern does not connect these points to her 1992 argument, so one wonders whether for
her these ‘unfamiliar observations’ are indices of a Melanesian ‘modernity’ (both expressions are
hers). In such a case, the antinomy of quality v. quantity is distributed temporally, either as an
ethnographic novelty (old v. new Melanesia) or ‘analytically’ across Strathern’s papers (1992 v.
1999)!
13
Marx and Simmel both came close to articulating such a scenario, commenting on the
paradoxical character of money as both a measure of value and a value of itself (Marx 1990
[1867]: 199; Simmel 1978: 122).
14
This argument about the divinatory encompassment of money is at odds with Bloch and
Parry’s Durkheimian point that certain monetary exchanges constitute a central modality
through which transcendent social or cosmic orders are ‘reproduced’. I am referring here to
Bloch and Parry’s famous typology of ‘long term’ v. ‘short term’ monetary transactions (1989:
23-30), whereby the former – which are typically ritualized – co-opt transient individual lives
and actions in a project of cosmic and social reproduction, while the latter remain the ‘legitimate
domain of individual – often acquisitive – activity’ (1989: 2). Without going into the
detail, it should be clear that such a distinction is not borne out in Ifá, which tends to fuse the
everyday with the divine: human fortunes, however self-interested, just are the outcome of
divine forces. Indeed, I would argue that Bloch and Parry’s contention that when money is
involved in sustaining representations of transcendent entities it must enter ‘long-term’ cycles
of transaction plays on an unjustifiably general equation of transcendence with permanence,
endurance, or – indeed – infinity. In this connection I find convincing Mircea Eliade’s claim
that such tacit detemporalizations of the divine are peculiar to Judaeo-Christianity (Eliade 1991
[1954]: 124-37). What is crucially different in cosmologies such as that of Ifá is that divinities
are adored not for their transcendental sovereignty over an infinite universe (this, for babalawos,
is a matter of speculation), but for their power to inject their otherwise transcendent influence
into everyday temporal affairs. Hence the focal role of the oracles. Unlike their JudaeoChristian
equivalent – prophesy – oracles provide temporal gates, so to speak, through which
transcendent deities can blend into the immanent minutiae of everyday life. So Bloch and
Parry’s transcendentalism does to divinities what monetarism does to money. An inordinately
theoretical focus on the omnipotence and immortality of divine entities tends to eclipse the
fact that their power is manifested at particular times and places or, if you like, in short-term
events.
15
For example, Strathern closes her critique of the Western ‘barter model of value’ thus:
‘[W]hat people exchange is always a totality … And thus the only possible quantity at issue is
one. We may speak of a ratio, but if so it is one of an otherwise unquantifiable magnitude –
the act of another agent as a measure of oneself as an agent.The difference is qualitative’ (1992:
188).
250 MARTIN HOLBRAAD
16
In Ifá cosmology ‘everything’, as babalawos emphasize, can be explained with reference to
its ‘birth’ in one oddu or other.
17
Surrogate name for the oddu Ofún Meyi.
18
Obara Meyi is the name of another oddu, and, like all oddu, is personified as a deity in his
own right.
19
Olofin stands at the apex of Ifá mythology, as the all-powerful and unapproachable god of
the sun (sometimes identified with the God of Catholicism).
20
For anthropological critiques see Hart (2001: 264-72; in press); Humphrey (1985);
Humphrey & Hugh-Jones (1992: 1-20).
21
The absence of structure is also what distinguishes this notion of ‘partibility’ from
Melanesianists’ use of the mathematical concept of ‘fractality’ (cf. Gell 1998: 137-40; Wagner
1991). A fractal object is one that reproduces structural features at different scales. The ‘partibility’
of money, however, comes down to the fact that it reproduces an absence of structure
at whatever scale gradation.
22
Note, of course, that determining what amount may be ‘right’ is an explicitly comparative
exercise that puts money in the role of transcendental measure, as described above.The point,
however, is that such comparisons presuppose partibility, that is, the ability of a multiplicity to
divide into integral (and thus determinate) sums.
23
The paradox here is that, as discussed above, abstraction is also meant to explain the
tendency of money to disembed itself from moral orders such as the ‘religious’. This contradiction
may be sufficient ground to doubt the validity in this context of arguments from
abstraction!
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Multiplicité dépensière : l’argent dans le culte Ifá à Cuba
Résumé
En contradiction avec l’hypothèse selon laquelle l’argent est un agent d’abstraction et de
« dés-intégration », les anthropologues ont tendance à établir des analogies avec d’autres objets
d’échange, minimisant ainsi la nature quantitative propre à l’argent. L’auteur cherche ici à
défaire l’association, implicite dans ce type de procédés, entre quantité et abstraction. En se
concentrant sur le caractère particulier de l’argent comme objet « purement multiple », il
cherche à rendre compte de « l’intégration » sans occulter l’aspect quantitatif : à quoi ressemble
une quantité lorsqu’on ne la regarde pas comme un dénominateur abstrait ? Cette question
est explorée en relation avec l’Ifá, un culte de divination afro-cubain dans lequel les
transactions monétaires constituent les prémisses cosmologiques.
Martin Holbraad is Lecturer at the Social Anthropology Department at University College
London. Having conducted fieldwork in Havana on Afro-Cuban religion since 1998, he is currently
working on a book on divination and anthropological truth, and a co-edited volume on
the ontology of artefacts.
Department of Social Anthropology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT,
UK. m.holbraad@ucl.ac.uk
254 MARTIN HOLBRAAD