Abstract
This chapter argues that the analysis of Calon integration into the Bahian economy occurs not through individuals, but through households. It suggests that the Calon involvement in local economy is best approached as a form of non-autarkic householding, a concept that Chris Gregory develops on the basis of the work of Karl Polanyi. This is a form of economic insertion of communities that depend on exchange relations with majority societies, which see them as ‘outsiders’ and from which, at the same time, these communities differentiate themselves.
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- 1.
This contrasts with the situation in Europe and North America, where many Romani communities derived significant income from seasonal agricultural labour or collection of forest produce.
- 2.
My analysis here is influenced also by that of Martin Olivera (2016), who argued that the organisation of the economic practices of Gabori Roma of Romania could be understood as the domestic mode of production (Sahlins 1972). I prefer Gregory’s model of ‘householding’, since it is better suited for analysing a form of integration fully embedded in the market and for capturing how the flexibility of social arrangements, kinship, and exchange relate.
One must not conflate householding as a concept used here with ‘house’. In the present case it is applied to people who might prefer living in tents, do not value ‘house’ as an institution transcending individual lives, for whom one’s house is not a source of any special emotional attachment and who easily part with physical houses.
- 3.
In ‘The economy as instituted process’ (1957a), Polanyi suggests that three forms of integration presuppose the existence of specific institutions and social relations that, in different historical settings, are marked by different modes of their coexistence: thus, ‘reciprocity’ can be associated with the symmetry of moieties and ‘redistribution’ can depend on the centricity of temple economies, while ‘exchange’ most strongly characterises self-regulating capitalist markets.
- 4.
Many interpersonal conflicts mentioned in this book involve affines: Manuel was killed by his sister’s husband Mauro; Beiju and Camarão killed a man who had come to marry their sister, but who instead killed their father the night before the wedding; Viviane’s father was killed by her maternal uncle; and so on.
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Fotta, M. (2018). Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche As Householding. In: From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_7
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