Contenu du sommaire : L'argent domestique : des pratiques aux institutions

Economic Socialization and Monetary Hierarchies in a Context of Crisis: Argentina, 2001-2003 Between 2001 and 2003, more than half of all Argentine provinces issued their own currency, which coexisted with the national currency (the peso) on their respective territories. This article draws upon a case study to examine the effects of this currency proliferation on the everyday uses and social representations of money in Argentina. On the basis of a detailed examination of monetary practices, it considers the practical modalities of the coexistence of various currencies. At the same time, it offers the necessary materials for an empirical investigation of the processes of economic socialization that, in every historic and geographical context, give form to socially diffuse practices of billing and payment. I first describe the population's everyday monetary practices during the period in which provincial currencies circulated. I then turn to consider the relations between the various currencies in circulation as well as the social relations that produced and were transformed by them. Finally, I present the economic socialization processes that simultaneously caused and resulted from the manner in which monetary diversity was established.

Carola and Saraswathi: Juggling Wealth in India and Mexico Drawing on ethnographic work in India and Mexico, this article considers the nature of wealth in the women's everyday financial operations. We argue that wealth is not simply the actual income or quantifiable resources possessed by an individual or family but also relates to the manner in which certain material and symbolic resources are deployed and endowed with meaning in given cultural contexts. Beyond what is typically defined as “capital”, what matters in the acquisition of wealth is the process by which people are able to employ their capital to realize a profit ( “capitalization”). Doing so, however, requires that one constantly “juggle” the mechanisms for acquiring wealth. These consist of an uninterrupted series of risky operations in which various forms of capital are combined, articulated and sometimes substituted for one another. It is only by virtue of this interdependency and constant circulation that these forms of capital acquire value.

Senegalese Immigrants and Savings: A Multi-Situated Domestic Economy Faced with French Financial Institutions Drawing upon a long-term ethnographic survey, this article seeks to show how, inscribed within several universes of meaning and belonging, Senegalese immigrants sometimes wind up developing conflictual and mutually uncomprehending financial relations with French banks. This requires lifting the veil on certain financial institution customs as well as on saving practices that appear unintelligible from the perspective of the established norms of the country of residence. To do so, it is necessary to deconstruct received ideas concerning the resources of migrants whose class positions cannot be solely defined by reference to the criteria of France.

Private Clients, Banks and Trust: An Italian Case Study This ethnographic study presents the results of a survey regarding the influence of banking advisors on indebted households in two Italian banks. The data was collected in the course of 73 interviews with the holders of variable rate mortgages and their banking advisors. The present article aims to describe borrowers' choices and motivations faced with soaring monthly repayments at the time of the 2008 financial crisis. The information collected during the survey shows a few of the ways in which banks influence their clients and reconfigure the resources available to families as well as the tools they use to do so, a crucial new factor of inequality in contemporary society.

In the late 1950s Swedish commercial banks started to offer payroll services to employers and open current accounts with chequebooks for both white- and blue-collar employees. Within a decade Swedish wage earners were turned into bank customers and the commercial banks – formerly solemn institutions serving business and the very richest – became retail companies selling a wide range of products to a broad public. The paper investigates, through the case of so-called cheque account salaries, the cultural challenges posed by the exceptionally early bancarisation (spread of the use of banking services) in Swedish society. I argue against over-emphasising the individual self-governing financial subjects depicted in Foulcauldian studies of the financialisation process. The making and control of new financial subjects in Sweden was made possible, at least during its first phase, by technologies and discourses rooted in a more directly disciplinary and hierarchical value system impregnated by class (as defined by production rather than consumption). Collective affiliations of groups of employees, building on wage earner identities, rather than on consumer identities, proved to be instrumental in the financialisation of everyday life. The new everyday consumers of financial products were created in a back and forth movement between the older subject positions and the models imagined for the new. Furthermore, my study demonstrates that the prevalent chronology of the financialisation of daily life in Europe can be traced further back in time.

Chinese Perceptions of a Crisis-Ridden EU If, as coined by John Churton Collins, “in adversity, we know our friends”, then the EU could not have thought of a better opportunity than the one created by the post-2000 wave of crises that rippled throughout Europe to test the strength – if not the sincerity – of its partnership with China. This research surveys a series of articles published in two journals closely linked to the Chinese central government. It shed light on Chinese perceptions of the EU between 2007 and 2013, and, more particularly, on the high degree of ambiguity that characterizes these perceptions. While, on the eve of EU crises, Chinese analysts worried about the rise of a powerful EU capable of defending its own interests when dealing with China, the faltering of the Eurozone, itself largely attributed to mistakes made by European leaders, has been considered with equanimity. In fact, the weakening of the European model is seen as part of an evolution in the distribution of power that are beneficial to China both economically and politically.

What Security Architecture for the Mediterranean? This study addresses the security architecture of the Mediterranean, a zone characterized by significant heterogeneity: stability to the North, instability to the South. It argues for a cooperative security regime that takes sub-regional diversity into account. Drawing upon neo-realist, neo-liberal and (above all) constructivist approaches as well as the closely related concepts of security regime and security community, the article seeks to assess the relevance of cooperative security for the Mediterranean space. Given its heterogenous configuration and the tension between strategic imperatives and ethical considerations in European preferences, how are norms transferred to the southern shore? The primacy of strategic imperatives in the context of the Arab uprisings and elsewhere distorts the process of norm transfer and externalization. However, despite the persistence of some hotbeds of conflict in the region, a system of cooperative security is indeed being established.

From Citizen Power to People Power: The Institutionalization of Women's Political Action in Venezuela With the arrival to power of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela changed political regime, adopting the project of “participatory and protagonistic democracy” (protagónica) in the 1999 Constitution. The central role played by Communal Councils in this policy of participation allowed “everyday territories” to be promoted as levels of action and spaces in which specific actors – most of them women – could be involved. It is therefore worth asking how the “popular power” of twenty-first socialism departed from the liberal state's rhetoric of citizenship – a rhetoric created by and for men – in order to promote women's political skills and draw inspiration from their practices? The collapse of the division between state and society that accompanied the establishment of the Communal Councils allowed the political character of women's local action to be recognized. Yet it also raises the question of party affiliation in political involvement and, paradoxically, the self-determination of power that it permits.