Abstract

Despite the pervasiveness of barter across societies, this mode of transaction has largely escaped the anthropologist’s gaze. Drawing on data from fairs in the Argentinean Andes, this book explores fairs’ embeddedness within religious celebration, arguing that barter is addressed as a sacrifice to catholic figures and local ancestors, and thus challenging a widespread view of barter as a non-monetary form of commodity exchange. Issues of value, identity, and exchange are considered, furthering our understanding of how social groups create themselves through material circulation.

“Olivia Angé has crafted an engaging, insightful, and timely work that constitutes an important contribution to Andean/Latin American Studies, economic and religious anthropology, and the study of exchange. The author artfully weaves an edifying tapestry of the performativity of regional fairs among Kolla people of Argentina.” · David Berliner, Université Libre de Bruxelles

Olivia Angé is Associate Professor in Economic Anthropology at the Université libre de Bruxelles. She specializes in the study of material circulation, agriculture, and value creation in the Andes. Since 2005, she has conducted extensive fieldwork on barter fairs in the Argentinean cordillera. She is the co-author (with David Berliner) of Anthropology and Nostalgia (Berghahn, 2014).