Nancy Munn

Nancy Munn is an anthropologist who was a professor at the University of Chicago until June 1997 when she retired. She has a PhD, Australian National 1961. At the University of Chicago, she taught Anthropology and Social Science. She studies exchange, which Graeber discusses in chapter two of Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, and poses that value and worth are an outcome of human effort. Her point of view on value is "Commodities have to be produced... , social relationships have to be created and maintained; all of this requires an investment of human time and energy, intelligence, concern. If one sees value as a matter of the relative distribution of that..."(Graeber 45).
Munn has done much of her research in Australia, New Guinea and the Islands off the coast of New Guinea. Her degree from Australian National University is likely the reason for her focus in that area of the world.

SBC

Sweet Briar Currency

            Imagine an alternate Sweet Briar in which no student is allowed to have a vehicle on campus. Taxis are constantly available to take us wherever we want, whenever we want, but we have to pay them in tokens that allot amounts of time. There are tokens for five minutes, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, two hours, and five hours. These tokens are in the shape of our Sweet Briar rose logo and are made of ceramic in various colors along with numbers on the tokens to indicate their value.  A five-minute token is purple, a fifteen-minute token is yellow, a thirty-minute token is white, one hour is turquoise, a two-hour is green, and a five-hour is pink. The tokens’ only ascribed worth is their value in time, allowing us to be off campus for various amounts of time, but the tokens are how we purchase everything on the Sweet Briar campus.

            A five-minute token is worth between fifty cents and seventy-five cents. Five minutes will not buy anything on campus except maybe a candy bar out of a vending machine, and would have next to no ascribed worth unless one found themselves running late when they were on their way back to campus. A fifteen-minute token is worth about two dollars. Not much. Because honestly, where can you get to, do something, and be back from in fifteen minutes here? Sweet Briar isn’t really close enough to anything for fifteen minutes to be worth much.  A thirty-minute token is worth about four dollars. Still not very much, as thirty minutes is not very much time to get anything done if you include travel times. An hour is worth about eight dollars. In an hour you could go to the store and get something fairly quick to eat and still be back at school. Two hours is worth about sixteen dollars. I would pay sixteen dollars to a driver to take me somewhere that was two hours away. A five-hour token would be worth about forty dollars. Forty dollars is a lot of money, so not many people would be spending five hours off campus at their leisure. But wouldn’t forty dollars seem a fair price to pay someone to sit in a parking lot for three and a half hours while you see a movie or shop and drive you there and back?

            Back on campus, the way things were bought and sold would be different. Smaller denominations such as $1.35 would not exist. If I wanted to buy something that would be worth about $1.35, it would instead be worth about ten minutes- two five minute tokens. There would be no nickels and dimes and quarters and pennies. Prices would be more rounded off in general. Lunch might be worth twenty-five minutes- one fifteen-minute token and two five-minute tokens. A t-shirt in the bookshop might be worth an hour and a half.

            The way I decided the value for my currency reflected how much I felt that my time would be worth. At work, I expect to make between seven and eight dollars an hour. So that is about how much I would be willing to pay for someone that much time.  I considered basing my currency on fives and tens like American currency, but ten dollars was too much to spend for an hour away, especially when it takes about forty minutes to get to Lynchburg so you wouldn’t even be able to get there and just turn around and come back for ten dollars, and five dollars was too little, when you can get to Amherst much more quickly and have plenty of time to do things before coming back. This currency would be clearly valuable considering that the taxis are the only way to get off campus, unless one would have their parents come get them. It would also be valuable when you realized that you couldn’t buy anything without it. The way to assign importance to things we generally take for granted is by eliminating all other options. Without the option of driving yourself, without the option of paying with cash or sweet cash, a new currency would quickly become valuable, and in this currency’s case, quite hoarded, especially among the lower class group. One would be significantly encouraged to save their SBC for a trip they wanted to take, even if it would only be into Lynchburg to see a movie, one would have to save about five hours.

            In this alternate Sweet Briar, an elite group would most certainly form. The wealthy class would have all of the leisure time. They would be the ones who could go to the bigger cities hours away from here without a second thought. The people on the bottom would be the ones who hardly ever got off campus except for absolute necessary times, had no leisure shopping trips, and never went out to eat. The wealthy would control how much off-campus time the rest of us had by choosing to spend their time or save it for future excursions.

            This alternate Sweet Briar could potentially be extremely stressful for people with limited funds if they needed to go off campus for some kind of crisis, yet it would be extremely comfortable for affluent students who could come and go as the please and not have to even pay for gas. However it would give students who would be considered middle class and didn’t get off campus much the opportunity to save their SBC on campus and therefore have “extra” SBC to spend on leisure activities.

Art at SBC

I found this painting in the hallway in Benedict. It really caught my attention because the painting style is similar to the way my mother paints. It reminded me of the paintings that are all over the walls back at home.