WEBVTT Kind: captions; language: en-us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:00:01.200 --> 00:00:09.400 all right so moving on to what is perhaps maybe the most challenging read for this 00:00:09.400 --> 00:00:14.350 week but let me try to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:00:14.350 --> 00:00:24.100 run this down for you so you could relate it more easily to the other text Michael Taussig's book 00:00:24.100 --> 00:00:34.000 is very well known and insightful and the chapter you're reading is quite theoretical but it takes 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:44.750 it starts off with a very clear and interesting pattern NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:00:44.750 --> 00:00:51.000 and I want you to remember this that whenever you read a text, ask yourself what is the pattern that 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:59.800 provoked the author to write what he or she writes okay, and it's often 00:00:59.800 --> 00:01:03.700 in the very first sentence on the very first page of the preface of the introduction or the first 00:01:03.700 --> 00:01:08.650 chapter look for that pattern. In this case the NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:01:08.650 --> 00:01:16.000 devil and commodity fetishism in South America. Michael Taussig's book from the 1980s the 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:25.800 pattern is that Bolivian Peruvian and Colombian peasants who began to work in the tin mines NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 80% (H?Y) 00:01:25.800 --> 00:01:29.800 or in plantations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:01:29.800 --> 00:01:42.000 for corporations they started to talk about the devil to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:01:42.500 --> 00:01:54.100 discuss to circulate rumors about the devil to say that the devil as a spirit resides in the tin 00:01:54.100 --> 00:02:04.400 mountains and in the plantations where people started to work in this process, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:02:04.500 --> 00:02:16.900 This emergence of the devil in local cosmology and rituals happened at different 00:02:16.900 --> 00:02:22.300 locations but as a response to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:36.000 social changes people became wage workers, so this is what Taussig starts off with isn't it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.350 strange NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:02:38.350 --> 00:02:50.000 that the devil emerges in local cosmology and rituals and mines the same time that 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:57.200 peasants turn into wage workers in mines and partly also in plantations and fields in 00:02:57.200 --> 00:03:01.200 Columbia when the Labor Relations shift NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:03:01.200 --> 00:03:10.250 you see an effect you see response in local cosmology. Why is that? NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:03:10.250 --> 00:03:13.800 that is the question at the heart of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 74% (MEDIUM) 00:03:14.500 --> 00:03:17.700 Taussig's text. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:26.100 Workers start to enter into contracts with the devil inside the mine and then they drawn but also 00:03:26.100 --> 00:03:33.200 add to the all the rituals of gift exchange with the earth and try to enter into reciprocal 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:44.600 relations by offering gifts and so on to this Devils figure in the mines and like I said partly also 00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:46.800 in the plantations and NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:03:48.900 --> 00:03:56.000 in Colombia. Taussig sees this and he asked this very NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:03:56.100 --> 00:04:03.800 typical anthropological quite serious question which is similar to the question that which is the same 00:04:03.800 --> 00:04:08.100 question that Malinowski asked what the hell is going on here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:04:08.100 --> 00:04:16.200 and in order to answer that let us take a step back because it is kind of hard for us I think to 00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:22.800 grasp for us as readers why should it be so difficult or provoking or NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:04:24.700 --> 00:04:35.400 serious for someone to be a wage worker for someone to turn into a wage worker because we are after 00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:37.850 all very used to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:04:37.850 --> 00:04:47.300 working for a wage this is what we are and our part of the world most of the day we go to work we 00:04:47.300 --> 00:04:57.700 work for a wage we returned home we spend that weight and we live our lives we sell ourselves on a 00:04:57.700 --> 00:05:02.700 labor market 'arbeidsmarkedet' commodities NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:05:02.700 --> 00:05:11.850 and there's nothing unnatural about this in fact you will all NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:05:11.850 --> 00:05:18.000 become wage workers now you're students, some of you are also wage workers but you will 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:24.350 become wage workers you're going into the labor market. Notice this term the labor market 00:05:24.350 --> 00:05:32.900 This is what Polanyi talks about how we developed a market for things that were in themselves not 00:05:32.900 --> 00:05:39.750 made for the market, so we have a labor market where we commodify ourselves or we are commodified 00:05:39.750 --> 00:05:42.700 ourselves as workers NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:05:42.700 --> 00:05:51.100 we have a brand we build our CVs so that you can sell yourself your body at the highest possible 00:05:51.100 --> 00:05:52.500 price NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:05:52.500 --> 00:06:00.300 but as Polanyi and Mauss reminds us this was not the case for most of history and it is 00:06:00.300 --> 00:06:01.850 In fact NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:06:01.850 --> 00:06:08.350 an illusion to think that we the human body is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:06:08.350 --> 00:06:15.350 a commodity, labor is a fictitious commodity remember as we all know from Polanyi NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:06:15.350 --> 00:06:23.400 but nonetheless either you want it or not we are being commodified, we're at the receiving end of a 00:06:23.400 --> 00:06:31.400 process that seeks to turn us into commodities on a labor market so this shows by the way that when 00:06:31.400 --> 00:06:34.650 we talk about gifts and commodities we're not just talking about things NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:06:34.650 --> 00:06:42.700 we're talking about people we talk about how we can give ourselves to a partner, I gave myself to you 00:06:42.700 --> 00:06:44.200 too NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:06:45.200 --> 00:06:51.900 or we sell our labor on a labor market NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 71% (MEDIUM) 00:06:52.300 --> 00:06:54.800 but NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:06:54.800 --> 00:07:02.500 even though we perhaps accept this as natural, we do not question it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:02.500 --> 00:07:11.200 the commodification of ourselves on the labor market Taussig study a society a society where this NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:20.200 change has just happened, and he argues that to turn ourselves in our bodies to 00:07:20.200 --> 00:07:26.650 commodify our bodies in this way on a labor market for a wage is unnatural NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:26.650 --> 00:07:31.799 and in the critique or in the expression NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:07:31.799 --> 00:07:45.300 of devil worship in the tin mines you find very human expression of human critique of the 00:07:45.300 --> 00:07:55.800 commodification of labor of people in capitalist society that says Taussig we should all learn from 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:59.350 because even though this is natural to us NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:07:59.350 --> 00:08:05.650 it is in fact not natural to man it should not be natural, NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:08:05.650 --> 00:08:13.000 it is natural to us because we have learned and accepted that we are commodities. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 87% (H?Y) 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:27.000 So what is going on in Taussig's text there is a couple of concepts that I wanted to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:08:27.300 --> 00:08:39.799 to see to notice and to try to understand. There is a shift he says as people go from toiling on the 00:08:39.799 --> 00:08:49.600 land with their own hands for their own use producing for their own use for their own consumption 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:57.900 for their own local systems of local economic systems for their own subsistence NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:08:58.600 --> 00:09:01.550 two words NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 81% (H?Y) 00:09:01.550 --> 00:09:06.300 production for exchange NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:09:06.300 --> 00:09:13.400 this involves this shift from use value production to exchange value production it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:09:13.400 --> 00:09:20.400 involves and creates a major change in the world view of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:09:20.400 --> 00:09:30.700 the miners and the plantation workers that Taussig is writing about so notice again we're in kind of 00:09:30.700 --> 00:09:42.400 Polanyi land here now use value subsistence is production geared towards sustaining human needs you can 00:09:42.400 --> 00:09:45.950 say it's part of one of the three NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:09:45.950 --> 00:09:55.000 principles for economic systems pre-industrial economic systems that Polanyi writes about NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:09:55.000 --> 00:10:05.200 reciprocity redistribution and house holding that is production for your own consumption NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:10:06.800 --> 00:10:16.050 whereas exchange value is about production that is geared towards increasing profits NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:10:16.050 --> 00:10:24.200 it is production for a wage for producing profit for someone who owns NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:10:24.200 --> 00:10:28.500 the land who owns machines who owns the mines NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 79% (H?Y) 00:10:28.500 --> 00:10:36.400 and who buy your labor power. This is fundamental distinction NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:10:37.200 --> 00:10:50.500 that is at the heart of capitalist society and what Taussig is seeing in the the response of 00:10:50.500 --> 00:11:00.000 peasants by starting to to discuss to worship and to NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:02.900 --> 00:11:06.900 ritualise the devil NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:11:06.900 --> 00:11:20.400 is a very clear critique against the capitalist mode of production says Taussig. The the way that 00:11:20.400 --> 00:11:28.150 the devil murders in ritual and cosmology when people shift from subsistence farming NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 90% (H?Y) 00:11:28.150 --> 00:11:35.400 for their own use towards exchange towards wage labor NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:11:35.800 --> 00:11:39.900 to produce exchange value NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:11:39.900 --> 00:11:48.700 when the devil emerges it is a response to that process, it is not 00:11:48.700 --> 00:11:55.300 because of the force of tradition or the glorious mythology and the ritual of pre-capitalist past so 00:11:55.300 --> 00:12:02.200 the devil is actually something quite alien to local cosmology who do not find this worship this 00:12:02.200 --> 00:12:04.600 ritualizing of the devil NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:14.200 outside the mines and in communities where people still produce for their own use you find it 00:12:14.200 --> 00:12:21.900 specifically in these locations so he says the emergence of the devil in rituals and local cosmology 00:12:21.900 --> 00:12:30.000 is the people's creative response to an enormously deep-seated conflict between use-value and 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:32.900 exchange-value orientations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:12:32.900 --> 00:12:42.650 so what he says is that these people remind us that what we think of as normal and natural and in 00:12:42.650 --> 00:12:45.400 our day is actually not NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:12:45.400 --> 00:12:51.000 you can say with Polanyi labor is a fictitious commodity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 61% (MEDIUM) 00:12:51.400 --> 00:12:55.500 these people were NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:12:56.000 --> 00:12:59.300 turned into commodities NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:12:59.300 --> 00:13:06.400 or sought to be commodified they turned into something that could be bought and sold in the tin 00:13:06.400 --> 00:13:11.800 mines it could be replaced as workers that felt unnatural NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:13:11.800 --> 00:13:16.400 And Taussig says that the incredible thing about capitalist production is that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:22.900 workers give their labour we give our labor we give up so much of the value that the labor 00:13:22.900 --> 00:13:26.650 produces without much concern NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:13:26.650 --> 00:13:35.300 he's drawing very thoroughly here on a Marxist framework NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:44.500 because at the heart of capitalist value production says Taussig is exploitation workers in a 00:13:44.500 --> 00:13:51.300 factory or in a mine produce more value than they are given in return there's a surplus that NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:13:51.600 --> 00:13:57.600 the owners of the means of production take away NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:13:58.000 --> 00:14:02.050 why is it that we all accept NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:14:02.050 --> 00:14:05.500 this state of affairs NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:14:05.900 --> 00:14:16.150 we all accept that we are in the wage labor relation in a sense commodities we produce commodities 00:14:16.150 --> 00:14:25.200 and these commodities the stuff that the tin mine produces or the the computer screen that 00:14:25.200 --> 00:14:31.750 comes out of a factory it has nothing to do with the hands that made them in the sense NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 77% (H?Y) 00:14:31.750 --> 00:14:38.400 worker who works in let's say the screen that you're looking at right now a Macbook Air is what I'm 00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:47.400 looking at the screen, there are people involved in the process that landed 00:14:47.400 --> 00:14:56.900 this screen on my kitchen table there are workers in a factory somewhere in Asia I assume who will touch 00:14:56.900 --> 00:14:58.400 the screen NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 83% (H?Y) 00:14:58.400 --> 00:15:03.250 however I don't know who this is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:15:03.250 --> 00:15:09.000 the screen is not there, there's nothing of them in this thing this commodity NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:12.950 there's nothing of the person who produced it NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 78% (H?Y) 00:15:12.950 --> 00:15:16.200 that follows this thing. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:15:17.800 --> 00:15:27.500 I will not know this person he or she does not have a claim or to any debt with me or any 00:15:27.500 --> 00:15:33.400 relationship with me in fact I don't even think of this person when I look at the screen NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:15:33.400 --> 00:15:39.250 I think of it as a commodity its value lies in the price NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 67% (MEDIUM) 00:15:39.250 --> 00:15:49.300 there's a price that is determined by a market that I'm looking at here NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:15:49.300 --> 00:16:00.650 the hands have been cut out the history the context has been removed and this is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:16:00.650 --> 00:16:08.600 result of what Taussig following Karl Marx calls commodity fetishism. NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:12.300 So commodity fetishism is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:16:12.300 --> 00:16:14.800 a process NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:14.800 --> 00:16:21.550 that you can say and this is a third concept okay use value, exchange value, and commodity fetishism 00:16:21.550 --> 00:16:25.900 that I want you to take from Taussig NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:16:26.200 --> 00:16:33.100 Commodity fetishism is a state of social relations that emerges in capitalist societies with a social 00:16:33.100 --> 00:16:34.600 relations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:34.600 --> 00:16:37.100 that go into producing NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 85% (H?Y) 00:16:37.100 --> 00:16:46.600 Commodities, are transformed into objective relationships between commodities or money NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:16:46.800 --> 00:16:55.800 the value it seems comes now from the thing itself, we've forgotten about the labor that goes into it we have 00:16:55.800 --> 00:17:05.300 forgotten about the history the sweat the context in which it was produced it emerges as a thing in 00:17:05.300 --> 00:17:09.400 itself free from human relations NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 89% (H?Y) 00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:22.099 and this is a false assessment says the Marxist says Taussig this is NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 67% (MEDIUM) 00:17:23.900 --> 00:17:27.400 this de-contextualization NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 84% (H?Y) 00:17:27.400 --> 00:17:32.400 is a mask NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:32.400 --> 00:17:35.199 because of course there was NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 70% (MEDIUM) 00:17:35.199 --> 00:17:41.600 there were human hands that went into producing this MacBook Air screen there was labor exploitation 00:17:41.600 --> 00:17:43.449 there was sweat NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:43.449 --> 00:17:46.500 There were all kinds of NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:17:46.500 --> 00:17:53.100 human history's that has gone into producing this value it's just that because of the commodity 00:17:53.100 --> 00:17:54.350 form NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 86% (H?Y) 00:17:54.350 --> 00:17:58.400 it's impossible to trace it's impossible to see NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 82% (H?Y) 00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:06.199 the hands that have made it have been forgotten there's no touch left of the producer NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:18:06.199 --> 00:18:14.000 I will never know them the producers of the screen and they will never know me, because of commodity 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:25.400 fetishism this is a deeply unnatural state of affairs says Taussig one that the tin miners and 00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:33.200 plantation workers in Latin America react to by worshipping the Devil by invoking the devil in 00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:36.400 rituals when they start to become NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 91% (H?Y) 00:18:38.300 --> 00:18:42.700 part of a process of commodity fetishism NOTE Treffsikkerhet: 88% (H?Y) 00:18:43.800 --> 00:18:51.800 that is the argument that I largely want you to take from Taussig and with that let's turn to 00:18:51.800 --> 00:18:57.400 The work of Anna Tsing before we wrap it up.