Conveners
RT 5 - ENTANGLED EXCHANGES: MONEY, COINAGE AND COLONIAL PROJECTS
- Fleur Kemmers (Goethe University)
- Nanouschka Myrberg Burström (Stockholm University)
RT 5 - ENTANGLED EXCHANGES: MONEY, COINAGE AND COLONIAL PROJECTS
- Fleur Kemmers (Goethe University)
- Nanouschka Myrberg Burström (Stockholm University)
Description
Org. and moderator: Fleur Kemmers, Nanouschka Myrberg Burström
A central theme in colonial history and postcolonial theory is the role of economy in the establishment of power structures. Money, as means of exchange and as means of payment, plays important roles in the introduction of new practices, value standards and material realities. Commodification processes strongly affect power relations in the interactions between coloniser and colonised. Surprisingly, coinage was rarely discussed in this connection and numismatic scholarship has not really contributed much to the debate.
Postcolonial perspectives have developed in cultural-historical research since the 1990s. In this process, the study of the material culture of colonisation has crystallised as a central component of the field. As we have postulated before, coins have much to gain from being investigated from a theoretical standpoint and a material culture perspective. Thus, bringing coinage prominently into the debate on ancient and recent colonial practices seems long overdue.
Coinage offers unique opportunities to study interactions and effects of the meeting between colonisers and colonised, as well as economic, political and ideological interactions between colonisers and their state of origin. Be it the Greek colonies in Southern Italy or the European colonial enterprises of the Modern period, coins reflect historical events as well as hybridisation processes. They are characterised as entangled between local groups, colonial power and global networks. We suggest that the study of coins and other means of exchange – adopted, adapted or refuted – may reveal less apparent and under-communicated processes, values and discourses in the study of colonial environments and projects.
We aim to discuss particularly interesting cases, raise awareness of the numismatic material’s potential within the field of postcolonial studies, and investigate theoretical and methodological keys for such studies.
List of panelists:
Fleur Kemmer
John Creighton
Georgia Galani
Rory Naismith
Florent Audy
Nanouschka Myrberg Burström
Karin Pallaver
María Gabriela Huidobro
Plus additional 10 min. break
moderated by Fleur Kemmers and Nanouschka Myrberg Burström
