Looking at Money in America

Abstract

■ This article discusses meanings of money in America and is based on an ethnography carried out in the United States by a Brazilian anthropologist who studied banks, investment companies, health insurance, service clubs, com pulsive spenders, restaurants, shops, scholarly and non-scholarly articles, finan cial magazines, books on personal finance, proverbs, expressions, etc. Money is looked at in relation to love, death, blood, semen, food, God, Catholicism and Protestantism. The author tries to compare attitudes towards money in the United States with those existing in Brazil. In North American society money, which can be regarded as a total social fact, is considered less polluting than in Brazil where it is seen as something potentially dirty, perhaps because of the huge social and economic inequalities existing in that country. In summing up the author asks if Brazil is following the North American path or whether its cultural specificities will work as counter-balancing checks.