Money, Sacrificial Work, and Poor Consumers
通过对印度喀拉拉邦贫困移民到中东的民族志研究,揭示了贫困者如何通过苦难和自我牺牲积累“牺牲性金钱”,并将其用于消费,提出了“牺牲性劳动”概念来解释这一现象。
Abstract This is an ethnography among poor migrants from Kerala, India to the Middle East. This study offers insights into how the poor accumulate sacrificial money through sufferings and self-abnegation, and earmark it for consumption in Kerala. The hardships endured to earn the sacrificial money transform it into a sacred object. The phenomena of accumulation, earmarking, and meaning making of sacrificial money by the poor can be understood through the concept of sacrificial work. Sacrificial work is a spatially demarcated circuit of accumulation of money through hardships and its conflict-ridden transfer to family, community, and self for consumption. In sacrificial work, the poor erect a boundary around this money, and earmark it as caring, communal, and transformative. By delineating the various aspects of sacrificial work, this study brings to the center a behavior that has, in spite of its ubiquity, been relegated to the margins of consumer research.