Abstract
To be a reviewer of books, music pieces, paintings and other art forms, I have always considered myself to be somehow ignoble in nature. My difficulty to be part of such exercises has been mainly due to the fact that a reasonable piece of art of literature is difficult to build into a coherent and totally comprehensible piece of work to the reader. When it has to reach a book length, it is often a daunting task. It is an unfortunate belief that the creator of any kind of book is at full liberty to do it in a way that pleases him or her and is at most a clever argument that people make to draw writers into the writing process itself. Many a writer have shared with me their struggles with editors about the microcontent of the content that a writer chooses to present and also the fact that the timelines are imposed and this, more often than not, leaves the writers with a sense of unhappiness because rarely do they succeed in getting into print form what they would have liked in a way that would have satisfied them.
The writer then has to face yet another problem. The question that comes up is who owns the book? The writer or the reader(s)? This is real and unsettling for the writer simply because of the fact that once a reader gets the book into his/her hands and starts reading, he/she is less likely to empathise with the writer and more likely to interpret the contents of the book drawing upon his/her own experiences and also his/her preferences for certain kinds of scholarship. So to put it starkly, a Marxist is not going to read a book by a liberal thinker without prejudice. In that sense a book already starts with a disadvantage; its readers are not starting with an empty and completely open mind and since language is one of the important variables that decides the arguments as being sustainable or unsustainable. In Arjun Appadurai’s work one, has to say that context (can be the reader’s social, political, economic, civilisational or linguistic context) plays a role in how the book is understood; the author stands disadvantaged since what he (Arjun Appadurai) has produced is now in the possession of the reader, even though it started life as the possession of the writer. To be truthful Arjun Appadurai himself is a victim of what might be seen by some as a conundrum; people say his reputation precedes him and that his fame is larger than life.
To the laity, this impression of Arjun Appadurai may become a reason to celebrate the book. But personalities such as him also find detractors for all the reasons that I have laid out above. I have never followed Arjun Appadurai’s scholarship closely so I do not begin with any preconceived notions about him. My limited exposure and the research that I have done on his writings have not really given me an impression that Appadurai is a man who can lay claim to any special abilities or reasons to treat him as a scholar of economics who needs to be taken seriously. But with this book Appadurai has done just that; he wrote a book that nobody would expect him to write. This seems to have put him at risk of not being taken seriously, but when I was asked to read his book and write a review and when I started the exercise of reading, with each passing page, I started believing that Appadurai should not have written this book, for nowhere does he indicate that he has any serious reason to write this book to make his readers understand the ground realities of the aftermath of the economic recession following the sub-prime housing loan crisis in America. According to the author himself, the
principal argument is that the failure of the financial system was primarily a failure of language. This argument does not deny that greed, ignorance, weak regulation and irresponsible risk-taking were important factors in the collapse. But the new role of language in the marketplace is the condition of possibility for all these more easily identifiable flaws.
He then lays out four steps in which he uses the idea that language did not evolve sufficiently to allow people to understand the invisible dynamics of the logic of promissory finance and to demonstrate that he leans on Marcel Mauss’ book The Gift and Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee who he invokes whenever it is convenient for him.
To complicate matters, he also drops the Maori word ‘hau’ which as a noun is the vital essence of a person and as a verb means to be spread, famous or resound among many other meanings. He makes no attempts to explain why he chose that word and which of the numerous meanings he has taken into consideration. Somewhere in the middle of the book he does say that it is a Maori word and means ‘spread’ but that is about all.
Then for a long time till he reaches Chapter 4 where he briefly reminds us that this book is about the financial crisis of 2008 and beyond, he leads us through a maze of names ranging from Karl Marx, Marcel Mauss, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Michael Sandel, Elie Ayache, Noam Yuran, Georg Simmel and J. L. Austin and navigates through phrases such as Barnesian counter performative effects, the toxic version of the Kula ring and the prior ontological absolute that precedes and is the condition of all pricing, etc., with very big and broad brush strokes. Apart from the fact that he drops a whole load of names, some of which contradict each other, most others are just there to impress the reader. Very few of the people and their ideas are actually explained and no case is made as to the necessity of using them.
The content is incoherent due to the fact that the author is discussing eclectic ideas without grounding them in some sort of reality and reconciling them with that reality. It could also be that he has failed to put the connections in his mind onto paper and, therefore, by the time the reader finishes one section which he/she has understood, the original and the larger context of the book itself is lost. In fact, the explanation of the age of derivative finance, which seems to be what Appadurai has set out to explain, is not convincing, if not totally absent. Apart from that, the main title Banking on Words itself is probably useless due to the fact that Appadurai is still drawing from the well of French structuralism and post-structuralism that have been abandoned by serious social science scholars the world over, including the French themselves.
One way of closing the review of this book is by seeing the three endorsements that the book has received. The first is from Ajit Balakrishnan, founder Redifff.com who says,
Professor Appadurai applies the tools of anthropology and points out that the modern world of financial derivatives …operate in a marketplace of promises…This book would be useful for the business analysts and economists who seek to understand the underpinnings of our modern, financialized (sic) world.
The second comes from Rajiv Lall, MD and CEO of IDFC Bank, who says, ‘Drawing on the writings of Durkheim, Mauss and Weber….An invigorative read—erudite and crisp’.
The third comes from Shiv Visvanathan, Professor and Vice Dean, Centre for the Study of Science, Society and Sustainability, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, who says, ‘Building on the twin traditions of Mauss/Austin…keeps its word, its promise of a classical analysis of the economic collapse of 2008’.
If one were to read these three descriptions, they are divided totally by what they saw in the book but united by singular lack of agreement on what the book is about. Perhaps Appadurai has set out to prove Elie Yuran’s argument which says, ‘economics being a discipline is entirely about the uses to which money can be put—to amass goods, power, status, security—and never why human beings want money itself’ (p. 59). The answer is in the bit which says to amass goods, power, status, security and the urge to be recognised as rich. Appadurai wants to understand the mystery about ‘how money comes to be an end in itself, a bottomless magnet for human desire’. To put it charitably, it is not an argument for making money an end in itself, for it cannot be proven.
The ideal person to write a review of this book would be Noam Chomsky. It would be most interesting to read what he has to say. This book is about Appadurai rehashing old ideas and relying purely on ideas of others which have little relevance today, especially for the banking and finance sector. It is a book about nothing and Appadurai is banking on words to impress the readers with derivative arguments from every source that is available to him.