Economies of Relation: Money and Personalism in the Lusophone World

“Money does not bring happiness.” For Roberto Da Matta, in Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes (1979), this saying embodies the ambivalence surrounding money in Brazil, a legacy of a Lusophone cultural tradition that privileges personal relationships over impersonal commodified exchange. This volume of Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies questions this tradition from the perspective of different disciplines. Does money stand in contrast to personal relations? And, if so, is this really particular to Lusophone or, more widely, Latin cultures—as opposed to, say, Anglo-American cultures or Protestantism generally? This book will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, history, literary criticism and Luso-Brazilian studies.