ABSTRACT
What is exchange? This seemingly straightforward term is part and parcel of the most fundamental, everyday activities that make life possible. It is about how we look, what we look at and what we look like; our language, which even when greeted by silence has already involved a series of exchanges; the chains of supply and demand that enrich the material texture of our worlds with goods from everywhere; and the financial instruments and institutions that facilitate these movements of commodities and people. It extends from acts of reciprocal giving and receiving, commerce, swaps, barters, sacrifices, disposing of, and obtaining, to the institutions created to enable exchange, of stocks, communications, currencies and money itself – which is, of course, simply an index of exchange. Ultimately and most profoundly all exchange is about transformation, an itinerary through space, a crossing, traversing movement and change across a relational continuum. Exchange encloses within it a notion of parity and reciprocity, a mirroring.
