What is wealth? Can there be a definition that moves beyond the superficiality of cash accumulation? Who is embracing a new definition? Using data collected form ethnographic work conducted in Maya villages in the lowland rainforests of Belize, social anthropologist Kristina Baines presents thoughts on the movement between a traditional reciprocal labor system to a cash economy, and back again. Outlining the details of the Maya reciprocal labor system, which uses a day’s work as currency to trade for a day’s work of another community member, Kristina discusses what it means in terms of health, heritage and future to use a cash-less system.  As part of Proteus’ ongoing exploration of COMMERCE, Kristina questions our understandings of poverty and wealth, the linear perception of “development” and how we put alternatives to capital into “communal” or “fringe” boxes. What lessons can these traditional systems teach us about commerce in our communities when we recast ideas about heritage in the present?

Kristina Baines is a social anthropologist on a mission to uncover ecological connections to health and happiness. She works with Maya communities in the Toledo District, Belize and in the US, and has collaboratively developed environmental and cultural heritage educational materials based on local research (www.teacha.com). She hopes, through the use of technology, to promote the wide dissemination of anthropological ideas and their applications (www.coolanthropology.com). She is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Faculty for Academic Technology with the City University of New York at Guttman Community College in New York City.

When Labor Was Capital: The Slave-Breeding Industry looks at how US slavery differed from the other slaveries of the hemisphere in having a domestically supplied slave trade, with Virginia, “the mother of slavery,” as the largest supplier of native-born human beings for market. Ned Sublette, author of The World That Made New Orleans and the co-author (with Constance Sublette) of the forthcoming The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Chicago Review Press, October 2015), will talk about how labor was capital in the making of the United States.

Ned Sublette is the author of The Year Before the Flood (Lawrence Hill Books, 2009); The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square (Lawrence Hill Books 2008); and Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo (Chicago Review Press, 2004).

He is a frequent speaker at universities, museums, conferences, and festivals. Known also as a singer-songwriter, in the 1990s he co-founded the record label Qbadisc, which pioneered the marketing of contemporary Cuban music in the United States in the early 90s. He has produced or co-produced many albums and over 150 episodes of the public radio program Afropop Worldwide. He has received several fellowships and awards, including the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience in Chestertown, MD.

Paul Glover, social activist and social entrepreneur, believes that real money is measured in hours of labor, steady as the clock. In conjunction with the Proteus exhibit, Labor, he will describe the benefits and processes for creating, growing, and managing labor currencies. The Ithaca HOURS program he created in 1991 has traded millions of dollars value, among thousands of residents and 500 businesses. HOURS have sparked an international movement to stimulate grassroots control of money.http://www.paulglover.org/hourintro.html 

Glover created the alternative currency Ithaca HOURS and recently launched Philadelphia ArtCash which seeks direct conversion of art into money, to expand the creative economy. He also ran for Governor of Pennsylvania last year as a Green Party candidate. These are just a few of his many projects. Join us for a glass of wine, a presentation by Paul and stimulating conversation!

Paul Glover is founder of 18 organizations and campaigns, including Philadelphia ArtCash, Ithaca HOURS local currency, Philadelphia Orchard Project, Health Democracy, Citizen Planners of Los Angeles. He is author of several books and a former professor of urban studies. His GreenPlanners consultancy helps communities prepare a secure and abundant future even while fuel and food costs rise