Tales from Albarado

Smoki Musaraj

Description

Tales from Albarado revisits times of excitement and loss in early 1990s Albania, in which about a dozen pyramid firms collapsed and caused the country to fall into anarchy and a near civil war. To gain a better understanding of how people from all walks of life came to invest in these financial schemes and how these schemes became intertwined with everyday transactions, dreams, and aspirations, Smoki Musaraj looks at the materiality, sociality, and temporality of financial speculations at the margins of global capital. She argues that the speculative financial practices of the schemes were enabled by official financial infrastructures (such as the postsocialist free-market reforms), by unofficial economies (such as transnational remittances), as well as by historically specific forms of entrepreneurship, transnational social networks, and desires for a European modernity. Overall, these granular stories of participation in the Albanian schemes help understand neoliberal capitalism as a heterogeneous economic formation that intertwines capitalist and noncapitalist forms of accumulation and investment.

Sujets

• Personal finance
• Eastern Europe
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501750366
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

TALES FROM ALBARADO

TALES FROM ALBARADO Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania

SmOKi MUsaRaJ

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a grant from the First Book Subvention Program of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.

Copyright © 2020 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell .edu.

First published 2020 by Cornell University Press

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Names: Musaraj, Smoki, author. Title: Tales from Albarado : Ponzi logics of accumulation in postsocialist Albania / Smoki Musaraj. Description: Ithaca [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019050415 (print) | LCCN 2019050416 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501750335 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501750342 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501750359 (epub) | ISBN 9781501750366 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Ponzi schemes—Albania. | Speculation—Albania. | Postcommunism—Economic aspects—Albania. | Albania—Economic conditions—1992– Classification: LCC HC402 .M87 2020 (print) | LCC HC402 (ebook) | DDC 364.16/3—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050415 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019050416

Cover image: Decorative display of multiple currencies. Tirana, Albania. Photo by the author, September 2008.

To Matthew and Simone

Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Tale of Albarado and the Anthropology of Financial Speculation

1.  Fajde, Pyramid Firms, or Ponzi Schemes?: Gendered Discourses of Finance 2.  “Money Flowed Like a River”: Materialities of Speculation 3.  “Working the Money”: Migrants, Remittances, and Social Ties 4.  “All We Wanted Was a Beautiful Home”: Housing and Temporalities of Speculation 5.  The Pyramid Way: Speculation in Construction

Epilogue: Ponzi Logics in Postsocialist Albania

Notes References Index

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64

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112

138

157

163 173 189

Illustratîons

Figure 1.1. A credit contract (kontratëhuaja) of a pyramid firm 41 Figure 1.2a. Vefa ad appearing in 1996 in Albanian newspapers 45 Figure 1.2b. Kamberi ad appearing in 1996 in Albanian newspapers 46 Figure 1.3. A fiveyear anniversary Vefa ad running in several Albanian newspapers in 1996 48 Figure 1.4. Collage with Masude Kadëna as the top of the pyramids 56 Figure 2.1.Letra me vlerë 80 Figure 2.2. Durim’s book of accounts, listing the sums of deposits in multiple currencies (from left to right, lek, dollars, drachmas, liras, and marks) for each of his clients 85 Figure 4.1. A former kreditorë at one of the Vefa buildings that house pyramid families 122 Figure 4.2. Communistera Elbasance house (foreground) and postsocialistera “European” house (background) 131 Figure 4.3. Former kreditorë in heraneksof the Vefa apartment subsidized to her as one of the pyramid families 136 Figure 5.1. New highrises in ongoing construction at Tirana’s eastern periphery143

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