ANDREW WALSH

Mount Allison University

"Hot money" and daring consumption in a

northern Malagasy sapphire-mining town

he inspiration for this article came one afternoon in September

T
A B S T R A C T
In Ambondromifehy, a sapphire-mining town in
1999 while I was visiting myfictivesister Soa in the northern Mala-
northern Madagascar, young men earn and spend a
gasy sapphire-mining town of Ambondromifehy. Drinking beer in
great deal of what some call "hot money." Rather
the tiny, ramshackle hut that she had newly come to share with her
than invest their earnings with long-term intentions
"spouse" (vady) Jao and his newfound fictive brother Koko, I asked
considered responsible and proper by some around
her and her housemates about the living that could be made from the local
them, they consume "daringly" by spending money
sapphire trade. Jao, seated on the edge of a sagging bed, bottle hinged to
to fulfill immediate desires. I argue that such "daring
knee, answered first. His minimum daily take from the sale of the sapphires
consumption" might be understood as the active
he mined, he drunkenly boasted, was 250,000francsmalgaches (fmg), about
response of young men who refuse the passive roles
$40, or what a cane cutter earns for a month's work at a nearby sugar planta-
allotted them by both the sapphire trade and tradi-
tion. Soa confirmed this. When pressed for more examples of fortunes made,
tional systems of social organization. [Madagascar,
Jao chinned toward Koko, hunched by the doorway rolling a joint. Jao indi-
consumption, money, risk, sapphire mining, mascu-
cated that Koko had recently sold a day's take of stones for a staggering 2.5
linity]
million fmg ($400)enough money to hire someone to build ten simple
thatch huts of the sort that the four of us were crowded into. I could not resist
asking Koko why he had not invested some of this windfall in a place of his
own. "This is hot money [vola mafana]," Jao answered for him, "you can't
hold on to it." Koko, yet to speak a word my way, was in no state to disagree.
In fact, in seeming support of Jao's point, he shortly pulled what many Mala-
gasy people consider a day's wage from his pocket (25,000 fmg) and sent a
neighborhood child out for more cold beer.
Like 30-year-old Jao and 21-year-old Koko, many young men in Ambon-
dromifehy earn and spend a great deal of money, "living the life," as Jao often
assured me with great enthusiasm in barely discernible English. The setting
in which they do so, however, is anything but luxurious. Ambondromifehy is
a place plagued by crime, disease, frequent fires, and a high cost of living.
Miners live in cramped and unhygienic conditions, their livelihoods precari-
ously attained through the procurement and sale of a commodity to which
they have only limited access. And yet, Ambondromifehy is a place in which
young men like Jao and Koko claim to thrive, some likening themselves to
outlaws, renegades, or frontiersmen and their town to locales in an imagi-
nary, anarchic, B-movie "America." "We live in Los [Angeles]," Jao once told
me, invoking the chaotic setting of innumerable policefilmsthat have shown
in Ambondromifehy's video parlors. "This place is Texas," noted another young
man on another day, calling to mind the westerns of an earlier generation.

American Ethnologist 30(2):290-305. Copyright 2003, American Anthropological Association.

 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the conspicuous consump-
tion concomitant with Jao's understanding of "hot money"
was seen by many, Jao included, as essential to the mainte-
nance of Ambondromifehy's unique character. In this arti-
cle I discuss how this is, in fact, the case. Given that not all in
the town agreed with Jao's take on "hot money," however, it
would be misleading for me to stop there. In recognition of
the coexisting understanding that "hot money" is, in fact,
nothing more than the product of individual miners' imagi-
nations, I further show how the conspicuous consumption
justified by talk of "hot money" might also be understood as
central to the maintenance of the unique characters who in-
habit the place. It is only by considering both the functional
and the phenomenological significance of conspicuous
consumption in Ambondromifehy that one might come to a
reasonable understanding of its role in the lives of young
men like Jao.
It is well appreciated in the social sciences that states
and markets are not alone in determining the value of
money. Money's value is also determined by the situated in-
dividuals through whose hands it passes (or does not pass)
on a daily basis. This in mind, it is not surprising that some
of the most illuminating studies of money to emerge in re-
cent years are those that have provided readers with the his-
torical and ethnographic background necessary to imagine
relevant subjectivities (Hutchinson 1996; Masquelier 1999;
Shipton 1989; Weiss 1996; Zelizer 1994). The assumption be-
hind such studies, here generalized by Parry and Bloch, is
that "in order to understand the way in which money is
viewed [in any particular context] it is vitally important to
understand the cultural matrix into which it is incorpo-
rated" (1989:1). It is not the case that the use of money uni-
versally "[gives] rise to a particular world view" but rather
that "existing world view[s] [give] rise to particular ways of
representing money" (Parry and Bloch 1989:19).
This article begins with the same assumption, illustrat-
ing as it proceeds that the "heat" of money in Ambon-
dromifehy can only be understood with reference to the
lives and "world views" of the town's young, male, migrant
miners. It is, therefore, less a study of "hot money" than a
study of the situated, subjective perspective from which
money might be perceived as "hot."1
For reasons that will become apparent as I proceed, I
have chosen to approach Jao and others among Ambon-
dromifehy's conspicuous consumers as "people who live for
the moment," akin to the individuals and populations repre-
sented in Day et al. 's edited collection Lilies of the Field (1999).
Like London's prostitutes (Day 1999), Greece's coffeehouse
gamblers (Papataxiarchis 1999), and Japan's day laborers
(Gill 1999), among others, Ambondromifehy's miners are
people whose apparent "freedom and autonomy stand in
opposition to transcendental values associated with a variety
of institutions that organize long-term social reproduction
and, simultaneously, produce hierarchical relationships" (Day
et al. 1999:2). They are people inclined to do without, albeit
sometimes only temporarily, whatever arrangements "en-
mesh [them] in a politically coercive world where they can
find a place only as dependents" (Day et al. 1999:3). They re-
fuse the passive roles allotted them by forces beyond their
control (i.e., markets, states, "transcendental values," etc.),
choosing instead to "live in the present," as active respon-
dents "to conditions of marginalization" (Day et al. 1999:7).
Employing the terms that miners themselves use, I describe
how many of them "dare" (mahasaky) to act boldly and
without foresight in the context of an industry (and global
economy) in which, however prospective they might be,
they necessarily "risk" (mirisky) in the face of great uncer-
tainty. As what I term "daring consumers," especially, they
indicate an orientation toward the present that is strikingly
at odds with the concerns and strategies of many around
them.
In making this argument, I do not mean to suggest,
pace Aristotle, Simmel, or Marx (see Parry and Bloch 1989:
2-6), that the consumption patterns of these young men in-
dicate the insidious capacity of money and monetary ex-
change to disintegrate traditional forms of social organiza-
tion. Money is, of course, nothing new to Madagascar, and
certain kinds of monetary exchange are among the most im-
portant means by which some Malagasy people have propa-
gated traditional systems of social and political organization
through changing times (see, e.g, Lambek 2001). Nor am I
inclined to see acts of extravagance as indicating "a failure
or an incapacity" on the part of certain miners "to accultur-
ate to the capitalist ideology and practice of accumulation
and profit making" (De Boeck 1999a:179). Instead, like De
Boeck, whose fascinating work among diamond miners in
Angola I cite frequently here, I approach the consumption of
these young men as something "underpinned and shaped by
local rural modes, conceptions and categories of wealth, ac-
cumulation, expenditure, physical and social reproduction
and well-being which originate in . . . (pre)colonial moral
matrixes, attitudes, practices and beliefs" (1999a: 179). Min-
ers, as Bauman (1988) might suggest, exhibit "freedom" in
their consumption (and other) choices in Ambon-
dromifehy. Rather than take responsibility for their choices
by considering them with foresight in light of the conse-
quences they might have, they live them out ("for the mo-
ment") in the irresponsible way that many Malagasy people
expect of young men. One of the points I mean to stress in
this article is that however shocking the "daring consump-
tion" of Ambondromifehy's miners might appear, it is not
entirely unprecedented or unexpected to those who may
criticize them for it.
Obviously, the plight and strategies of the people I de-
scribe here are not unique to this setting. As the diverse case
studies collected in Lilies of the Field indicate, the uncer-
tainties and tensions that characterize the lives of Ambon-
dromifehy's miners are common to many marginal people
291
American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
in the world today. Although many of us have been living
through the development of what Beck (1992) refers to as
the "risk society" (cf. Rustin 1994)that is, the current post-
industrial era in which modernization has become reflexive,
turning its tools on itself in the face of the social and ecological
risks engendered by its purported progressAmbondrom-
ifehy's miners and others on this imagined realm's periph-
eries have been living despite it. The risks that characterize
their societies are imposed, originating with forces that
most (in Ambondromifehy, at least) recognize as well be-
yond their control. Understanding how they view and deal
with these risks in practical and imaginative ways is key to
understanding their predicaments. By focusing as much as I
do on the uncertainties that Ambondromifehy's miners face
on a daily basis, I mean to point out not only the difficulties
in their lives but also the powerful imaginations of those
among them who appear to overcome these difficulties, al-
beit momentarily, through the pursuit of what is commonly
termed la vie.
Some might view the approach taken in this article as
contradicting the perspectives of the very people whose
lives it intends to explorethat is, as suggesting that no
matter how they might view themselves, the lives of young
men like Jao and Koko are in fact, determined entirely by
forces beyond their control. In one sense, their consump-
tion patterns indicate how they are the passive purveyors of
well-established cultural stereotypes, mirroring one an-
other in replicating Malagasy images of youthful masculin-
ity. Alternatively, any emphasis on the effects of marginality
on their consumption patterns might lead to a portrayal of
miners as the common, unwitting, and passive victims of an
overbearing global economy. Although there are certainly
arguments that can be made on both fronts, to stress only
the passivity of miners is to deny them the individuality and
agency that they so evidently prize. To overcome this di-
lemma I approach their consumption as an active response
to the circumstances of their lives. In line with Gell (1986:
110), I consider consumption both a "form of symbolic ac-
tion" and a "creative process," a means by which miners ex-
ert individuality and control, establishing for themselves
and, in some cases, for others around them, their mastery of
those things that might master them. Ultimately, I illustrate
how daring consumption, like witchcraft in "modern" Africa
(Comaroff and Comaroff 1993; Englund 1996; Geschiere
1997; Sanders 1999) and "occult economies" (Comaroff and
Comaroff 1999:279; Scheper-Hughes 1996) throughout the
world, might be interpreted as indicating the active and
powerful imaginations of people at risk.
Ambondromifehy's sapphire trade
In the two years following the discovery of sapphires in its
environs in 1996, Anibondromifehy grew from a village of 400
into a town of approximately fourteen thousand. Although
292
this number has subsequently fallen somewhat because of
the departure of many miners for more recent sapphire,
ruby, and emerald finds in Madagascar's southeast, when I
conducted research in the place in 1999 and 2000, signifi-
cant numbers of newcomers continued to arrive on a daily
basis. For many of the young men and women who have
come to dominate the place, involvement in the sapphire
trade and its attendant pursuits is only the latest in a series
of short-term migratory labor experiences that have led
them through settings as diverse as gold-mining towns, fish-
ing villages, plantations, and urban centers throughout
Madagascar.2 The sapphire trade has offered many the
promise, and some the means, of earning previously unat-
tainable sums of money.3
For reasons to be clarified shortly, Ambondromifehy is
unlike many mining towns described in social scientific lit-
erature (for example, Moodie 1994; Nash 1979), in that its
inhabitants tend to work for themselves rather than for
companies or claim-holders. This place does, however, bear
a remarkable resemblance to the chaotic diamond-mining
communities of the Zaire-Angola border region described
recently by De Boeck (1999a, 1999b). In De Boeck's words,
Ambondromifehy might be well described as a "frontier"
town where the "frontier" in question is a "socio-cultural
and economical" one characterized by a mixing of "'rural'
and 'urban', local and global [and] 'traditional' and 'mod-
ern' categories, practices, mentalities, relationships and be-
lief systems" (1999a: 201). It is not, however, a "frontier" that
migrants plan on settling permanently, a fact that has pro-
found implications for migrant-host relations in the place.
Although some of the four hundred or so longtime residents
of the place continued to espouse what they felt were par-
ticularly Malagasy (Gasy) ideals of hospitality as late as 2000,
their enthusiasm for assisting incoming "visitors" (vahiny)
to achieve their goals had diminished considerably from
what it reportedly had been. Referring to the willingness of
prospectors to transgress local land taboos (fady ny tany) in
the pursuit of sapphires, longtime residents tended to por-
tray these newcomers as short-sighted interlopers.4 Com-
menting on how the disrespectful acts of these visitors had
incurred the "land's anger" (helontany), they blamed them
for the droughts, fires, and disease that had purportedly af-
fected the region at an unprecedented rate since 1996.
The arrival of so many miners in Ambondromifehy has
also been of great concern to national and international
conservation organizations charged with overseeing the re-
gion's environmentally sensitive "protected areas." The
Ankarana Special Reserve, an area centered on an immense
limestone massif (called Ankarana) located several kilome-
ters to the west of Ambondromifehy, is deemed to be par-
ticularly threatened. Digging in the forestsflankingthe massif
or scouring the caves that underlie it, miners are seen to be
causing irreparable damage to the reserve's unique ecosys-
tems and endangering the region's burgeoning ecotourism
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
trade. Following the failure of education programs to con-
vince miners to stop their activities, the government de-
cided in 1998 to turn responsibility for guarding the re-
serve's boundaries over to the Malagasy national policea
change that has, as shall soon be apparent, only added new
players to an already complex competition of interests.
As noted above, Ambondromifehy is not and was never
a company town and, as such, has developed without the di-
recting vision of an overarching organization set on the effi-
cient exploitation of paid labor.5 Miners in Ambondrom-
ifehy, about three-quarters of the population, work for
themselves or as members of small groups, using simple
technology (shovels, mining bars, and flashlights) to dig pits
and scour cave walls in search of sapphire veins. Because of
alack of water in many of the areas in which they work, most
miners return to water sources in or near Ambondromifehy
with sacks of dirt to be sieved. When they find stones, they
generally sell them locally to Malagasy traders who, in turn,
sell to West African and Thai buyers based in the provincial
capital of Antsiranana. What happens to sapphires after
they leave Madagascar (first for Bangkok and other centers
of the international gem trade, most Malagasy traders be-
lieved) is largely unknown to miners. The notion that the
small, dark stones (in their uncut and unpolished state) are
used in jewelry proved laughable to many. Sapphires "have
no meaning" (tsisy dikany) to Malagasy people, one inform-
ant pointed out, backing up his contention with reference to
the frequently reported fact that prior to 1996 sapphires
were used only "by local children in slingshots.
Although many miners stress their individuality in ways
that I explore shortly, they tend also to depend heavily on
one another in their pursuit of fortune. Newcomers like
Koko (who had arrived in Ambondromifehy only a few
weeks before I met him) rely on others to teach them the ba-
sics of the industry how and where to dig, what features
distinguish valuable sapphires from duds, how to avoid the
police, how to go about negotiating sale prices, and so on.
Newcomers are able to find mentors with remarkable ease.
More experienced miners, like Jao, often take newcomers in,
adding them to the networks on which they, too, rely heavily
for the supply of everything from digging partners to infor-
mation on new finds and police movements in the region.
There are several points worth noting about the social
networks entered into and propagated by young miners in
Ambondromifehy. They are extremely porous and tend to
overlap, meaning that individual miners move into, out of,
and among them with little difficulty. Another important
point, and one that distinguishes these networks from those
that tie many miners to the "ancestral places" (tanin-
drazana) from which they originally came and to which
many intend eventually to return, is that miners' relation-
ships with one another are not primarily manifested in ways
that tie them to the places in which they live and work to-
gether. Although they might employ kin terms in referring to
one another, as Jao and Koko did by calling one another
"younger sibling" (zandry) and "elder sibling" (zoky), respec-
tively, they do not do so as people committed to the preser-
vation of the enduring sites at which their rclatedness is
manifested.6 More appropriate, perhaps, given the transi-
tory nature of their relationships with one another, they
tend to establish and propagate relatedness through more
ephemeral means, for example, drinking, smoking pot, eat-
ing, and gambling togetheracts of common consumption
rather than common investment, often requiring great out-
lays of money.
"In Ambondromifehy," Jao once told me, "people ask
for 5,000 Malagasy francs the way that people ask for 500
anywhere else." Gifts, or cadeaux (not loans, or trosa) of this
amountabout $1, or the price of a pack of cigarettesare
frequently given with little thought. The obligation to share
is deeply felt by many, some speaking of feeling awkward
(megnamegnatra) or downright ashamed (megnatra) if they
do not provide what another has asked of them. This means,
of course, that earning a great deal of money on a particular
day can lead to problems for miners. If they are to sustain
the social relationships that have served them in the past
and are necessary for future success, they may be compelled
to spend a good portion of their money on others. Those
who try to save money or invest locally in a shop, bar, or res-
taurant often only delay the inevitable dispersal of their
earnings. In the few cases I followed, such people were
shortly overwhelmed with friendly but imposing demands
for loans or credit. And there is, of course, no sense in trying
to avoid obligations by downplaying successes. Little goes
unreported or unexamined in the informal interactions
through which these social networks are maintained.
Although I focus considerable attention on conspicu-
ous consumption in this article, it should be noted that not
all young male miners partake in la vie to the extent that Jao,
Koko, and others I met did. Indeed, in 1999, several young
men in Jao's network of connections disengaged from their
local obligations by simply leaving Ambondromifehy when
they came upon windfalls, one justifying his departure with
the sympathetically received claim that he was returning to
his home region to fulfill an oath he had made to elders and
ancestors there. Miners need not always leave, however, to
invest in enduring kin and locality-based social networks.
Through their interaction and combined efforts, kin who
share connections to particular ancestral places often coop-
erate in Ambondromifehy, fostering networks that provide
much of what non-kin-based networks do for other miners,
but that are modeled on and contribute to the reproduction
of more enduring ones based in distant locales. It is impor-
tant to note, however, that such strategies seem only to work
for and are pursued by miners with strong connections to
home regions, and that by no means do all miners fall into
this category. Although Jao and Koko talked about the
places they came from, neither planned on returning to
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American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
these places in the future for anything more than visits. The
same was true of Soa.
Much as the town has attracted many young men, it has
attracted young women like Soa as well, some with the in-
tention of trying their own hands at mining or trading, oth-
ers planning to benefit secondarily from the trade, offering
miners their services as prostitutes, cooks, laundresses, and
so forth. As one might expect, given all that I have noted
above regarding the relationships that male miners have
with one another, marriages in Ambondromifehy are mark-
edly ephemeral and are the focus of little prospective invest-
ment.7 Not that long-term unions are what men or women
who come to Ambondromifehy are seeking. In interviews I
conducted in 1999 and 2000, many of the town's women in-
dicated a desire for self-sufficiency. Commenting on why
she thought women were better traders than men, Roby,
one 28-year-old trader, repeated a common refrain, noting
that "women calculate/reflect [calcule] more [than men do]
. .. because men have made them suffer." Women, she sug-
gested, are more motivated than men to be prospective in
the sapphire trade and see that saving and investing their
earnings carefully might eventually free them of the neces-
sity of relying on others for their livelihoods. The future that
Roby imagined for herselfin a "European-style house"
(trano vazaha) complete with a pool, in the nearby town of
Ambilobedid not include a husband.8
Female informants in Ambondromifehy commonly
stressed that the only path to success in the sapphire trade
was to "put money to work" (mampiasa vola) as a trader.
They were certainly not alone in suggesting this. Many
menminers and especially tradersargued the same
point. Whenever I brought up the notion of "hot money"
with these people, they suggested a very different view to
that of Jao. Later in the interview cited above, Roby re-
marked that "it depends on the calculations/reflections
[calcule] of people .. . if you love la vie, you will be quick to
eat [mihinana] your money.. . .Money is not hot but people
[who say it is] just don't know how to put it to work." Miners
like Jao who spend their windfalls extravagantly are deemed
foolish by "calculating" people like Roby and the men and
women alongside whom she trades, not just because they
"eat money" (mihinana vola) in pursuit of la vie but because
they "kill money" (ma mo no vola), destroying its potential.
Significantly, Jao and others who reveled in the "hot money"
lifestyle did not dispute the terms used to phrase such cri-
tiques of their behavior. They, too, spoke of their propensity
for "eating" and "killing" money. To better understand how
and why they embraced such understandings, one must
delve deeper into the sapphire trade and consider the vari-
ous positions that they take as participants in it.
294
Risking and daring in the sapphire trade
When asked why they had come to Ambondromifehy or
why they were leaving for sapphire finds elsewhere in
Madagascar, miners commonly relied on a single word to
describe their intentions: mirisky (to risk). As they used the
term, "risking" is a matter of investing effort in a project with
hopes for, but no assurance of, a favorable return. This defi-
nition in mind, mirisky is a term that nicely encapsulates
nearly everything that miners do in Ambondromifehy. For
many, risking begins when, lacking any technology or train-
ing that might assist them in determining where to dig, they
"drop pits" (mandatsaka fatagna) with no certainty of what
they will find in them. Those who mine in caves confront
similar uncertainty, never entirely sure of what the path
they have chosen or the particular cavern they find them-
selves in will yield. As some miners see it, still more uncer-
tainty comes from the fact that sapphires themselves are
understood to have hiagna a quality that might be trans-
lated as "will" or "agency" and that makes them attracted to
some things and people and not others.9 As might be ex-
pected, diviners in Ambondromifehy are an extremely busy
lot, advising clients where, when, and how deep they should
be looking for sapphires or providing them with prescrip-
tions for formulae (generically referred to as "haody") that,
when embodied through ingestion or bathing, will make
them attractive to willful sapphires. Miners frequently assert
the need to avoid any "strong medicines" (haody mahery)
that might cause them to repel sapphires. Indeed, these lat-
ter formulae, one sort of which young men sometimes self-
administer before traditional fighting matches (morengy)to
repel the blows of their opponents, are the chosen means by
which jealous malefactors sabotage others' efforts at earn-
ing their fortunes.10
It is not only traditional medicines that some feel make
miners attractive or repellent to sapphires, however. Certain
types of behavior may be significant as well. Whether ac-
counting for their own generosity or warning others of the
potential repercussions of stinginess, miners frequently re-
marked that those who distribute their wealth among others
are sure to continue finding sapphires, whereas those who
do not are liable to encounter misfortune. Such contentions
might be linked to the common Malagasy understanding
that generosity and hospitality are fundamental elements of
"Malagasy custom" (fomba Gasy), essential to the promo-
tion of sociality and relatedness among people as well as to
the continuing prosperity of individuals.11
Another way in which some miners attempt to ensure
success in the sapphire trade is through respectful dealings
with their forebears (elders and ancestors) and the various
land spirits they believe to inhabit the areas in which they
mine. As many see it, respecting elder kin and ancestors
through remittances or acts of remembrance ensures the
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
flow of blessing from these powerful figures, increasing a re-
spectful descendant's attractiveness to sapphires.
Diviners frequently diagnose unsuccessful miners as
having ancestors who are angry at having been forgotten. In
such cases, they prescribe trips to "ancestral places" (tanin-
drazana) and assure unfortunate clients that by atoning for
their neglectful behavior and thereby returning the flow of
ancestral blessing to the support of their efforts, they will be
able to thrive. Miners sometimes also make small sacrifices
at the mouths of caves or before starting to dig pits in the
hope of appeasing local land spirits (hiagnantany), who
may appear to them in dreams or visions and direct them to
valuable finds. When disrespect is shown the land, as when
miners knowingly transgress taboos associated with it, the
opposite can happen. Thus, as longtime residents of Am-
bondromifehy commonly explain it, the fact that sapphires
are so much harder to come by today than they were in 1996
is not a function of overexploitation but, rather, a reflection
of how miners have been victimized by a spiteful environ-
ment.12
Miners encounter further uncertainties when it comes
time to sell sapphires, despite the fact that there are numer-
ous Malagasy traders with whom they can choose to deal.
Demand for particular sorts of stones can increase or de-
crease rapidly depending on the needs of the West African
and Thai exporters based in Antsiranana and, beyond them,
the turbulent global gem market they supply. These facts in
mind, miners commonly describe themselves as being at
the mercy of buyers and markets, perpetually taken advan-
tage of by forces beyond their reach. The fact that sapphires,
unlike other locally procured or produced commodities
such as rice or shrimp, have no use value to them only rein-
forces this sense of marginality. That sapphires were used as
slingshot pellets until 1996 was evidently tragicomic to
many I spoke with, indicating to them just how marginal
both they and Madagascar are in the global economy. And
with this sense of marginality seems to come the fear of be-
ing victimized. Cautionary tales of how the trade's earliest
buyers had cheated miners by insisting on buying sapphires
in bulk, using the standard rice measure of a condensed
milk can (kapohaka), circulated as late as 2000, warning of
the ever-present possibility of exploitation. Some miners
have, as mentioned previously, sought a modicum of relief
from the uncertainty of the market by learning its intricacies
and "putting money to work," aiming for the modest but
steady profits promised by successful trading rather than
the windfalls of mining. But this transition is not for every-
one. It requires a willingness to forfeit control of money by
investing it in stones that may or may not be sold for a
higher price, a willingness to watch money that one might
have "killed" (mamono) oneself made "dead" {vola maty
"dead money," the standard way that traders describe their
losses) through dealings with others.
Along with traders, foreign buyers, and the interna-
tional gem market, the Malagasy state is another uncon-
trollable variable that contributes to the uncertainty of min-
ers' lives. Illegal mining parties are regularly raided by the
national police, always when the miners are at their most
vulnerable, exhausted from their work and weighed down
by sacks of dirt on their way out of the Ankarana reserve.
When caught, miners are commonly arrested, have their
equipment and sapphires confiscated, and are required to
pay fines. Often, the last of these burdens leads many to re-
turn to their illegal activities with even greater vigor almost
as soon as they are released from police custody. Many min-
ers 1 spoke with saw themselves as the least powerful par-
ticipants in a cycle that benefits their state-sanctioned ad-
versaries more than it does them. Some took a similarly
cynical view of the conservation organizations endeavoring
to keep them out of the Ankarana reserve, arguing that
groups such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature (formerly the
World Wildlife Fund) and its Malagasy equivalents were no
more than fronts for foreign concerns seeking exclusive ac-
cess to the resources (including sapphires) of the areas they
claimed to protect. The few foreign companies that at-
tempted to undertake large-scale mining in the region were
described with similar disdain. Employing geologists, armed
personnel, and advanced technology and claiming govern-
ment-sanctioned rights over local land (outside of the
Ankarana reserve), these companies were seen as having
risk-reducing advantages completely out of the reach of
miners.
Some miners in Ambondromifehy have risen to the
challenges presented by the state, conservation organiza-
tions, and companies by organizing a worker's association
to assert their own local claims. After years of protesting ef-
forts to clear them out of the region, by 1999 members of
this Association of Simple Miners (Fikambagnana Mpiton-
drakaTsotra) had assured themselves a tenuous place in the
local sapphire trade. By 2000, however, following the depar-
ture of many to mining centers elsewhere in Madagascar,
attempts at further securing the rights of independent min-
ers in the region had stalled. The state's continuing support
of the interests of conservation organizations and compa-
nies operating around Ambondromifehy were met with dis-
may by those who had organized the earliest protests.
Drawing inspiration from nationalist rhetoric learned
through years of public education, one of these young men
asked rhetorically how it has come to be that Malagasy peo-
ple are denied access to their own tanindrazana the "land
of [their Malagasy] ancestors"when it is precisely such
land that stands to offer them the means of achieving the
prosperity so often promised by politicians.
Readers may well remark a significant gap between the
cynical perspectives of miners confronting forces perceived
to be beyond their control and the rather more assured,
boastful ones attributed to Jao and others introduced in this
295
American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
article's opening paragraphs. How is it that some miners
can be so taken with la vie in a context of such oppressive,
prevailing uncertainty? To answer this question one must
first acknowledge that although miners certainly "risk" in
the pursuit of uncertain prosperity in Ambondromifehy,
this is not all that they do. As indicated by the acts of trans-
gression, propitiation, and protest listed above, miners take
active roles in the sapphire trade as well. For many, the need
to risk in the pursuit of sapphires is offset by the inclination
to "dare" (mahasaky).
Miners are commonly said to "dare to do things" (ma-
hasaky raha), such as dig in unstable pits, jump chasms in
caves, defy police, and transgress local or inherited taboos.
In combat, they "dare" one another, making or accepting
challenges in traditional fighting matches (morengy) in
town or, more often, perpetrating or resisting robberies and
intimidation at mining pits or in caves. As consumers they
"dare prices" (mahasaky prix), indicating a willingness to
pay "no matter how much" (na hoatrino) for what they want
when negotiating purchases or payments for the services of
prostitutes, bartenders, and taxi drivers. In all contexts,
"daring" is a matter of acting boldly and with little regard for
potential consequences. But it is not just this fact that distin-
guishes daring from risking. Acts of "daring" also commonly
suggest the willingness of those who undertake them to defy
various authorities. Thus, transgressing a known taboo is
"daring" in being an act of defiance, indicating one's lack of
concern for the traditional authorities that institute and
regulate standards of moral practice. Entering the Ankarana
reserve under the nose of the national police force is simi-
larly both daring and defiant.
In contrasting "daring" and "risking," I do not mean to
imply that these terms are antonyms or that miners are con-
sistently faced with situations in which they must choose to
either "risk" or "dare." These are, rather, alternate ways of
rendering miner positionality vis-a-vis the conditions under
which they live"risking" suggesting how they are passive
and prospective, "daring" how they are active and inclined
to live "for the moment." To better understand the distinc-
tion, consider the description Jao gave me of a trip that he
and Koko had made into the depths of the Ankarana massif:
We were supposed to leave in the night, but we left early
in the morning. We had heard that the gendarmes [na-
tional police] were arresting people . . . but we went
anyway. .. when we got inside the entrance to the cave,
there was lots of talking. We "dosed up" [midozy] ...
those who smoke pot, smoked. Those who drink, drank
. . . then we said let's go . . . we crawled for 300 or 400
meters.. .that's where I got all of these cuts on my arms
and knees. . .and kept going and came to a chasm called
plonge de la mort [fall to the death] . . . this is what we
Malagasy call "goodbye father" fveloma baba] because
there is only a small rope to help you across it and if you
don't know how to do it you'll fall and be killed directly
296
. . . there have already been three who have fallen in the
chasm and been killed here . . . then we descended 30
meters and arrived at the entrance to the cave [where we
were intending to dig]. We called in to the person we
knew there, and he let us in . . . they don't want many
people in there because it gets very hot. You can't
breathe in there. We worked . . . from 9[a.m.] until 3
[p.m.] and decided to keep working until 9 at night. We
crawled out through shit and piss . . . the people who
didn't get into the cave [and upset that they didn't] shit
and pissed in the passage we returned through.
Obviously, Jao and Koko undertook this trip in the con-
text of "risking"when leaving on such expeditions, they
often described themselves as going off "to risk" (mirisky)
rather than "to work" (miasa). In the process of risking, how-
ever, they dared as well. They dared to enter the reserve, to
crawl through cramped passages, to squeeze out rivals on
their way to desired destinations, and to work long hours
under dangerous conditions. And their rivals dared, too,
showing their displeasure at being excluded in what most
Malagasy would consider an entirely inappropriate way, de-
filing others with their own shit and piss.
It is a striking and important point that miners often
"dare" to behave in ways that many Malagasy people think
will make them repellent to the wealth they seekthat is, in
ways contrary to the Malagasy customs (fomba Gasy) that
many Malagasy people see as essential to the preservation
of sociality and prosperity. In his descriptions of work in the
caves, Jao never failed to mention how badly people, himself
included, behaved there. Food, water, alcohol, and pot go
unshared. Violence is commonplace. As one miner put it,
the "lifestyle" (fienana) in the caves is that of barbares; those
who are "big" (mavinty) are "rulers" (ampanjaka). The
counterproductive potential of this sort of behavior was
most apparent to longtime residents of Ambondromifehy,
who frequently remarked on how miners brought uncer-
tainty on themselves through their lack of respect for local
customs (fomba) and land taboos (fady ny tany). This is not
to suggest, however, that these longtime residents were
completely unfamiliar with the concept of daring and its sig-
nificance in the lives of young men.
The "daring" behavior of miners is exemplary of a way
of being commonly attributed to young men throughout
Madagascar. One might remark similarities, for example,
between miners like Jao and the young Malagasy (Zafi-
maniry) men discussed by Bloch who, like the boar they
hunt on forays into the bush, are considered and encouraged
to be "wild, dangerous and strong" (1999:183) individuals.
In the settings in which I have worked previously as well,
young men who "dare to do things" are conferred consider-
able status by both peers and elders. During traditional
fighting matches (morengy) especially, boys and young men
(ranging in age from ten to 25 years) participating as members
of village teams take one another on in contests that establish
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
hierarchies of daring. Although much that goes on in such
matches is no more than posturingas in the behavior of
young Zafimaniry men, "an emphatic theatrical element is ...
always highly evident" (Bloch 1999:183) in the swaggering
and taunting of morengy fightersdaring is essential to
their performances. Young men who decline challenges to
fight are said to "not dare" (tsy mahasaky) their challengers,
whereas a fighting champion (fanorolahy, a "living male") is
someone who "nobody dares to take on" (tsisy mahasaky
izy). Significantly, however, the daring evident in these
matches is restricted beyond the ring; young men, champi-
ons or not, are not meant to "dare" their elders by confront-
ing or contradicting them outside of the morengy environ-
ment. In reality, of course, young men dare to defy existing
orders by transgressing taboos, behaving violently or antiso-
cially, and so on, but when they do so, they are likely to be
called to answer for their disrespect and, to the degree that
they acknowledge the authority of elders, must atone for it
through various sorts of sacrifice. As Bloch suggests is the
case among Zafimaniry as well, the careful deliberation of
elders in cases of inappropriate youthful daring provides
young men with an example of what they are meant to be-
come as they mature. The conclusion of such deliberations
and the sacrifices that follow mark the channeling of this po-
tentially disruptive youthful vitality into the communities it
threatens, transforming the antisocial force characteristic of
young men into its opposite.
Although there are certainly parallels between the anti-
social behavior attributed to young men in other Malagasy
contexts and the "daring" of miners in Ambondromifehy,
there are significant differences as well. To get a sense of
these differences, one might look no further than to the par-
ticular nature of the morengy matches that occur regularly
in the mining town. Attended by thousands on a weekly
basis, Ambondromifehy's morengy matches pit miners
against one another not as representatives of particular vil-
lages but as individuals. Many miners fight with the hope of
establishing reputations they can carry with them on their
mining expeditions. In the past, fighting champions led the
gangs that once plagued miners in the bush and controlled
much of the sapphire trade. More recently, since a police
crackdown on organized crime, successful fighters have
come to act as highly paid guards for the town's wealthiest
traders. In sum, morengy matches in Ambondromifehy
have been transformed from relatively bounded and con-
trolled contexts in which young men establish a socially
sanctioned willingness to dare to contexts in which daring
in the ring is the means to ensure the effectiveness of daring
outside of it. The social regulation evident in how village-
based fighters (or any young men, for that matter) are kept
in check outside of the morengy environment is not appar-
ent in Ambondromifehy. Indeed, there are times when liv-
ing in the town feels like attending an extended morengy
match. It is a place where elaborated forms of the "artistic
excesses" (Bloch 1999) that make up the morengy aesthetic
and suggest the essence of youthful masculinity are con-
stantly center stage.
Considered alongside one another, miners' responses
to the uncertainties of the sapphire trade and the "daring"
acts they undertake on a daily basis may appear inconsis-
tent to some. Whereas the former, like "risking" itself, are
motivated by concerns for future prosperity, the latter are
carried out daringly, without concern for their potential
consequences. In fact, the juxtaposition of mirisky, "risk-
ing," and mahasaky, "daring," suggests a paradox that is es-
sential to the lives of miners in Ambondromifehy. Intent on
remaining attractive to sapphires and retaining positive re-
lations with fellow miners, many stress the need to behave
in accordance with "customs" (fomba) that serve to rein-
force social relations with others. Intent on profiting from
ancestral blessing and on local land, they may carry out acts
of respectful propitiation to traditional authorities. Intent
on their rights, they join with others to protest the imposed
uncertainties of the state, conservation organizations, and
companies. Yet, as Jao's comments about work in the caves
indicate, the sociality and solidarity implied by some of their
pursuits are inverted in others. Another recipe for success in
the sapphire trade suggests that miners must at times be-
have arcf/socially, as "daring" individuals in pursuit of per-
sonal gain.13 They should trust no one, least of all the people
working alongside them. They should be prepared to mine
always and everywhere, even if this means defying tradi-
tional or state-sanctioned authorities. Some might even be
inclined to employ strong, repellent medicine, either on
themselves (as protection from police or fellow miners) or
on others (to make them repellent to sapphires). Put an-
other way, the sapphire trade seems to encourage the simul-
taneous realization of two stereotypesthat of the antiso-
cial, individualistic, daring, and irresponsible young man
and that of the social, deliberative, collective-oriented, and
responsible elder. It is not only in the pursuit and procure-
ment of sapphires that these stereotypes are realized. They
are realized through the various ways in which miners han-
dle the money that they earn from sapphires as well.
"Daring" consumption
Conspicuous consumption, Veblen has famously argued,
might be understood as a "means to reputability" (1993:43).
Incorporating "friends and competitors" into personal proj-
ects, individuals may spend lavishly on "valuable presents
and expensive feasts and entertainments" (Veblen 1993:43)
as a way of establishing and increasing their reputations in
the eyes of others. Although reputations are important
among Ambondromifehy's miners, and "friends and com-
petitors" are certainly drawn into individual efforts to establish
them, Veblen's classic perspective can only take us so far. If one
focuses entirely on what consumption entails for consumers
297
American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
(i.e., the reputability it leads to, the networks it fosters, the
hierarchies it supports, etc.), one may well lose sight of the
significance of all that is not consumed in this context. In
Ambondromifehy, investing in personal reputability re-
quires that alternatives be ignored, and it is as much how
people do not spend money as how they do that is most con-
spicuous to some observers.
As in all sorts of "daring," "daring a price" (mahasaky
prix)paying any amount for what one desiresis a matter
of acting boldly, without thought to the consequences of ac-
tions or to the directions of the authorities who might have
you refrain.14 It is consuming, in other words, without the
foresight or deliberation characteristic of responsible elders.
The question I asked Koko about the house he had not built
was inspired by discussions with other young Malagasy men
for whom house-building was a matter of utmost impor-
tance. Elsewhere in northern Madagascar, as in other parts
of the island (Bloch 1995; Thomas 1998), houses are signifi-
cant sites both for the production of individual adult identi-
ties and the establishment of relatedness to others in com-
munities. Building a house is one of the most important
investments one can make, an investment not just or always
of money (for some invest no more than their own labor) but
of one's intentions for a future in a particular place and
among a particular group of people. Ideally, along with
clearing fields, buying cattle and marriage goods, getting
married, supporting children, making sacrifices when nec-
essary, and so on, house building is a way for young men to
invest in the reproduction of the enduring social and moral
orders under which they might prosper. Investing in this
way roots them in particular places and among particular
people, leading them to become tompontanana and
reyamandreny ("fathers and mothers" of their communi-
ties) in the process.
Obviously, Ambondromifehy is not a place conducive
to this sort of investment. None of the miners I spoke with
had any intention of staying over the long term. Some
planned to return to home regions if the sapphire trade ever
died. Most were open to the possibility of moving on to
other boomtowns as opportunities presented themselves.
Very few saw the point of building substantial houses in Am-
bondromifehy or requesting land in the region on which
they might grow rice. When they did invest in property, it
was in easily transportable thingsmattresses, bicycles,
gold jewelry, clothes, radio-cassette players, and so on;
things that they could take with them when (not if) they de-
cided to leave. Even these investments were uncertain, li-
able to be lost to robbery or a town fire. Some did, as men-
tioned earlier, channel money to home regions through
remittances destined for the purchase of land or cattle or for
the building of houses. But for those without access to trust-
worthy paths of remittancemany offered accounts of how
remittances had been "eaten" on the road by their carri-
erssuch a strategy was untenable. Accumulating or saving
298
money apparently was also not an option for many. Unwill-
ing to take cash with them on mining forays for fear of hav-
ing it stolen by other miners or confiscated by the police, the
miners' only choice was to leave the cash behind in Ambon-
dromifehy or to travel 50 kilometers to the nearest bank or
post office to put it into an account. Neither of the options
was attractive to the miners I spoke with, the former be-
cause of concerns over the trustworthiness of housemates
or spouses and the ever-present possibility of a town fire
and the latter because of the inconvenience of giving up a
day's work to put away money that might well be needed
over the short term.15
These points noted, it is, of course, far too simplistic to
argue that Ambondromifehy's conspicuous consumers
spend money in the way that they do only because of a lack
of other options. To deepen understanding of their con-
sumption habits, one might usefully return to the distinc-
tion between daring and risking introduced previously.
Jao, Koko, and others in Ambondromifehy might be
termed "daring" rather than "conspicuous" consumers. By
spending money on the immediate fulfillment of personal
desires and, as Veblen might have it, investing in their own
personal reputability, they suggest indifference toward the
deliberative, collectivist strategies and long-term concerns
of those who would have them do differently. Simply put,
spending money on la vie means not investing it in ways
that might mark their passage to a responsible status. "Dar-
ing prices" and other sorts of extravagant spending are the
investment strategies of those intent on denying the power
of figures who might have them do differently. Rather than
channel the value of their efforts into the support and repro-
duction of enduring kin- and place-based social networks-
networks in which young men, it should be noted, are likely
to occupy subordinate positionsAmbondromifehy's con-
spicuous consumers spend on themselves, "for the mo-
ment." Put another way, "daring consumption" suggests the
active (perhaps defiant) force of young men unwilling to be
rooted in place and made pivotal in time, people inclined to
confront the need "to risk" (a need suggestive of subordina-
tion, passivity, and dependence) with the willingness "to
dare" (indicating control, agency, and independence).16
Given how closely what I have described here parallels
many of the cases discussed in Lilies of the Field, it is tempt-
ing to suggest that daring consumption is a corollary of any
risky business.17 It is a means by which people allotted the
essentially passive role of living with uncertainty exert con-
trol and demonstrate agency, albeit only "for the moment."
Thus, although statements from Ambondromifehy's miners
regarding the heat of money might seem to suggest the view
that money is somehow more powerful than the people who
deal with itthat is, that it is too "hot" to handlethe lives
of these same people indicate the possibility that the oppo-
site is true. It is they who momentarily master it through
daring consumption. Here it is worth recalling that miners
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
do not only consume the various goods and services for
which they exchange money. In spending money the way
that they do, they consume money itself. They "eat" (mihi-
nana) it rather than see it eaten by someone else; they "kill"
(mamono) it themselves rather than see it "dead" (maty)
through dealings that send it out of their control.
Writing on "the consumption of an African modernity"
in Cameroon, Rowlands has suggested that "consumption is
... akin to fantasy; a means of resolving a sense of lack or ab-
sence, of convincing all concerned, in particular oneself,...
of one's special form of achievement" (1996:203). Especially
among men "who live for the moment," it seems that certain
types of consumption take on particular importance in self-
construction. "In singing, drinking, and gambling," Sophie
Day, Evthymios Papataxiarchis, and Michael Stewart write,
"men 'become' themselves" (1999:13). And so it is, I would
argue, for many young miners in Ambondromifehy. They
consume daringly in the process of being and becoming ac-
tive, powerful, attractive, and even "charismatic" (Weber
1968) men. This in mind, their consumption is not so much
"akin" to fantasy as it is the means to the momentary reali-
zation of fantasy. Here it is worth remarking that Jao and Soa
and others in their network used the term mireiy, from the
French rever (to dream), to refer to the hours they spent
drinking, smoking pot, and discussing matters with friends.
Whether in bars, discos, or houses, the "dream" of a life
where money is no object was more than just imagined; it
was actually lived out, albeit only momentarily. The prob-
lem was, of course, that in the context of Ambondromifehy's
turbulent sapphire trade, the selves that miners momentar-
ily realized through such consumption habits were unsus-
tainable over time. Obviously, "living for the moment" was
and is essentially ephemeral. And the miners I met dealt
with this fact in varying ways. To illustrate some possibili-
ties, let me return to Jao, the man whose words inspired me
to write this article.
Jao's story
Jao first came to Ambondromifehy in December 1998, only
eight months before I first met him. Stocky and muscular,
always dressed in a leather jacket, jeans, and expensive im-
ported running shoes when he wasn't mining, he looked
every inch the ex-morengy champion that he claimed to be.
It was as a master of the morengy ring that had he earned
the nickname by which most people knew him: Ampanjaka,
or "ruler."
In describing his consistent success in the sapphire
tradethe fact that whenever he went out to look for sap-
phires, he was sure to return with somethingJao often
made reference to his ancestry, implying that there was
something special about himself that others did not share. It
was well known in his network that Jao was descended from
a line of ritual specialists renowned for performing incred-
ible feats in Bobaomby, Madagascar's northernmost region.
It was one of Jao's ancestors, Soa informed me, who was re-
sponsible for introducing cattle to Madagascar by calling
them out of the ocean and onto dry land centuries ago. In
private, Jao confirmed these details and went further, de-
scribing himself as mahery rintagna, that is, as having a
"strong" or "hard destiny"an expression that people in
northern Madagascar sometimes use to describe unique,
charismatic, seemingly invulnerable figures. More signifi-
cantly, perhaps, Jao saw himself as an inherently attractive
man. In various conversations over our time together, he in-
formed me that his pet lemur, Soa, Koko, and I were all led to
him by God (Zagnahary); we were all, like sapphires, at-
tracted to him for reasons beyond our control.
Jao imagined himself just the sort of innately powerful
figure that Weber (1968) had in mind when discussing the
nature of "charismatic authority." Possessing "exceptional...
qualities" (Weber 1968:48), he saw himself as an individual
who draws people to him by virtue of who he is, not by what
he does for them. This in mind, understanding of his situ-
ation is limited by viewing his spending and generosity as
nothing more than strategies for achieving reputability (as
Veblen might suggest). From a Weberian perspective, Jao's
consumption habits might be seen as indicating his rejec-
tion of the "rational every-day economizing" (Weber
1968:53) that charismatic heroes are meant to avoid. Writing
of the prototype that seems to share most in common with
men like Jao in Ambondromifehy, Weber describes how
charismatic "warrior heroes . . . seek booty and, above all,
gold... . But charisma," Weber continues, "rejects all ra-
tional economic conduct" (Weber 1968:21). To "prove" (We-
ber 1968:22) their exceptional nature continually, warrior
heroes cannot invest the booty they discover according to
any "rational" strategy. It must, rather, be spent or distrib-
uted to reveal just how insignificant existing economic or-
ders are. For Weber's warrior heroes, booty is not so much
the end as the "material means of the mission" (Weber
1968:21); the goal is not to accumulate booty but to retain
charisma. The same might be said of Jao and others like him
in Ambondromifehy. Consuming as they do, they reject ex-
isting norms of "rational" economic behavior in support of a
self-image that must be proven again and again if it is to re-
main intact.
Jao both introduced me to the notion of "hot money"
and gave me plenty of food for thought on the topic. On that
first night we spent together and in the weeks that followed,
he described how hot money might as well be spent on la vie
because nothing good can come of it. If you buy a car with
such money, it is likely that the car will crash. If you try to
"put money to work," it is likely to end up "dead" (maty), lost
through dealings with unscrupulous traders. "Why not
spend it quickly and in fulfillment of short-term desires-.'" lie
often asked me. For someone as attractive as he, he implied,
good fortune is assured.
299
American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
Once again, Jao's view parallels that of many others
who "live for the moment" while asserting that what is
needed to do so indefinitely will be provided by an abun-
dant environment (Day et al. 1999:12). As indicated above,
however, Jao's particular perspective was uniquely shaped
by his personal history. It was also, I think, significantly in-
formed by certain cultural ideals that likely inform the imag-
inings of many Malagasy people. As he presented himself to
me and others who gathered in his household to share in the
celebration of his earnings, Jao did not see himself as a
predator, an expert at capturing wealth in the mode of re-
cently described equatorial Africans establishing personal
value (De Boeck 1999a; Guyer 1993), but as an inherently
powerful being to whom wealth was drawn (along with le-
murs, women, and anthropologists). As he described them,
his successes in the sapphire trade came not because of the
things he did, but because of what he was (cf. Graeber 1996).
In this, he might be seen as akin to the traditional Malagasy
rulers from whom he gets his nicknamethe Ampanjaka
who have enjoyed varying degrees of influence in many
Malagasy regions through historywhose power is indi-
cated in their ability to draw people, service, and tribute to
themselves and the centers, they constitute (Bare 1980;
Feeley-Harnik 1991; Lambek and Walsh 1997). Although the
power of these rulers, for whom charisma has become routi-
nized (Weber 1968), is manifested in the respectful acts of
people willingly drawn to royal centers, for Jao, an analo-
gous power could only be displayed through his own ac-
tions. It was he alone, and not constituents of a polity ar-
rayed around him, who authored the displays indicating the
status he claimed. It was he alone who, through daring con-
sumption, established for himself and others just who he
was}8
As daring as it might have been in the moment, how-
ever, it is important to note that Jao's conspicuous con-
sumption inevitably precipitated the sobering need to go
out and "risk" again. And despite his skill at wresting sap-
phires from the land and, reportedly, his fellow miners, such
risking, however much daring it required, was not appar-
ently something that brought him the pleasure that con-
sumption did. Indeed, Jao's attitude toward his life and
prospects was markedly different from one day to the next,
from occasions when money was plentiful to those when it
was needed. On mornings after nights of extravagant spend-
ing Jao bemoaned his situation, sometimes accusing Soa
and Koko of stealing from him. Showing me the scars that
crawling through pits and passages had left on his back and
belly, he once told me that he "kills himself (mamontegna)
in the process of mining. Yet he continued with his risking,
daring, and daring consumption. When 1 ran into him on a
return visit to Ambondromifehy a year after our first meet-
ing, he assured me that all was as I had remembered it. Al-
though he no longer shared a house with Koko or a bed with
Soa, he continued to "live the life."
It would be misleading to suggest that Jao's attitudes
and experiences represent those of all of Ambondromifehy's
young male miners. Consider the contrasting case of Abdou,
a 21-year-old man I interviewed immediately after he had
sold a single sapphire for 800,000 fmg (about $120). "What
am I going to do with this money?" he asked, repeating my
question,
I'm going to buy sapphires and turn them around.. .I'll
sell them, put my money to work, and make even more
than I have now. ["What about la vie?" I asked]... I am
notgoingtodo la vie, I won'tdrink alcohol, I'mnotgoing
to sleep with any women... . If I spend all my money on
women, when it's done, they won't concern themselves
with me! . . . In the past I didn't know. I didn't think
much. I bought clothes and shoes . . . and the women!
All of the women, all of the prostitutes did well from me.
Now I think. I remember. I am no longer a child but an
adult. I've got a beard.. .I've got children. I've got a wife
here. I'm going to buy and sell.
According to Abdou, the move from daring consump-
tion to deliberative investment is evidently linked to matu-
ration. He is certainly not alone among Malagasy people in
expressing the notion that as a man ages he should give up
the daring practices and strategies of youth in favor of the
deliberative ones expected of men with "beard[sl" and "chil-
dren." What of "hot money?" Repeating a common refrain,
Abdou assured me that there is nothing inherently "hot"
about the money one earns from sapphires. It is, rather, "the
minds of people that make money hot." "Hot money," as
Abdou and other deliberative investors understood it, is
nothing more or less than the product of the imaginations of
people like Jao. Provided that one ignores the sometimes
disparaging nature of such characterizations and acknow-
ledges, in contrast, how imaginations are in fact powerful
resources for people facing risk and uncertainty, there is
perhaps no better way of understanding "hot money" in
Ambondromifehy than this.
Conclusion
By way of closing this article on Ambondromifehy's young,
male conspicuous consumers I turn to a very different seg-
ment of the town's population: the tompontanana or "peo-
ple responsible to/for the community" who inhabited the
place prior to the 1996 sapphire rush.
According to Antilahy Lehibe, the eldest living malede-
scendent of a set of five brothers credited with having
founded Ambondromifehy in the 1920s, the first prospec-
tors who came to his (then) village in 1996 did precisely what
newcomers should do. They introduced themselves to him
and to other longtime residents, informed these tompon-
tanana of the reason for their visit, asked what local customs
and taboos they should be aware of, and promised that they
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
would behave respectfully while in the region. As days
turned to weeks and more and more prospectors arrived,
some of these "visitors" (vahiny) even requested small plots
of land on which to construct simple shelters or huts. Anti-
lahy Lehibe and other "fathers and mothers" (reyaman-
dreny) of the community reportedly reciprocated appropri-
ately. They received visits, answered questions, and
accepted prospecting migrants into their community with
the expectation that these newcomers would uphold the lo-
cal moral order by behaving responsibly while in the region.
Antilahy Lehibe argued that it was (or would have been) in
the best interest of visitors to respect local taboos, customs,
and, above all, the directions of tompontanana, in that such
respect stood to guarantee them the prosperity that they
were seeking in the region. If they had become responsible
members of the community, Antilahy Lehibe insinuated,
and were able to channel local sources of blessing into their
efforts, they might have done much better.
That the initial expectations of tompontanana would go
unmet was reportedly obvious within a few months after the
first arrivals. As rumors of the sapphire rush spread and tens
of incoming prospectors turned to hundreds and then thou-
sands, tompontanana authority over the community dwin-
dled. Indeed, most miners I met in 1999, including Jao, Soa,
and Koko, had minimal relations with the tompontanana in
their midst. They could identify them by their well-built, ce-
ment-floored, tin-roofed houses but saw little importance in
visiting them or informing them of their arrivals and depar-
tures, as would be expected under normal circumstances.
When tompontanana commented critically on the lives
of the miners who vastly outnumbered them in Ambon-
dromifehy, they tended not to single out the miners' ex-
travagant consumption habits the way that traders often
did. In fact, tompontanana interpretations of the behavior
of young men like Jao and of the traders or miners who "put
money to work" emerged with particularly local concerns in
mind. What was most significant to tompontanana was not
the fact that miners wasted money, but that they, like many
traders, transgressed local taboos, disregarded the well be-
ing of their neighbors, and, perhaps most significantly, re-
fused to invest in the community in which they were seeking
their living. Particularly galling was the fact that many visi-
tors disregarded tompontanana warnings against building
houses, doing laundry, bathing, washing pots, or sieving
sapphires near certain sites locally considered sacred
(Walsh 2002a). They further ignored tompontanana re-
quests that they atone for their defiling acts by ritually
"washing" (manasa) these sites with costly cattle sacrifices.
Most revealing of all, however, were tompontanana com-
plaints about and reactions to visitors' thoughtlessness with
regard to their houses. Not only were newcomers criticized
for building houses without tompontanana blessing (some-
times in the environs of aforementioned sacred sites), but
those many miners who abandoned their houses when they
left Ambondromifehy were also castigated in absentia for
putting the entire town at risk. In a setting in which fire and
robbery were two of the greatest threats to public safety and
private property, abandoned houses were seen as little more
than potential fuel or hiding places. More disturbing than
that, though, was the fact that houses were of so little signifi-
cance to the miners who built them that they could be aban-
doned with seemingly little concern. Following a particularly
destructive townfirein September 1999, many tompontanana
remarked that their visitor neighbors seemed far more con-
cerned with protecting the portable contents of their houses
than they were with preserving the actual houses and those
of their neighbors.
In the face of newcomers' irresponsible attitudes and
behaviors, and despite their own inclinations toward hospi-
tality, by 1999 tompontanana had taken drastic steps to pre-
serve what they could of the community that had once ex
isted in this place. They had placed lids and locks on wells
and fenced in what sacred sites they could, restricting the
access of visitors to powerful sources of blessing that might,
under normal circumstances, have assisted them in their
pursuit of sapphires. After the fire, tompontanana decided,
after considerable deliberation, that abandoned houses
could be torn down, even without the permission of those
who had built them.
It is striking how tompontanana responses to the irre-
sponsibility of miners in Ambondromifehy contradict cer-
tain fundamental ideals that many hold essential to the de-
velopment of moral communities in the region. Before the
sapphire rush inhabitants of the community likely would
not have been refused access to water or sacred sites, and
they would not have expected that their neighbors might
ever tear down their houses. Indeed, in other northern
Malagasy settings in which I have worked, newcomers may
strive to establish themselves as responsible members of ex-
isting communities by contributing funds to the digging or
keeping up of wells, carrying out costly invocations at sacred
sites under the guidance of community elders, and building
houses. That such expensive undertakings are possible and
effective indicates quite clearly that, in tompontanana eyes,
there is nothing inherently disruptive about money. It is the
way in which people invest or consume that determines the
moral implications of money. When invested in wells, in
cattle for sacrifice, or in houses, money can certainly be a
means by which enduring, locality-based moral orders of
the sort that tompontanana argue once existed at Ambon-
dromifehy are reproduced. When "eaten" or "killed" outright,
or "put to work" and sent to distant locales as remittances,
however, money's potential capacity for the reproduction of
a local moral order is compromised.
Ironically, perhaps, it is the fact that the consumption
of newcomers is relatively inconspicuousthat is, it leaves
no enduring traces locallythat is most problematic to
301
American Ethnologist Volume 30 Number 2 May 2003
those intending to live in Ambondromifehy for more than
just the moment.
Tompontanana perspectives on consumption and in-
vestment patterns in Ambondromifehy suggest the possibil-
ity that "hot money" must have an antithesis. If, as Jao con-
tended, hot money is money that leaves no enduring traces,
then "cool" or "cold money" might be that with lasting con-
sequencesmoney invested in wells, cattle, or houses, for
example. Where hot money is essential to the reproduction
of the ephemeral social networks on which so many of Am-
bondromifehy's transitory miners rely, cold money might
be thought of as that invested in the reproduction of endur-
ing social networks based in particular locales. Cold money,
like ancestors, reproductive rituals, or other things consid-
ered "cold" (manintsy) in Madagascar, might be associated
with continuity in the way that hot money, like youth, death
rites, and other "hot" (mafana) things are with disruption.
What will remain uncertain in Ambondromifehy, however,
is whether, over the long term, responsible and enduring in-
vestment necessarily follows conspicuous consumption in
the way that ancestors do youth and communal reproduc-
tion does the death of individuals. Although individuals like
Abdou may see and describe their own transformations
from daring consumers to deliberative investors, so long as
they do so as inhabitants of a place in which they have no in-
tention of rooting themselves, such shifts in status will re-
main invisible locally.
Notes
Acknowledgments. Research for this article was generously sup-
ported by a postdoctoral fellowship and standard research grant
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Can-
ada. Thanks are due to the people of Ambondromifehy who hosted
me during my stays there in 1999 and 2000. Paul Antze, Sandra
Bamford, Janice Boddy, Jennifer Cole, Berkeley Fleming, Michael
Lambek, Anne Meneley, and Karin Schwerdtner all read or offered
valuable comments on an earlier draft of this article. The comments
and suggestions of Carol Greenhouse and readers enlisted by Ameri-
can Ethnologist were essential to the production of a final draft.
1. Although I first heard it in Ambondromifehy, the expression
"hot money" is not restricted to this place or to an association with
the sapphire trade. In other contexts, it is used to refer to money that
has been stolen, attained through deception, or, under certain con-
ditions, found. It is an expression that some informants used, for
example, to denote the profits of unscrupulous vanilla buyers, who
cheat innumerate rural growers by misreading the weight of the
produce they buy or miscalculating the total amounts they pay out.
Others attributed "heat" to money that has been stolen or earned
through the sale of stolen goods. One informant I met in Ambon-
dromifehy even suggested that if a person sees another drop money
on the street and then picks it up with no intention of returning it to
its owner, then this money is "hot." As this last example illustrates,
there is nothing intrinsic to money itself that makes it "hot"it is,
rather, the immoral actions and intentions of the people who steal,
find, earn, and spend it that give it its heat.
2. Although perhaps partially indicative of the well-documented
Malagasy "penchant for perambulation" (Wilson 1971:194; for a
sampling of perspectives on migration in Madagascar, see Bloch
302
1971,-Deschamps 1959; Sharp 1993), it is important not to downplay
the dire economic circumstances that motivate and confront miners
who move to Ambondromifehy. Most inhabitants of the town are
well described, to borrow Martinez's (1995) phrase, as "peripheral
migrants" who, like the Haitian plantation workers in the Dominican
Republic that Martinez describes, are forced from one "rural periph-
ery" of the global economy to another (and another) in the pursuit
of insecure livings.
3. Single stones can and do sell for what these migrants might
earn from a month's labor elsewhere. This is not to imply, of course,
that all who have come to this place have made their fortunes.
Indeed, many seem worse off when they leave. Still, stories of the
fortunes to be made in the sapphire trade have remained compelling
enough to draw a steady stream of newcomers, even as their dejected
predecessors make room for them. Like many of those who arrive,
many of those who leave do not so much leave as move along a
circuit of chronic migration, motivated by the possibility of fortunes
that are, in reality, rarely realized.
4. Tompontanana ("people responsible for [their] communities")
do not only have bad things to say about the sapphire trade. Most
have benefited from an expanded local market for the rice and other
staple crops they produce, and some have parlayed their knowledge
of the region and traditional medicines into lucrative consultancies.
A few have even set out in search of sapphires themselves, doing
precisely those things that they would have prospectors refrain from
doing. When asked how he could dig in what was well recognized as
a taboo area, one longtime resident tellingly replied that "nobody
has a taboo against money" (tsisy olofady vola).
5. Although several companies have attempted to establish large-
scale industrial mining operations in the region, lack of water (a
necessary resource for industrial mining) and access to the areas in
which the best sapphires are to be had has prevented any lasting
projects from taking root. Obviously, companies have been denied
access to the Ankarana reserve.
6. The multiple ways in which Malagasy people simultaneously
establish their relatedness to one another and to the land on which
they live is a topic that cannot be fully explored here. Interested
readers should consider Astuti 1995; Bloch 1971; Dina 2001; Feeley-
Harnik 1991; Middleton 1999; and Walsh 2001 for a sampling of
perspectives on this topic.
7. Although households are shared by couples, houses them-
selves are not built as markers of unions, as they often are in other
communities in the region, nor do husbands regularly supply their
wives with the furnishings to outfit them. Women are more likely to
receive easily transportable goods from their spouses, gold jewelry,
for example, or imported clothing. It is also significant that, as mi-
grants, husbands and wives are also denied the possibility of invest-
ing in affinal relationships by working in thefieldsor households of
one another's families.
8. I will further explore the diverse roles that women play in
Ambondromifehy in a future article. Suffice it to note here that, like
many of their male counterparts, many of Ambondromifehy's
women seem habitually to choose active over passive roles, often
opting for relationships (with African and Thai buyers, for example)
that will assist them in moving toward independence. In diamond-
trade communities in Angola, De Boeck comments that "mine mar-
riages" tend to "[serve] an economic, purely utilitarian purpose in
the short term, with for the woman involved an oftentimes advanta-
geous financial outcome" (1999b: 109). Again, the similarity to the
situation in Ambondromifehy is striking.
9. De Boeck writes that on the Zaire-Angola border, diamonds are
seen to be "like wild animals and indeed behave in unpredictable
and irrational ways" (1999a: 186). They are understood, in other
words, to have a class of agency with which bana Lunda miners are
quite familiar, one that they counter with a complementary, predatory
 "Hot money" and daring consumption American Ethnologist
agency of their own. Although miners in Ambondromifehy do not
liken sapphires to wild animals, I have heard many draw compari-
sons between their mining and the work of shrimp fishers on the
nearby coast. Sapphires and shrimp both remain invisible to those
searching them out until they are in the searchers' possession; both
are commonly understood to be given or withheld, attainable or not,
by virtue of a variety of invisible forces.
10. Often, it is said, miners covertly administer such medicines to
those with whom they are closest; for example, those with whom
they share a pit but not an agreement for sharing what they find in
it. By doing so, a certain logic suggests that they seek to improve their
own chances by making their digging partners repellent to sap-
phires.
11. Nowhere is the link between present consumption and future
prosperity better indicated than at events marking life cycle rites or
the fulfillment of promises made to ancestors at which sponsors
sacrifice wealth (often cattle) for the sake of the guests they invite. As
I have witnessed them in northern Madagascar, such occasions
clearly indicate the perceived link between present, socially sanc-
tioned consumption and future prosperity. "Dead today, succeeded
tomorrow" (matyniany, solonyamaray), the final exclamation made
over cattle about to be sacrificed, captures the essence of this view.
Elders who thank their descendents for gifts of money with a blessing
meant to assist them in earning even more indicate the same dy-
namic. The logic suggested in such practices is that wealth must be
consumed or expended if it to be assured in the future; generosity
and hospitality precipitate further prosperity. For further discussion
of the role of sacrifice in traditional systems of social relations in
Madagascar, see Cole 2001 and Walsh 2002b.
12. As indicated in the various examples given above, the predica-
ment of Ambondromifehy's miners, "risking" in their pursuit of
sapphires, is not so different from that of many Malagasy people
outside of the trade. Nonminers might be seen as "risking" as well,
pursuing their essentially uncertain livelihoods under the eye of
various forceselders, ancestors, rulers, possessing spirits, and so
onthat have the power to help or hinder them. Although they
certainly act prospectively with regard to these forces, sponsoring
acts of propitiation or accommodating their needs, they are never
guaranteed the ends they seek.
13. Even miners who dig in teams and agree to split their com-
bined earnings are aware of and joke about this paradox. When they
gather to drink, the one among them who has hidden the most
sapphires from the others in their parties must confess and buy the
first round.
14. Koko, one of the young men with whom I began this article,
went through the 2.5 million fmg windfall he earned just before I met
him within a matter of days, daring prices in the process. In docu-
menting his spending to me, he listed the few durable commodities
he had purchased (a bicycle and shirt, totaling no more than one-
quarter of the value of the windfall), and then, following a brief
pause, he wrote the rest off to la vie. Most of his money, I later
learned, went to buy beer and pot to be shared in bars and homes
with others, paying for prostitutes, and, in one splurge, hiring a taxi
to take him and a group of friends to the nearby town of Anivorano
for a night of dancing.
15. See Day's work on London prostitutes for another example of
how, in some cases, "it is easier to spend than to save" (1999:146).
16. Much like acts of "daring" in other Malagasy contexts, "daring
consumption" is obviously central to the construction of youthful
masculinity in Ambondromifehy. It is undoubtedly significant that
the things that young men spend their money on (i.e., drinking,
drugs, women, etc.) are the very things that young men are expected
to desire most of all. For a sampling of views on the significance of
consumption in gender construction, see Butler 1990; Connell 1 W)rr,
Mills 1997; Suggs 1996.
17. See especially Gills (1999) and Days (1999) contributions to
Lilies of the Field, in which they describe the unc ertainties faced by
Japanese day-laborers and London prostitutes, respectively. For an
alternate take on risk management in India's diamond trade, see
Westwood 2000.
18. By focusing on what he is rather than what he does in describ-
ing his successes in the sapphire trade, Jao might be seen as attrib-
uting to himself the sort of power that has elsewhere been attributed
both to elite bourgeois women prone to personal adornment (Berger
1971i, cited in Graeber 1996) and feudal aristocrats intent on being in
the present rather than doing prospectively (Weber 1978, cited in
Graeber 1996). As indicated in the lives of the former, this is "a power
born of subordination" or "a mere residual of power, all that is left
to those who have no access to the more direct variety" (Graeber
1996:9). It is also, as indicated in the lives of the latter, a sort of power
that encourages the people whose lifestyles indicate their claim to it
to imagine themselves immune to risk.
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Westwood, Sallie Mount Allison University
2000 "A Real Romance": Gender, Ethnicity, Trust and Risk in the Sackville, New Brunswick
Indian Diamond Trade. Ethnic and Racial Studies 23(5): E4L1E4
857-870. Canada
awalsh@mta.ca

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