Academic literature on the topic 'South African Banknotes'

The purpose of the study is to study animalistic imagery in the design of banknotes and their correlation with the traditional and contemporary culture of the country they represent. The article is aimed at identifying aspects of money design impact on preserving unique heritage of a particular and its positive representation in the world. Research methodology is based on the application of empirical and comparative analysis. The theoretical basis consists of scientific publications on sign systems, certain aspects of banknote design, and the priority of different factors in banknote identification. The source material for the study includes banknotes from countries with different cultural backgrounds containing animalistic images. Scientific novelty. For the first time in the Ukrainian space, the article provides a review and systematization of the use of animalistic illustrations in the design of banknotes from different countries worldwide. The influence of a country’s traditional culture on the design of modern banknotes is explored. A comprehensive analysis of the design of Australian and South African banknotes is carried out from both design and culturological perspectives. Conclusions. Currently, images of fauna representatives are an integral part of the design of banknotes in countries such as South Africa, Australia, Madagascar, South Sudan, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand. The images used in banknote design present unique representatives of fauna specific to regions, which have become an integral part of local traditional culture and contemporary practices. This proves that the design of banknotes is based on a semantic component, particularly on signs that, on one hand, are iconic accurate reproductions of real fauna representatives, and on the other hand, symbols of many cultural mythologies and basic principles of the mentality of the leading ethnic group for a particular country. Studying the correlation between images used in the sign system of a particular country’s banknotes and its traditional culture allows for a better understanding of the specificity of using not only animalistic illustrations in banknote design but also other elements as components of the banknote sign system.

This essay explores the role of commensuration – the mechanisms that render equitable and negotiable different orders of value – in the production of society and history. While equilibration, standardization and conversion are implicated in most theories of money and commodification, their nature as social processes has not been adequately specified, above all in the construction of universalizing ideologies and modernist political and economic regimes. We pursue these processes in relation to one African theatre, examining the ways in which different regimes of value, brought up against one another in the encounter between the southern Tswana peoples and European colonizers, became the subject of both conflict and complex mediation. Cows, coin and contracts – which had the capacity to construct and negate difference – soon were invested here with magical qualities. But colonized peoples were also sensitive to the capacity of such currencies to enable or impede convertibility and the forms of abstraction and incorporation they permit. Which is why, in South Africa and elsewhere, those currencies often became metonymic of the contestations of value on which colonial struggles, tout court, were played out.

In Archaeological dialogues 12.2 Jean and John Comaroff explored the role of commensuration – the mechanisms that render equitable and negotiable different orders of value – in the production of society and history. While equilibration, standardization and conversion are implicated in most theories of money and commodification, their nature as social processes has not been adequately specified, above all in the construction of universalizing ideologies and modernist political and economic regimes. They pursue these processes in relation to one African theatre, examining the ways in which different regimes of value, brought up against one another in the encounter between the southern Tswana peoples and European colonizers, became the subject of both conflict and complex mediation. Cows, coin and contracts – which had the capacity to construct and negate difference – soon were invested here with magical qualities. But colonized peoples were also sensitive to the capacity of such currencies to enable or impede convertibility, and to the forms of abstraction and incorporation they permit. Which is why, in South Africa and elsewhere, those currencies often became metonymic of the contestations of value on which colonial struggles, tout court, were played out.In this short essay they respond to the comments on their article by John Creighton and Laurier Turgeon.

This paper analyses the way in which the text displayed on bilingual and multilingual currency (banknotes and coins) and stamps constructs and reproduces linguistic hierarchies, reflecting the relative status of the languages within the issuing country. The paper briefly discusses the selection of languages which appear on stamps and money, which is nearly always in accordance with the dominant language ideologies. It then goes on to show how the choice of language and the relative positioning and size of texts in those languages constructs the languages involved as of equal or unequal status. Two case studies are considered: the construction of equality between English and Afrikaans in South Africa on stamps and banknotes of the period 1910 to 1994, reflecting the constitutional requirement that those languages be treated ‘on a footing of equality’; and the construction of linguistic inequality in the stamps of Palestine and Israel, where first English (under the British Mandate) was displayed as dominant over Arabic and Hebrew, and later Hebrew (in Israel) was shown to dominate over the other two. The paper argues for a dual analysis of text in public texts like stamps and banknotes: on the one hand text is language, and is subject to a (socio)linguistic analysis, while on the other, text has a physical form and dimensions which means that texts are interpreted in terms of their visual features and spatial relationships to other texts. The language hierarchies which are reproduced and transported by stamps and money are thus discursively constructed through a combination of text as language and text as image.

This thought-provoking essay strives to theorize the concept of ‘regimes of value’ and, more specifically, the role of material objects in the convertibility of different orders of value in the making of modern economies and societies. Put forth by Arjun Appadurai in his edited volume The social life of things (1986), the notion of regime of value originally referred to the use of categories of material objects in the construction of value within a specific cultural context. Appadurai was more concerned with the way value is invested in objects than in theories of exchange and currency, consequently the notion remained relatively untheorized. Jean and John Comaroff break new theoretical ground in at least two ways. First, they take into consideration and juxtapose different regimes of value – primarily cattle for the southern Tswana peoples and currency for the European colonizers – to see how they are constructed and become the focus of complex mediations between these groups in the colonial context of South Africa. Cattle, like currency (in the form of coins or paper money), come to objectify value because they have the power to make or break social relations, to build new social hierarchies or overturn old ones, to do or undo moral economies. They show that different regimes of value can coexist in the same social space and be played out against one another. Second, Jean and John Comaroff interrogate the role of conversion, or ‘commensuration’, as they say, of regimes of value, that is, their power to make objects from different cultural contexts universally objectifiable, comparable and negotiable. Instead of making difference, as is usually thought, it is the capacity to negate difference and make all things equal that expresses the effectiveness of a regime of value. It is also these processes of commensuration and conversion that give material objects their magical qualities, through which they become fetishized and ‘seem to have a power all of their own’ (p. 131). More than the written word or oral discourse, it is material objects that become the preferred tools and means of colonial domination. The authors contribute then to a better understanding of the workings of political economies as well as to the materialities of colonialism.

Abstract The use of wildlife imagery in society is highly varied and could contribute to reinforcing national identity. Standard depictions of wildlife include photographs, video, artwork and symbols or icons, including on currency. We investigated the representation of native fauna on 4541 banknotes from 207 countries between 1980 and 2017, to identify geographic hotspots and taxonomic patterns and determine whether threatened and endemic species were more readily represented. Native fauna was depicted on 15.2% of banknotes reviewed (352 unique species) with a strong bias towards terrestrial species (89%) and a dominance of bird and mammal species (83% combined). African banknotes had the highest mammal representation while birds were favoured in South America. Globally, threatened species were commonly depicted on banknotes with 30% of all imagery representing these species. The fauna species depicted on banknotes generally perpetuate existing perceptions about these species (i.e., charismatic species). We recommend several avenues for further investigation to explore relationships between perceived value and wildlife representation. These include longitudinal studies of how representation changes over time, the inclusion of flora and/or coin imagery, identifying species‐specific traits for selected wildlife and examining the decision‐making processes governing wildlife imagery on banknotes. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.