Oznaczanie i liczenie domowych pieniędzy
Earmarking and Counting Domestic Money

Summary/Abstract: The text concerns the counting and allocation of income by couples running a household together. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the households of 28 young couples in Warsaw and drawing on Viviana Zelizer’s concept of earmarking (2012) this article demonstrates how couples differentiate money depending on its source, form, and destination, and how they assign a meaning to it. In order to reconstruct this meaning the text examines the practices of counting and earmarking money on a mental, material, and technological level. Analysis of the use of spreadsheets in budgeting has shown that in thinking of money and handling it the research participants mobilized categories that were not strictly mathematical but rather cultural and moral. Empirical study demonstrates that earmarking domestic money is a process of setting boundaries within a household and an area for practicing everyday, lay morality.

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