The Quality of Quantity: An Ethnographic and Experimental-Economic Analysis of the Cultural Influence on the Cognitive Perception and Classification of Quantities and Money in Western Kenya

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The inhabitants of Kadongo, a market center in Western Kenya, treat differently sized monetary amounts in specific social context as if they possess the same size. This recursive understanding of quantity also becomes manifest in the interpretation of electoral results, investment plans and betting strategies. In other situations such as the mathematics instruction in school a different understanding of quantities is taught. This additive understanding of quantity assumes that different quantities follow one another. The main ethnographic goal of the research project is to analyze the relations between an additive and a recursive understanding of quantities and money in Kadongo in order to shed light upon the question why actors prefer one of the two approaches to quantity in specific social situations. By combining ethnographic and experimental-economic methods, the project will isolate the factors that are responsible for context-specific shifts between an additive and a recursive understanding of quantities in order to answer the question to what extent, how and which socio-cultural factors influence the perception and classification of quantities in Western Kenya. The inclusion of experimental-economic methods will further help answer the question if the cross-cultural use of these methods is scientifically valid. Even if the cross-cultural use will prove to be problematic, the experimental-economic methods will lead to a better understanding of local conceptions of quantity, because the participations "Forces" informants to classify and disaggregate monetary amounts. The experiments, understood as such "enforced reflective quantifications", will furthermore help to understand the moral classification of money in Western Kenya.