This article explores crucial decisions made by Sylvia, a Xhosa woman living in the townships of Cape Town, during a period of approximately thirty years. These decisions involved large sums of money and had important consequences for her own life, for those of her son and grandchild, and for the relationships she had with her first and second husbands and in‐laws. Sylvia's decisions continued to be influenced by gendered ways of belonging to ancestors and descendants but also show important changes in connecting wealth and people. The wealth‐in‐people approach offers important insights into how Sylvia's decisions are guided by power and control over people as well as by prestige. However, it also becomes evident that the wealth‐in‐people approach does not sufficiently explain or theorize the agency of people. By drawing on the philosophical notion of practical rationality as a complementary analytical perspective, I explore agency in relation to aspirations and the acquisition of new open‐ended values. The perspective offered by practical rationality increases our understanding of how individual decisions, especially complex decisions around money, are made because of their transformative potential and the aspiration to cultivate oneself.

中文翻译：

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财富和实践理性：南非关于金钱的抱负和决定

本文探讨了居住在开普敦乡镇的科萨妇女Sylvia在大约30年的时间里做出的重要决定。这些决定涉及大量金钱，对她自己的生活，她的儿子和孙子的生活以及她与第一，第二任丈夫和公婆的关系都有重要影响。西尔维亚的决定继续受到祖先和后代的性别归属方式的影响，但也显示出财富与人之间的联系发生了重要变化。以人为本的方法提供了重要的见解，使人们了解西尔维亚的决定是如何通过对人民的力量和控制以及声望来指导的。但是，很明显，以人为本的方法不足以解释或理论化人的代理权。通过将实践合理性的哲学观念作为补充的分析视角，我探索了与理想和新的开放式价值的获取有关的代理。实践理性所提供的观点使我们对个人决策，尤其是围绕货币的复杂决策如何做出决策有了更多的了解，因为这些决策具有变革性，并且渴望培养自己。