Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach (Economy and Society)


This chapter shows the moral ubiquity of money lent in heterogeneous situations, both formal and informal where money circulates. It also reveals how moral capital becomes a guarantee that sustains the power relations at the core of these situations. For those with scarce economic and cultural assets, the daily management of finances involves fighting to have their values acknowledged. Moral capital is their passport. However, like all forms of acknowledgment, it is rare and thus can become a form of domination that some are forced to accept in order to access the material benefits capitalism has to offer.

The chapter two analyzes how the underground economy operates as a moral space of income. This exploration will reveal the dynamics of questioning and legitimizing what has to be done to earn money. Having moral capital is the way in to these economic transactions that are not regulated by law.

Informal and illegal markets are moral spaces where the legitimacy of money earned comes into play. To get involved in these transactions, moral hierarchies are established among participants and they are the also the prerequisites for successful participation. The conditional cash transfer CCT programs have become the new paradigm of the struggle against poverty. These programs have progressively expanded to around thirty countries in the region that has come to be known as the Global South.

The expansion of CCT programs changed the household budgets of the poor and became a focus of public debate. The use of money donated by the State became a way to morally discredit the poor. Money donated to the poor instantly becomes a source of suspicion. To understand this, the chapter three reconstructed the place of money donated by the state in different hierarchies of money.

This chapter identifies the different strategies individuals use to elude the biases associated with this type of money such as stigma cleansing rituals, exclusion strategies and silence in response to such judgments. Beyond the efforts to avoid the stigma associated with donated money, the reconstructed scenes show how monetary hierarchies uphold power relations among those who have the authority to judge and those who must acquiesce to such biases.

Through the processes of democratization in Argentina and most of Latin America that began at the beginning of the s, political scientists and sociologists began examining money in political life through the financial of political parties and the political clientelism. Has the monetization of political activities dissolved values, commitments, and loyalties among the poor?

Is this corruption or an ethical exchange among people who lack cash but possess moral capital? This chapter explores how politics involves power relations that can be understood through the moral dimension of money.

Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach

To put it more succinctly, this community places political money at the core of its collective life. The chapter five narrates the competition between political and religious leaders of Villa Olimpia. It shows how these power struggles are rooted in the accumulation of moral capital associated with the pieces of money. The Social Meaning of Money. Credit and the Modern Consumer Society. Credit and the Modern Corporate Economy.

Carruthers and Ariovich provide insights not only into how modern currency and credit markets work, but into why they sometimes fail to stabilize value or to ensure that credit is given only where credit is due. This lucid and engaging book should be required reading for students of economic sociology. Offers a fresh and uniquely sociological perspective on money and credit.

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Timely explanation and investigation of the social basis of our system of money and credit, what makes it work and why it can go wrong. Essential reading for upper-level students of economic sociology. For instance, a member may earn credit by doing childcare for one person and spend it later on carpentry with another person in the same network.

In LETS, unlike other local currencies , no scrip is issued, but rather transactions are recorded in a central location open to all members. As credit is issued by the network members, for the benefit of the members themselves, LETS are considered mutual credit systems.

It is estimated that over , businesses in the United States were involved in barter exchange activities in There are approximately commercial and corporate barter companies serving all parts of the world. There are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to start a barter exchange. Several major cities in the U. Both offer training and promote high ethical standards among their members. Moreover, each has created its own currency through which its member barter companies can trade. In Canada, barter continues to thrive. The largest b2b barter exchange is Tradebank , founded in P2P bartering has seen a renaissance in major Canadian cities through Bunz - built as a network of Facebook groups that went on to become a stand-alone bartering based app in January Within the first year, Bunz accumulated over 75, users [29] in over cities worldwide.

In the United States, the largest barter exchange and corporate trade group is International Monetary Systems , founded in , now with representation in various countries. Corporate barter focuses on larger transactions, which is different from a traditional, retail oriented barter exchange. Corporate barter exchanges typically use media and advertising as leverage for their larger transactions.

It entails the use of a currency unit called a "trade-credit". The trade-credit must not only be known and guaranteed, but also be valued in an amount the media and advertising could have been purchased for had the "client" bought it themselves contract to eliminate ambiguity and risk.

Soviet bilateral trade is occasionally called "barter trade", because although the purchases were denominated in U. Hess explained how he turned to barter in an op-ed for The New York Times in Barter exchanges are considered taxable revenue by the IRS and must be reported on a B form.

According to the IRS, "The fair market value of goods and services exchanged must be included in the income of both parties. Other countries, though, do not have the reporting requirement that the U. If one barters for a profit , one pays the appropriate tax; if one generates a loss in the transaction, they have a loss. Bartering for business is also taxed accordingly as business income or business expense.

Many barter exchanges require that one register as a business. Since the s, barter in some western market economies has been aided by exchanges which use alternative currencies based on the labour theory of value , and which are intended to prevent profit-taking by intermediaries. Examples include the Owenite socialists, the Cincinnati Time store , and more recently [ when? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Barter disambiguation. Hunting-gathering Pastoralism Nomadic pastoralism Shifting cultivation Moral economy Peasant economics.

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Collaborative consumption Gift economy International trade List of international trade topics Local exchange trading system Natural economy Private currency Property caretaker Quid pro quo Simple living Trading cards Time banking How barter works in Kanthalloor, India. Transactions of the Philological Society 8: Barter, Exchange and Value: Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of our Dreams. The false coin of our own dreams.

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As basic economic institutions, money and credit are easy to overlook when they and Laura Ariovich examine the social dimensions of money and credit at. Money and Credit: A Sociological Approach and millions of other books are . As basic economic institutions, money and creditare easy to overlook when they The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other.

The First 5, Years. Wright and Vincenzo Quadrini. Chapter 3, Section 1: Money and the Morality of Exchange. Barter is the new currency in collapsing Venezuela". Polanyi, Karl; et al.