The Social Life of Money

By Shaun Balderson
The 'Social Life of Money' presents a viewpoint that diverges from the traditional perspective of money. This traditional perspective is one that suggests money is solely some impersonal technical tool, a medium of exchange and a store of value. Here,  money is something that came about because the system of barter on any medium to large scale is impractical, inefficient and rife with logistical difficulties. 

In contrast to this traditional perspective, the social life of money suggests this traditional viewpoint is too narrow, lacks sufficient evidence,  but worse, constrains how we view the world, how we understand the way world works and how we might imagine a better world. 

I found this text interesting, along with the attached lecture he gave at LSE, because of the ways in which he presents the various narratives concerning what money is (and how what we know as money was developed) along with the social life, values and institutions, that sustain it. After a module in political anthropology last year and reading David Graeber's book on the history of debt, some of these arguments are quite similar to what I have come across before, in terms of the various narratives of how money, in various societies,  came about. 

From what I understand, (and this was pulled mainly out of the lecture) one area of the social life of money relates to trust. In this way,  money and the contemporary monetary system does not just need trust-based relationships between individuals, the government and financial institutions, but also between every member of a society.  Trust is crucial, and when trust collapses, so does money and the monetary system. What Dodd suggests, is that in recent years, through poor responses to financial crisis, 'a system that allows immensely profitable banks to remain solvent at the publics expense,' the development of bitcoin, and more, that we are starting to see trust in money and the social life of money eroding.