The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies

by Nigel Dodd (Author), Viviana A. Zelizer (Author)

New
Paperback
2017
$24.01

A dollar is a dollar--or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporating funds into webs of friendship and family relations, and otherwise varying the process by which spending and saving takes place. Zelizer concentrates on domestic transactions, bestowals of gifts and charitable donations in order to show how individuals, families, governments, and businesses have all prescribed social meaning to money in ways previously unimagined.

Synopsis

A dollar is a dollar--or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporating funds into webs of friendship and family relations, and otherwise varying the process by which spending and saving takes place. Zelizer concentrates on domestic transactions, bestowals of gifts and charitable donations in order to show how individuals, families, governments, and businesses have all prescribed social meaning to money in ways previously unimagined.

$24.01

Save:$3.67 (13%)

Quantity

2 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Edition: Revised
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 02 Jun 2017
ISBN 10: 0691176035
ISBN 13: 9780691176031

Media Reviews

Winner of the 1996 Culture Section Book Award, American Sociological Association Interesting and informative... Money is a medium of exchange. But that is only the beginning. --John Kenneth Galbraith, New York Times Book Review Zelizer's book is one of the richest and most thoughtful investigations of [money's] weirdness, examining in detail how money works in the real world, how we try to manage and control it, why we freely give it away in some circumstances--think, for instance, of tipping and how money shapes the relationships we have with one another. --James Surowiecki, GQ Magazine Zelizer has accomplished a rarity, writing a genuinely original book. --Randall Collins, Society

Author Bio

Viviana A. Zelizer is the Lloyd Cotsen '50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of The Purchase of Intimacy, Pricing the Priceless Child, Economic Lives and Morals and Markets