Davis - Money as a social institution : the institutional development of capitalism

Money as a Social Institution

Money is usually understood as a valuable object, the value of which is attributed to it by its users and which other users recognize. It serves to link disparate institutions, providing a disguised whole and prime tool for the invisible hand of the market.

This book offers an interpretation of money as a social institution. Money provides the link between the household and the firm, the worker and his product, making that very division seem natural and money as imminently practical. Money as a Social Institution begins in the medieval period and traces the evolution of money alongside consequent implications for the changing models of the corporation and the state. This is then followed with double-entry accounting as a tool of long-distance merchants and bankers, then the monitoring of the process of production by professional corporate managers. Davis provides a framework of analysis for examining money historically, beyond the operation of those particular institutions, which includes the possibility of conceptualizing and organizing the world differently.

This volume is of great importance to academics and students who are interested in economic history and history of economic thought, as well as international political economics and critique of political economy.

Ann E. Davis is Associate Professor of Economics at Marist College, USA. She serves as the Chair of the Department of Economics, Accounting, and Finance, and was the founding director of the Marist College Bureau of Economic Research, 19902005. She was the Director of the National Endowment for Humanities Summer Institute on the Meanings of Property, June 2014, and is the author of The Evolution of the Property Relation, 2015.

For a full list of titles in this series please visit www.routledge.com/books/series/SE0345

223 New Financial Ethics

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Aloy Soppe

224 The Political Economy of Trade Finance

Export Credit Agencies, the Paris Club and the IMF

Pamela Blackmon

225 The Global Free Trade Error

The Infeasibility of Ricardos Comparative Advantage Theory

Rom Baiman

226 Inequality in Financial Capitalism

Pasquale Tridico

227 The Political Economy of Emerging Markets

Edited by Richard Westra

228 The Social Construction of Rationality

Policy Debates and the Power of Good Reasons

Onno Bouwmeester

229 Varieties of Alternative Economic Systems

Practical Utopias for an Age of Global Crisis and Austerity

Edited by Richard Westra, Robert Albritton and Seongjin Jeong

230 Money as a Social Institution

The Institutional Development of Capitalism

Ann E. Davis

Money as a Social Institution

The Institutional Development of Capitalism

Ann E. Davis

First edition published 2017
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2017 Ann E. Davis

The right of Ann E. Davis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Davis, Ann E., 1947- author.
Title: Money as a social institution : the institutional development of capitalism / Ann E. Davis.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000587| ISBN 9781138945869 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315671154 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: MoneySocial aspects. | Social institutions. | Capitalism.
Classification: LCC HG220.A2 D39 2017 | DDC 332.4dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000587

ISBN: 978-1-138-94586-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67115-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by DiacriTech

Money is usually understood as a valuable object. On the contrary, the contention defended here is that money is a symbol utilized by a sovereign nation to enforce discipline for the achievement of national priorities. The value of money is attributed to it by its users, which other users recognize.

In other words, this book offers an interpretation of money as a social institution. The method is historical institutionalism, which makes use of linguistic statements, related institutions, and the associated expertise. This institutional complex evolves historically, with changing meanings over time.

This particular application to the concept of money makes use of recent contributions to the linguistic turn by such philosophers as John Searle. That is, money is a form of symbolic communication, with explicit documentation and implicit meanings. Second, money relates to the discipline of modern institutions, an analysis drawing upon Foucaults critique of modernity and Marxs critique of political economy. Third, money relates to the history of the state, drawing upon historians of the fiscal/military state such as Brewer, Tilly, and Schumpeter. Legitimacy and expertise also relate to the strength of the state, drawing upon the work of Habermas and Poovey. Finally, the persistence of core institutions like the corporation draws upon the analysis of John Padgett and John Powell, as well as Brian Arthur and Harold Berman.

The begins with a discussion of these three distinctive characteristics of money: its symbolic nature, disciplinary aspects, and relation to sovereignty. The key theorists of moneyMarx, Keynes, and Simmelare discussed and their major insights compared. The role of the individual is explored in the context of such a complex social institution, which improbably seems to empower solitary agents.

The considers the social theorists John Searle and Michel Foucault and provides a dialogue between them regarding the contradictory aspects of money. This dialogue helps to further develop the method of historical institutionalism in relation to money, drawing insights from both.

The public/private divide, are examined to better understand how the role of labor is rendered relatively invisible.

The provides a long-term history of money in the context of related institutional changes. This chapter begins with coin, the prototype of money, but emphasizes the social and institutional nature of the use and interpretation of coin. The widening use of money in long-distance trade provides a context for examining the development of the monetary genres and the changing structure of the corporation as a vehicle for various types of monetary exchanges.