Money carries multiple frames of value beyond its economic function

Evidence

Viviana A. Zelizer (1997), Bruce Carruthers (2010), Peter North (2007) and other sociologists and anthropologists of money have, over the past 30 years, sought to show that currencies are not simply unmediated expressions of the broader economic totality they represent and facilitate. Rather, a careful examination of money’s uses and meanings in the field of daily life reveals that they become carriers, transmitters and palimpsestual zones of mediation for multiple frames of value. Money is not only the disciplinary force of capital, materialized (though this it certainly is – see Caffentzis 2013; Cleaver 2000; Lapavitsas 1999); it can also function as a gift, as a means to negotiate social worth and as a medium of social intercourse. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 386

Categorization

• XREF: Zelizer’s intimate currency thesis connects to the reader’s financialization-of-culture project; also links to deWaard’s cultural argument about finance colonizing the everyday. — connects to: Financialised reasoning can colonise non-monetary measures like scores and percentages. — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 11; Economic transactions are embedded in complex moral relations, not just rational numbers — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 1043; Two dominant frames treat financial wealth as either real value or pure illusion — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 41 (+6 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes the social-studies-of-money framework countering the view of money as pure economic instrument.

Broader Connections

• Money serves transcendent death goals beyond rational economic exchange. #exemplifies (0.85) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 432
• Existential dread drives conspicuous consumption beyond rational calculation. #exemplifies (0.80) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 456
• Attention economy pits financialization against alternative forms of value #exemplifies (0.78)
• Financialization makes belief in value more central than ever #exemplifies (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 400
• Capital shapes human worlds beyond its economic operations and aims #exemplifies (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 152