#The Memory Bank RSS Feed The Memory Bank » 1. Money in the Making of
          + 1. Money in the Making of Humanity
          + 3. Capitalism: Making Money with Money
          + 6. The Changing Character of Money
          + 7. The Future of Money and the Market
          + Money: One Anthropologist’s View
          + Money in an Unequal World
          + Intangible Money Matters
          + Money in an Unequal World; LETS and Me
1. Money in the Making of Humanity
   Ours is an age of money. Half the world worships money and the other
   half thinks of it as the root of all evil. In either case, money makes
   goods and services as equals. The problem is that markets use money:
   The unequal face of the age of money is “capitalism”; and the principal
   development is only two centuries old. The combination of money and
   Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. We have to find ways
   forms of money from the capitalist institutions which currently define
   them. I believe that, instead of taking money to be something scarce
   Money would then become multiple sources of personal credit, building
   repersonalisation of the economy is cheap information. Money was
   exchange employing money forms which reflect our individuality, so that
   money may be more meaningful to each of us as a means of participating
   stark contrast to state-made money in the 20th century, where citizens
   places to store money. Money today takes the principal form of
   exchanging money for money in forms increasingly separated from the
   objects by means of money (markets) and the exchange of meanings
   through words and signs (language) is becoming blurred. Money is
   becoming information and information money. This provides us with an
   opportunity to reassess the positive relationship of money to culture
   and civilisation. For the memory bank of this title is money itself. I
   association between money and collective memory. The formation of a
   present age of money as a possible prelude to the formation of a world
   justice for all could be a realistic goal and money and markets would
   addressing the problems with which the age of money confronts us.
   On money, machines and the market
   And that economy will operate with money at its heart, since buying and
   the system of money-making in which nation-states preside over the
   it is by no means the only one. Money and markets allow for a widening
   money, time and energy, for example; and few of us would rather be
   life. Rather than be overwhelmed by money as an external object of
   subjectively through it. Money would then be seen as the preserve of
   markets and money. After a century and a half when machine production
   function of impersonal money, people can now participate in markets of
   money, electronic payment systems and customised markets. Virtual
   Democratising access to money is indispensable to progress. Although
   electronic money, interest-free savings and loan schemes, closed
   we will look on money as one of many instruments invented by people to
   in the world. There are those, of course, who would consider money and
   two faces of money, capitalism and markets, the institutions which
   express the unequal reality and the potential equality of money. In
   order and disorder underlying human attempts to make money more
   Markets require money and people with lots of money exercise
   variant of market economy in which the owners of big money control, for
   between “making money with money”, the sparsest definition of
   conjuncture of money and machines which makes our phase of economic
   exploration of money and markets from a humanist point of view. The
   sequence of chapters is as follows: the machine revolution; money in
   the market; the history of money considered as itself; and finally the
   goods, money and information is having a cumulative impact on landed
   this chapter “Money in the making of humanity”.
   A “bank” is a place where things of value, usually money, are stored
   “the memory bank” is money, but it is also this book itself, which was
   readers. Money provides a useful starting point and central focus for
   There are good reasons for approaching money as a memory bank in this
   cultures which take their word for coinage from them, money was at
   The idea of money as a source of social memory was also crucial for
   believed that money launched humanity from the state of nature onto the
   perishable products, the scope for property was restricted. Money, by
   intergenerational transmission of inequality. For Locke then, money was
   In our own day, we have seen money transformed from metallic objects to
   burglar who claims not to enjoy robbing banks any more. The money
   digitalised information. [8] [xvii] Money in this form is little more
   money, “capitalists”, today the form of that domination has moved on to
   what I call virtual capitalism. This is a phase of “making money with
   money” in which the money circuit is increasingly detached from real
   long-distance exchange is mainly of money for money in a bewildering
   revolution provides the most compelling reason for locating money in
   In the later chapters of this book, I suggest that money will
   able to make money for our personal and shared purposes. In the context
   of more democratic access to money, it will become clearer that its
   that we choose to calculate. We will make money in many different ways
   Seen in this light, money and language are the chief cultural
   whose formation this book points, through its discourse on money,
   money, drawing on all my experience, both professional and otherwise.
   social anthropology, I had chosen the topic of money. [10] [xix] My own
   life-long interest in money had taken many forms inside and outside the
   and a general obsession with prices and quantification. Money provided
   Philosophy of Money. [xxviii]
   drawn extensively on the example of two more recent writers on money,
   edge of water 2. A business establishment in which money is kept 3. A
   Words and Civil Government: John Locke’s philosophy of money,
   [xxix] Georg Simmel The Philosophy of Money, Routledge, London,1978
   (1900); J.M. Keynes A Treatise on Money (2 vols), Macmillan, London,
       The two great memory banks are language and money. Exchange of
       meanings through language and of objects through money are now
          + The anthropology of money and finance: from ethnography to
          + Money