Utopian Monies

Author(s):  
Nigel Dodd

Since the 2008 global financial crisis, there has been an explosion of interest in alternative and complementary currencies, by academics, governments, practitioners, and activists who are interested in the social and political possibilities generated by money's myriad forms; and by everyday users of money who are coming face-to-face with new forms of payment such as Apple Pay and PayPal, novel modes of financing such as crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending, and new digital currencies such as Bitcoin. Much of this interest has sought to reverse the conventional wisdom that money is a socially corrosive force. This chapter offers a survey and discussion of some of the most important developments in this field and argues that they all help to confirm the value and continuing relevance of Zelizer's pathbreaking analysis of the social meaning of money and, more recently, her work on the role of monetary media in the formation of circuits of commerce.

Author(s):  
Nina Bandelj ◽  
Christoffer J. P. Zoeller

This chapter reviews the literature on cognition and social meaning in economic sociology, with special attention to the case of money. The first part discusses subfields related to economic sociology that have carved space for attention to the role of cognitive processes, or cognitive embeddedness, including the institutional logics, conceptions of control, and classification/categorization perspectives. The second part takes up one central economic object, money, to compare and contrast the behavioral economics perspective on mental accounting with the research on the social meaning of money and relational work, which emphasizes how money’s multiple meanings and forms influence the negotiation of social-economic relations.


2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (01-02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anis Ur Rehman ◽  
Yasir Arafat Elahi ◽  
Sushma .

India has recently emerged as a major political and economic power in the world. The financial crisis that engulfed the world in 2008 needed developing countries like India to lead the rescue and recovery, instead of G7 westerns countries who dealt with such crisis in the past. Recently, discussions and negotiations are going amongst G20 countries regarding a new global financial architecture (G-20 Summit, 2008). The outcome will affect the relevant industries in India and hence it is a public interest issue for the actuarial profession in the country. Increased and more intrusive and costly regulations and red tapes are likely to be a part of the new deal (Economic Survey 2009-10). The objective of this paper is to study the perception of higher level authorities in Insurance sector regarding the role of regulator in minimizing the impact of global financial crisis. The primary data has been collected from 200 authorities in insurance industry. The data has been analyzed with statistical tools like MS-Excel. On the basis of the findings, various measures and policy recommendations for insurers have been suggested to minimize the impact of crisis.


1989 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Wherry

This article extends both Viviana Zelizer's discussion of the social meaning of money and Charles Smith's proposal that pricing is a definitional practice to the under-theorized realm of the social meanings generated in the pricing system. Individuals are attributed with calculating or not calculating whether an object or service is “worth” its price, but these attributions differ according to the individual's social location as being near to or far from a societal reference point rather than by the inherent qualities of the object or service purchased. Prices offer seemingly objective (quantitative) proof of the individual's “logic of appropriateness”—in other words, people like that pay prices such as those. This article sketches a preliminary but nonexhaustive typology of the social characterizations of individuals within the pricing system; these ideal types—the fool, the faithful, the frugal, and the frivolous—and their components offer a systematic approach to understanding prices as embedded in and constituents of social meaning systems.


Author(s):  
Huck-ju Kwon

One of the biggest challenges for developing a new more productivist social policy approach has been the apparent absence of a new, post-neoliberal, economic model even after the global financial crisis. This chapter explores the social policy implications of the official ‘pragmatism’ of the new economic model with its ‘institutionalist’ emphases on nation states finding what works best in their own contexts rather than looking to the one size fits all approach of recent decades.


Author(s):  
Alev Dilek Aydin

This study aims to assess the role of accounting and auditing in the recent financial crisis. After each crisis, there have been serious discussions concerning the reasons behind those crises. However, no consensus has yet been achieved until now. In this context, the analysis of the relationships among financial crisis, accounting, and auditing is of utmost importance in better evaluating the structural reasons behind the crisis. There are several points that this chapter aims to analyze to indicate the contributions of accounting and auditing to the recent global financial crisis. These points are: impacts of disregarding the main principles of accounting, the wide use of fair value accounting over cost-based accounting, incorrect and misleading financial and audit reports, applications of creative accounting, and lack of transparency and weaknesses of the auditing process. The debates generally concentrate on the use of fair value (mark-to-market) accounting in the financial reports as opposed to the historical cost method. It should be emphasized that accounting is very important as a key mechanism of market economies, because of its crucial role in the functioning of the markets in accordance with the public interest. The chapter concludes with several suggestions by taking the fact into consideration that accounting and auditing systems should be revised for the better protection of interests of the third parties such as investors, potential investors, and the state.


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