Technology of money

Douglas R. Holmes

Chapter 1 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 175-179 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Monetary regimes are among the most complex and pervasive symbolic systems we know of and yet they are poorly understood by anthropologists. A tiny group of current and former government officials, working primarily within central banks, have designed a global system to regulate the availability of money and credit to the financial system and the economy at large, a regime which invites or demands anthropological scrutiny. Built into the design of the contemporary monetary regime are a series of communicative protocols by which the behavior of prices unfolds as a function of language. Within this framework, the value of money is anchored to the ephemera of expectations, that is to the bewildering realms of anticipation, expectancy, and planning that impel or impede economic action prospectively. Central banks thus influence the countless appraisals of value animating our lives across a field of communicative action which anthropologists can enter ethnographically.

Keywords: Monetary policy; Central banking; Inflation-targeting; Agentive publics; Expectations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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