Tracing money: from personal history to abstract economics

Ann E. Davis

Chapter 6 in The Elgar Companion to Women and Heterodox Economics, 2025, pp 93-106 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The childhood poverty of my parents, and their struggles for economic well-being, alerted me early to the importance of the economy. As a graduate student I studied mainstream economics as well as heterodox economics, wanting to learn ‘both sides.’ Institutionalist approaches seemed, to me, the most promising to understand the human dimensions of the economy, as well as the social and psychological factors. My research focus has gravitated to money, and the ways in which this ‘symbol’ affects the structure of the economy and its operation. My personal history contrasts with the abstraction of money, which seems impersonal and to have its own agency. To analyse money, I draw upon heterodox institutionalists like Karl Polanyi, John R. Commons, and Karl Marx, as well as political and economic historians. My personal history also has led to my questioning of the subject's disappearance into economic abstractions, and to seek restoration of human agency instead of ‘the economy.’

Keywords: Abstractions; Commodity; Institutions; Money; Public; Private Divide; Value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035329304
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