Money as a social relation beyond the state: a contribution to the institutionalist approach based on the Argentinian trueque

Hadrien Saiag ()
Additional contact information
Hadrien Saiag: IIAC - Institut interdisciplinaire d'anthropologie du contemporain - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper provides a contribution to the institutionalist approach to money through ethnographic research carried out in two local currency systems in Argentina (known as trueque). It argues that Argentinian local currencies must be considered as monies in their own right even if they differ from state and bank issued currencies, because they can be understood as systems of evaluation and settlement of debts denominated in a specific unit of account (the crédito). Money is said to be an ambivalent social relation because in the two cases studied it mediates very different dynamics, exacerbating inequality in one context and promoting collective emancipation in another. This difference is due to the kind of political communities that the crédito tends to forge. In both Rosario and Poriajhu, the political community is defined by a set of values that legitimizes ongoing monetary practices and institutions rather the State's coercion.

Keywords: money; debt; institutionalist approach; money plurality; Argentina (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hme and nep-mon
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02343447v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in British Journal of Sociology, 2019, 70 (3), pp.969-996. ⟨10.1111/1468-4446.12610⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02343447v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02343447

DOI: 10.1111/1468-4446.12610

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().