The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies - (Original Edition) - Softcover

Zelizer, Viviana A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691048215 ISBN 13: 9780691048215

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1997

Synopsis

A dollar is a dollar--or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing social relations to cold, hard cash. Arguing against this conventional wisdom, Viviana Zelizer, a distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author, shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporating funds into webs of friendship and family relations, and otherwise varying the process by which spending and saving takes place.

About this title

From the Publisher:

A distinguished social scientist and prizewinning author reveals in fascinating detail what money really does for--and to--us.

From the Back Cover:

"Zelizer has a genius for detecting hidden order in everyday practices.... Gently but firmly she uses her discoveries to overturn widespread beliefs in the power of money to corrupt, standardize, and depersonalize social ties. Best of all, she writes of these complex matters with grace, lucidity, wit, and humanity."--Charles Tilly, Columbia University

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0691048215
• ISBN 13: 9780691048215
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304