Money in an Unequal World: Keith Hart and His Memory Bank - Softcover

Hart, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587990970 ISBN 13: 9781587990977

Publisher: Texere, 2001

Synopsis

Hart believes that humanity stands on the threshold of a new era in which there will be a pressing need to develop, conceptually and in practice, an awareness of the common problems facing world society as a whole. We have scarcely begun to contemplate how to establish and maintain the social, technological and cultural infrastructures we will need to survive in the 21st century. In a polarized world characterized by staggering economic inequalities, recent advances in technology offer radical possibilities for the development of human freedom and equality. Hart?s particular focus in this book is the Internet, which he argues holds the potential for a re-personalization of economic relations. In this world, new means of exchange could be harnessed to the ends of a truer economic democracy. Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. Hart, an anthropologist by training, offers a new view on the interaction between money, capitalism, and culture ? now, in the future, and throughout history. The many important strands of thought and experience in this book will challenge established views from all quarters of economic, political, and social thought.

About this title

Review:

Money in an Unequal World is a distinctly individualized exploration of the way currency has become a universal source of "social memory," and what this means in a global society now riding the latest wave of its transformation from "metallic objects to paper notes to electronic digits." Keith Hart, a teacher and social anthropologist, offers draws on a background that combines such eclectic pursuits as academics, entrepreneurship, and gambling. Also drawing upon philosophers of the "democratic revolution" like Locke, Kant, Marx, and Gandhi, he tackles this abstract tale by examining "the conjuncture of money and machines that makes our phase of economic history capitalist" and investigating "money and markets from a humanistic point of view." Inviting readers to discover the story in their own way--even recommending that one "dip into the argument at random, allowing your eye to rest where it finds fertile ground (and move on if it does not)"--Hart meanders in a basically linear and highly entertaining fashion from the struggle against the agrarian hierarchy to the collapse of Stalinism and the rise of the Web. Ultimately, he concludes that changes apparent today actually provide an unprecedented opportunity to improve the world using money and markets as instruments of "economic democracy." His argument is provocative and illuminating. --Howard Rothman

About the Author:

Keith Hart is an anthropologist who introduced to economics the concept of the informal economy. Hart has taught in a number of universities on both sides of the Atlantic, especially at Cambridge. There he was the Director of the African Studies Center and received the first ever teaching prize in the humanities and social sciences. He has carried out research in Ghana, the Caribbean and South Africa and has worked as a journalist, consultant and gambler. He founded Prickly Pear Press and the amateur anthropological association. He now holds a research post at the University of Aberdeen and lives in Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texere
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1587990970
• ISBN 13: 9781587990977
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320