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The world of money is being transformed as households and organizations face changing economies and new currencies and payment systems like Bitcoin and Apple Pay gain ground. What is money, and how do we make sense of it? Money Talks is the first book to offer a wide range of alternative and unexpected explanations of how social relations, emotions, moral concerns, and institutions shape how we create, mark, and use money. This collection brings together a stellar group of international experts from multiple disciplines--sociology, economics, history, law, anthropology, political science, and philosophy--to propose fresh explanations for money's origins, uses, effects, and future. Money Talks explores five key questions: How do social relationships, emotions, and morals shape how people account for and use their money? How do corporations infuse social meaning into their financing and investment practices? What are the historical, political, and social foundations of currencies? When does money become contested, and are there things money shouldn't buy? What is the impact of the new twenty-first-century currencies on our social relations? At a time of growing concern over financial inequality, Money Talks overturns conventional views about money by revealing its profound social potential.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Advancing Money Talks
• PART I BEYOND FUNGIBILITY
  • CHAPTER 1 Economics and the Social Meaning of Money
  • CHAPTER 2 Morals and Emotions of Money
  • CHAPTER 3 How Relational Accounting Matters
• PART II BEYOND SPECIAL MONIES
  • CHAPTER 4 The Social Meaning of Credit, Value, and Finance
  • CHAPTER 5 From Industrial Money to Generalized Capitalization
• PART III CREATING MONEY
  • CHAPTER 6 The Constitutional Approach to Money: Monetary Design and the Production of the Modern World
  • CHAPTER 7 The Market Mirage
  • CHAPTER 8 The Macro-Social Meaning of Money: From Territorial Currencies to Global Money
• PART IV CONTESTED MONEY
  • CHAPTER 9 Money and Emotion: Win-Win Bargains, Win-Lose Contexts, and the Emotional Labor of Commercial Surrogates
  • CHAPTER 10 Paid to Donate: Egg Donors, Sperm Donors, and Gendered Experiences of Bodily Commodification
  • CHAPTER 11 Money and Family Relationships: The Biography of Transnational Money
• PART V MONEY FUTURES
  • CHAPTER 12 Money Talks, Plastic Money Tattles: The New Sociability of Money
  • CHAPTER 13 Blockchains Are a Diamond’s Best Friend: Zelizer for the Bitcoin Moment
  • CHAPTER 14 Utopian Monies: Complementary Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Social Life of Money
• Selected References on the Social Scientific Study of Money
• Contributor Biographies
• Index