Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Redesigning Money to Curb Globalization: Can We Domesticate the Root of All Evil?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Anthropology of Sustainability

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability ((PSAS))

  • 3325 Accesses

Abstract

Modern money is a peculiar sign system in several respects. Its lack of connection to any conceivable material referent, such as gold or energy, has been much deplored over the course of history. Modern, neoclassical economics has abandoned the concerns of classical political economy with the material substance as well as the morality of exchange. The chapter argues that a sustainable, just, and resilient economy will require the establishment of a complementary currency that distinguishes between values pertaining to local human survival, on the one hand, and the exchange values in which financial institutions speculate, on the other.

This chapter overlaps with texts included in my book Global Magic: Technologies of Appropriation from Ancient Rome to Wall Street (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

eBook
USD 19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 27.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Blanc, J., ed. 2012. Thirty Years of Community and Complementary Currencies: A Review of Impacts, Potential and Challenges. Special issue of International Journal of Community Currency Research 16.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bloch, M., and J. Parry. 1989. Introduction: Money and the Morality of Exchange. In Money and the Morality of Exchange, ed. J. Parry and M. Bloch, 1–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bohannan, P. 1955. Some Principles of Exchange and Investment Among the Tiv. American Anthropologist 57: 60–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brennan, T. 2003. Globalization and its Terrors: Daily Life in the West. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Corbridge, S., R. Martin, and N. Thrift, eds. 1994. Money, Power and Space. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Daly, H.E. 1977. Steady-State Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.

    Google Scholar 

  • de Saussure, F. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Lausanne: Payot.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dittmer, K. 2013. Local Currencies for Purposive Degrowth? A Quality Check of Some Proposals for Changing Money-as-usual. Journal of Cleaner Production 54: 3–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dobson, R.V.G. 1993. Bringing the Economy Home from the Market. Montreal: Black Rose Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Douthwaite, R. 1999. The Ecology of Money. Cambridge: Green Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumont, L. 1977. From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster, J.B., B. Clark, and R. York. 2010. The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth. New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Georgescu-Roegen, N. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Graeber, D. 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York: Melville House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hart, K. 2000. Money in an Unequal World. New York: Texere.

    Google Scholar 

  • Harvey, D. 2010. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heilbroner, R. 1999[1953]. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. London: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirschman, A.O. 1977. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoffmeyer, J. 1996. Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hornborg, A. 2001. Vital Signs: An Ecosemiotic Perspective on the Human Ecology of Amazonia. Sign Systems Studies 29 (1): 121–152.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2006. Footprints in the Cotton Fields: The Industrial Revolution as Time-Space Appropriation and Environmental Load Displacement. Ecological Economics 59 (1): 74–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inikori, J.E. 1989. Slavery and the Revolution in Cotton Textile Production in England. Social Science History 13 (4): 343–379.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2002. Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England: A Study of International Trade and Economic Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Klein, N. 2014. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Allen Lane.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lietaer, B. 2001. The Future of Money: A New Way to Create Wealth, Work, and a Wiser World. London: Century.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lietaer, B., and J. Dunne. 2013. Rethinking Money: How New Currencies Turn Scarcity into Prosperity. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lipson, D. 2011. Is the Great Recession only the beginning? Economic contraction in an age of fossil fuel depletion and ecological limits to growth. New Political Science 33 (4): 555–575.

    Google Scholar 

  • M’Gonigle, R.M. 1999. Ecological Economics and Political Ecology: Towards a Necessary Synthesis. Ecological Economics 28: 11–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Macfarlane, A. 1985. The Root of all Evil. In The Anthropology of Evil, ed. D. Parkin, 57–76. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • McNally, D. 2014. The Blood of the Commonwealth: War, the State, and the Making of World Money. Historical Materialism 22 (2): 3–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell, T. 2009. Carbon Democracy. Economy and Society 38 (3): 399–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • North, P. 2007. Money and Liberation: The Micropolitics of Alternative Currency Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nöth, W. 1998. Ecosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies 26: 332–343.

    Google Scholar 

  • Parry, J., and M. Bloch, eds. 1989. Money and the Morality of Exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C.S. 1931–1958. Collected Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Polanyi, K. 1957[1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, W.R. 1987. Money and Liberty in Modern Europe: A Critique of Historical Understanding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rotman, B. 1987. Signifying Nothing: The Semiotics of Zero. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Schumacher, E.F. 1973. Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. London: Abacus.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sebeok, T.A., and J. Umiker-Sebeok, eds. 1992. Biosemiotics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sen, A. 1987. On Ethics and Economics. Oxford: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simmel, G. 1990[1907]. The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • von Uexküll, J. 1982[1940]. The Theory of Meaning. Semiotica 42: 25–82.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weatherford, J. 1997. The History of Money: From Sandstone to Cyberspace. New York: Three Rivers Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Ecology Division, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

    Alf Hornborg

Authors
  1. Alf Hornborg
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alf Hornborg .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Marc Brightman

  2. Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Jerome Lewis

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Hornborg, A. (2017). Redesigning Money to Curb Globalization: Can We Domesticate the Root of All Evil?. In: Brightman, M., Lewis, J. (eds) The Anthropology of Sustainability. Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56636-2_17

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56636-2_17

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-56635-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-56636-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation