Thirteenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

Two dominant conceptualizations of money have emerged in the social sciences. The orthodox view holds that money is primarily a medium of exchange and that physical money objects reflect the value of actual commodities. In contrast, heterodox work has emphasized the unit of account feature of money which holds that physical money objects are epiphenomenal to money’s fundamental nature as a unit of account. This paper presents a third alternative: that the value of money is an effect of the sociotechnical system that mediates monetary relationships between human beings. In focusing on the sociotechnics of money, it examines how money can be deployed to do forge social relationships through an examination of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS). LETS are community exchange networks in operation globally that provide information on goods and services available in a community and record transactions of members exchanging those goods and services in a unit of account separate from state-issued money. The paper describes the material infrastructure used by a pioneering LETS that operated in the 1980s in British Columbia to show how values were mediated through an elaborate technological infrastructure, consisting of an early desktop computer, a telephone answering machine, log books, and monthly statements and classified ads mailed to each member of the LETS network. It concludes by asserting that a material-semiotic approach that emphasizes the sociotechnics of money resolves the shortcomings of both the medium of exchange and unit of account theories of money.