Currency and culture: elements for an institutional approach to money

This article aims at demonstrating the institutional character of money and atexamining the necessary conditions to preserve it as a social operator. Money is a social institutionbecause it is central to the maintenance of social practices necessary for the creationof productive wealth and therefore for the material reproduction of modem capitalist economies.Moreover, as the productive circuit is one of the spheres of those economies in whichprivate “passions” and social “interests” can be reconciled, money is presented as an elementof social cohesion. It is argued, however, that only if trust in the maintenance of the “unityof the functions of money” endures can money be preserved as a social institution. Trust, insum, is shown to emerge from a cognitive process embedded in specific cultural patterns,whereby information is generated, passed on and reinforced, gradually engendering habitsand conventions to be followed by economic agents. JEL Classification: E41; E42; B52.