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.

Preface ixAcknowledgments xi
Introduction Advancing Money Talks 1
Nina Bandelj, Frederick F. Wherry, and Viviana A. Zelizer
PART I BEYOND FUNGIBILITY
1 Economics and the Social Meaning of Money 25
Jonathan Morduch
2 Morals and Emotions of Money 39
Nina Bandelj, Tyler Boston, Julia Elyachar, Julie Kim, Michael McBride, Zaibu Tufail, and James
Owen Weatherall
3 How Relational Accounting Matters 57
Frederick F. Wherry
PART II BEYOND SPECIAL MONIES
4 The Social Meaning of Credit, Value, and Finance 73
Bruce G. Carruthers
5 From Industrial Money to Generalized Capitalization 89
Simone Polillo
PART III CREATING MONEY
6 The Constitutional Approach to Money: Monetary Design and the Production of the Modern World 109
Christine Desan
7 The Market Mirage 131
David Singh Grewal
8 The Macro-Social Meaning of Money: From Territorial Currencies to Global Money 145
Eric Helleiner
PART IV CONTESTED MONEY
9 Money and Emotion: Win-Win Bargains, Win-Lose Contexts, and the Emotional Labor of Commercial Surrogates 161
Arlie Hochschild
10 Paid to Donate: Egg Donors, Sperm Donors, and Gendered Experiences of Bodily Commodification 171
Rene Almeling
11 Money and Family Relationships: The Biography of Transnational Money 184
Supriya Singh
PART V MONEY FUTURES
12 Money Talks, Plastic Money Tattles: The New Sociability of Money 201
Alya Guseva and Akos Rona-Tas
13 Blockchains Are a Diamond's Best Friend:
Zelizer for the Bitcoin Moment 215
Bill Maurer
14 Utopian Monies: Complementary Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Social Life of Money 230
Nigel Dodd
Selected References on the Social Scientific Study of Money 249
Contributor Biographies 255
Index 261