In keeping with the psychoanalytical tradition, this essay is an interpretation of a dream, or rather a series of answers to questions posed in a dream about the meanings of money. The answers touch on the periods in which the author has lived. What was the attitude towards money in the Soviet Union? How did it change during perestroika? What happened with the advent of capitalism? To understan…
This essay sketches out a psychoanalytic contribution to historical and anthropological discussions about the nature of money. Setting out from an observation by Jean-Joseph Goux, according to which the genealogy of the Oedipus complex is analogous to the genealogy of money form ('universal equivalent') in Marx, I ask how the Freudian notion of the father might illuminate our understanding of m…
We conducted 3 studies to investigate the effect of money priming on consumers' need for uniqueness. In Study 1, we found that when choosing products, consumers who were primed with money had a stronger need for counterconformity, compared to those who were not. In Study 2, we found that the meaning of money linked to the amount of money moderated the effect of money concept on consumers' choic…
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a key component of the United States’ economic policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic crisis, offering forgivable loans to small businesses to aid them in retaining their employees. In this article, we theorize and examine the PPP as a “public money,” performing a mixedmethods analysis of news articles covering the PP…
Adding to the issues of cognitive economics (Cortes and Londono IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science 43(2): 178-184, 2009) and the social psychology of "shadow economics" (Salvatore et al. IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science 43(2), 2009), the carrier of economic exchanges, money, plays a key role in children's socialization in different societies. Money given to…
Many developing countries provide conditional cash transfers (CCTs) for their poorest families. In the Philippines, CCT use has expanded rapidly such that in five years the amount of transfers increased by 3,300%, with PHP34 billion (US$801 million (2)) disbursed in 2013. This expansion of deliveries has complicated government logistics. In an effort to reach the poor in all areas of the countr…
This research examines the interplay between social networks and mobile money remittances in Western Kenya. Research was conducted in Kenya's Bungoma and Trans-Nzoia counties in 2012, 2013, and 2014, involving 12 family networks of between 8-70 people. Using small and frequent digital money transfers, relatives provide for household and emergency needs, contribute to ceremonies, and help pay sc…
Money has been called the human artifact that confirms the impossibility of disentangling the cultural and the symbolic from the economic. The terms of that entanglement are richly and rewardingly explored in this issue's articles by Helleiner, Curruthers and Espeland, and Siegel. The author assesses the many contributions made by these three articles. The author also considers how ideas about …
Modern money creates, transforms, transports, and possesses meaning by virtue of how it is used. This article devises a framework for the systematic study of monetary meaning. In particular, monetary meanings depend on the flow of money (both its proximate source and future direction) and on who promulgates or issues it. Meanings also derive from how money's use and flow are restricted and on m…