The Social Meaning Of Money [Paperback]

Viviana A. Zelizer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 1995

A distinguished social scientist shows what money really does for us—and to us. The book describes how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in ways that baffle market theorists, incorporating funds into webs of friendship and family relations, and otherwise differentiating the process by which spending and saving takes place.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From Karl Marx to Robert Bellah, money has been conceived of as a homogeneous, impersonal instrument that replaces personal associations with purely calculative ties. But the focus of such thinkers on money as a market medium is too narrow, declares Zelizer, chair of sociology at Princeton, who defines money as a social medium shaped by networks of personal relations. Concentrating on domestic transactions, bestowals of gifts and charitable donations in the U.S. between 1870 and 1930, this rigorous study argues that families, individuals, businesses and governments reshaped money into a personalized vehicle by earmaking specific funds and by inventing currencies ranging from housekeeping allowances, "pin money" and gift certificates to tips, bonuses, Christmas club savings accounts and food stamps. Zelizer draws on court cases, immigrants' memoirs, etiquette books, novels, plays, vaudevilles, women's magazines, advertisements and popular household manuals to capture the "social hues" of money and the meanings we invest in our hard-earned cash.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Zelizer, noted sociologist and author (Pricing the Priceless Child, LJ 5/1/85), has written a book about the "fungibility" (interchangeability) of money. No dry economic tome, this work betrays the author's sociological interest. She wants to know how people spend their money and what they accomplish with it. She explores "fundamental transformations [of] money in the United States between the 1870s and the 1930s," looking primarily "at domestic, gift and charitable monies." By carefully examining various strata of society-rich, middle class, poor-and dissecting their spending patterns, the author reveals the myriad currencies that actually exist in our culture. As she points out, the more we know about how people used money in the past, the better we can understand how people will use it today and in the future. A fascinating, well-researched work; recommended for large public and academic libraries with sociology collections.
Richard Drezen, Merrill Lynch Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (June 2, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465078923
• ISBN-13: 978-0465078929
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #715,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Money isn't neutral currency - it is earmarked with social meaning., February 16, 2007

By 

D. Stuart "Researcher at Kudos" (Auckland NZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies (Paperback)

This book is an academically rich history of the role of money in society - particularly US society since the late 1800s. It begins, somewhat vehemently in establishing its credentials as an alternative way of looking at money. Cash isn't just a neutral medium of exchange; a medium that renders all human effort and interactions in mere dollar terms. Today this argument doesn't need to be made so forcefully, though I wonder if the author had a point to prove. She wrote this over several years in which Friedman economics was at its callous height. Today there is a richer body of work about the psychology of money - for example the studies on 'mental acounting' of Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky. But those authors are theoreticians. What Zelizer demonstrates through a startling degree of social research is that humans being humans, we have an extraordinary facility of earmarking money with specific social meanings. In your home you may well have a petty change dish for the parking meter money, a secret stash of emergency money and a piggy bank for the kids' savings. And because we attach different meanings to these different stashes, we treat them differently also. We operate each stash by different rules. Zelizer shows how household money (once the domain only of the husband - she cites a New York judge who find a woman guilty of theft for "stealing loose change" from her husband's trouser pockets) has changed, and how the rules have slowly though not easily altered also, as society has become more consumerist, and as gender roles have changed also. I found equally fascinating the description of the little white lies that husbands and wives tell, in order to keep a little extra "me money" outside of the household budget. This book totally gels with the findings I've seen in focus groups that I've run where I've found big ticket purchases have been less about the actual cost than about how husbands and wives (or partners) get what they want while trying not to rock the relationship boat. Zelizer's social history is fascinating to read. It is well footnoted (the references are copious): a book that makes pertinent points about the rich social dimension of cash. This is very interesting material and heartily recommend for researchers, for those in the finance sector and for anyone who wants to better understand the financial dynamic of their own relationships. It is a rewarding portrait of our society and the way we attempt to reconcile our rational and emotional selves.

Zelizer's follow-up volume is also well worth investigating: The Purchase of Intimacy

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Different Perspective on Money, March 7, 2004

By 

John M. Zukoski (Dublin, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies (Paperback)

Viviana Zelizer (VZ) provides an excellent alternative view to what the meaning and social significance of currency is and was in various sub-cultures in the United States. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't identify an application of VZ's analogy between the empty soup cans used by immigrants to the US to compartmentalize savings for different purchases of durable goods to that of our current mental compartmentalization of savings for different purchases. Essentially, people have there own unique utility graphs for different products - whether we realize it or not. VZ illustrates how these differing utility graphs overlap in the sub-cultures of the past, present, and future. I recommend this book for anybody interested in monetary history.