The Social Meaning of Money: "Special Monies"

1989 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 342-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Social Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meaning Of Money

The Social Characterizations of Price: The Fool, the Faithful, the Frivolous, and the Frugal

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 363-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Wherry
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Social Location ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Meanings ◽  
Meaning Systems ◽  
Pricing System ◽  
Meaning Of Money

This article extends both Viviana Zelizer's discussion of the social meaning of money and Charles Smith's proposal that pricing is a definitional practice to the under-theorized realm of the social meanings generated in the pricing system. Individuals are attributed with calculating or not calculating whether an object or service is “worth” its price, but these attributions differ according to the individual's social location as being near to or far from a societal reference point rather than by the inherent qualities of the object or service purchased. Prices offer seemingly objective (quantitative) proof of the individual's “logic of appropriateness”—in other words, people like that pay prices such as those. This article sketches a preliminary but nonexhaustive typology of the social characterizations of individuals within the pricing system; these ideal types—the fool, the faithful, the frugal, and the frivolous—and their components offer a systematic approach to understanding prices as embedded in and constituents of social meaning systems.

scholarly journals Market crises as disasters: the social meaning of financial risk in 401(k) retirement accounts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Hayes
Keyword(s):  
Financial Risk ◽  
Household Wealth ◽  
Distinct Pattern ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Social Amplification Of Risk ◽  
Bear Market ◽  
Portfolio Returns ◽  
Retirement Accounts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meaning Of Money

This study seeks to extend the social meaning of money to account for the valorization of distinct forms of household wealth, using the 401(k) retirement account as an exemplar. In doing so, particular economic shocks are framed within the disasters literature for the first time. The institutional shift from corporate pensions to individual retirement accounts since the 1980’s changed the social and economic logics of retirement, making this financial location salient, where shocks to the stock market reveal a distinct pattern of economic action. Using the 401(k) retirement account data, I show that bear market years in 2002 and 2008 caused retirement savers to orient their portfolios toward durable conservatism – a finding that deviates from predictions made by either neoclassical or behavioral economic theory. Rather, a sociological mechanism developed in the disasters literature – the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) – provides a plausible explanation for the empirical findings. Interestingly, the practical rule of conservation that works well for many disaster scenarios, for retirement savers creates an unfortunate discrepancy between the objective chances of retirement security and the subjective aspirations of 401(k) savers by causing underinvestment in stocks that can produce suboptimal portfolio returns manifesting itself as latent retirement inequality, especially impacting the youngest savers who have the most at stake.

Cognition and Social Meaning in Economic Sociology

2019 ◽  
pp. 506-525
Author(s):  
Nina Bandelj ◽  
Christoffer J. P. Zoeller
Keyword(s):  
Economic Sociology ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
Meaning Of Money ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
Central Economic

This chapter reviews the literature on cognition and social meaning in economic sociology, with special attention to the case of money. The first part discusses subfields related to economic sociology that have carved space for attention to the role of cognitive processes, or cognitive embeddedness, including the institutional logics, conceptions of control, and classification/categorization perspectives. The second part takes up one central economic object, money, to compare and contrast the behavioral economics perspective on mental accounting with the research on the social meaning of money and relational work, which emphasizes how money’s multiple meanings and forms influence the negotiation of social-economic relations.

Fine Tuning the Zelizer View

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viviana A. Zelizer
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Neoclassical Economics ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
The Social ◽  
Meaning Of Money ◽  
Theories Of Money

This chapter presents the author's response to a complaint from two economic analysts that her conception of money as represented by the paper The Social Meaning of Money neglected general theories of money in favor of emphasizing the constant reintroduction of particularity into monetary transactions. In their paper “Markets and Money in Social Theory: What Role for Economics?,” Fine and Lapavitsas (2000) incorporated the author's critique of neoclassical economics and her empirical work, but not the theoretical basis for either one. The author welcomes their project to draw a different, interesting theory of markets and money from Marx's writing. However, she also says that Fine and Lapavitsas' theoretical enthusiasm for a political economy framework blinds them to the emergence of newer theoretical possibilities over the last decade or so. She responds to their statement in two parts: first, reacting to specific criticisms of her view; and second, outlining alternative ways of explaining markets and monetary transactions.

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