Money In An Unequal World: Keith Hart & His Memory Bank - Softcover

Hart, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587990970 ISBN 13: 9781587990977

Publisher: Texere Publishing, 2001

Synopsis

The focus in this book is the Internet, which the author agrees hold the potential for a re-personalization of economic relations. In this world, new means of exchange could be harnessed to the ends of a truer economic democracy. Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. The author offers his view on the interaction between money, capitalism and culture - now, in the future, and throughout history. This work is designed to challenge established views from all quarters of economic, political and social thought. "The Memory Bank" is money itself - especially now that the exchange of objects through money and the exchange of meanings through language are converging into a single network of communications. Money is becoming information and information is becoming money. In this world, the author reveals how new means of exchange can be harnessed to build a better future.

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Review

Money in an Unequal World is a distinctly individualised exploration of the way currency has become a universal source of "social memory," and what this means in a global society now riding the latest wave of its transformation from "metallic objects to paper notes to electronic digits." Keith Hart, a teacher and social anthropologist, offers this unique perspective by drawing on a background that combines such eclectic pursuits as academics, entrepreneurship and gambling. Also drawing upon philosophers of the "democratic revolution" like Locke, Kant, Marx and Gandhi, he tackles this highly abstract tale by examining "the conjuncture of money and machines that makes our phase of economic history capitalist" and investigating "money and markets from a humanistic point of view." Inviting readers to discover the story in their own way--even recommending that one "dip into the argument at random, allowing your eye to rest where it finds fertile ground (and move on if it does not)"--Hart meanders in a basically linear and highly entertaining fashion from the struggle against the agrarian hierarchy to the collapse of Stalinism and the rise of the Web. Ultimately, he concludes that changes apparent today actually provide an unprecedented opportunity to improve the world using money and markets as instruments of "economic democracy." His argument is provocative and illuminating. --Howard Rothman

About the Author

Keith Hart is an anthropologist who introduced to economics the concepts of the informal economy. Hart has taught in a number of universities on both sides of the Atlantic, especially CAmbridge. There he was the Director of the African Studies Center and received the first ever teaching prize in the humanities and social sciences. He has carried out research in Ghana, the Caribbean and South Africa and has worked as a journalisht, consultant and gambler. He founded Prickly Pear Press and the amateur anthropological society. He now holds a research post at the University of Aberdeen and lives in Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Texere Publishing
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1587990970
• ISBN 13: 9781587990977
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320