Money and Calculation: Economic and Sociological Perspectives (Bocconi on Management)

and Fellow of the Institute of Advances Studies, Nantes. His fields of interest range from economic history and the history of economic thought to phenomenology. He is the author of Il bivio della moneta (The Money Junction, Egea, 1999), Le radici di una fede. Per una storia del rapporto fra moneta e credito in Occidente (The Roots of a Faith. Outline of a History of the Helationship between Money and Credit in the West, Bruno Mondadori, 2008) and L'enigma della moneta e l'inizio dell'economia (The Enigma of Money and the Inception of the Economy, to be published in 2010). He is co-author with L. Fantacci of The End of Finance. Where the Crisis Comes from and How we can Conceive a Way Out, Polity, to be published in 2011. Emotions, reputations, relationships -- so many aspects of social and organizational life today are subject to quantification and other calculative practices. Calculation develops due to a demand for control and accountability. Money is one such instrument of calculation, and the foremost. As a unit of account and means of payment, it serves the purpose of exchange. Yet, money has itself increasingly become an object of calculation and exchange on financial markets tending less to the production and exchange of real goods than the elimination of uncertainty by means of exchangeability. Has the economy therefore lost its measure? The essays collected in Money and Calculation investigate, from various viewpoints, how calculation and money bear upon the meaning of measure in contemporary economic life. They will excite and give much pause for thought to economists, sociologists, and all who have an interest in the meaning of life in our globalized world Emotions, reputations, relationships 6 so many aspects of social and organizational life today are subject to quantification and other calculative practices. Calculation develops due to a demand for control and accountability. Money is one such instrument of calculation, and the foremost. As a unit of account and means of payment, it serves the purpose of exchange. Yet, money has itself increasingly become an object of calculation and exchange on financial markets tending less to the production and exchange of real goods than the elimination of uncertainty by means of exchangeability. Has the economy therefore lost its measure? The essays collected in Money and Calculation investigate, from various viewpoints, how calculation and money bear upon the meaning of measure in contemporary economic life. They will excite and give much pause for thought to economists, sociologists, and all who have an interest in the meaning of life in our globalized world Front Matter....Pages i-viii Introduction....Pages 1-15 Money Is the Scribe of a Market Economy....Pages 16-33 Money without Value, Accounting without Measure: How Economic Theory Can Better Fit the Economic and Monetary System We Live in....Pages 34-62 Silence Is Gold: Some Preliminary Notes on Money, Speech and Calculation....Pages 63-78 What Kind of Calculation Is Implied in the Money Rate of Interest?....Pages 79-100 A Time and a Place for Everything: Foundations of Commodity Money....Pages 101-121 Calculating Life and Money as Resources....Pages 122-147 Repressed Futures: Financial Derivatives’ Theological Unconscious....Pages 148-173 Representing and Modelling: The Case of Portfolio Management....Pages 174-188 Brief Encounters: Calculation and the Interaction Order of Anonymous Electronic Markets....Pages 189-213 Back Matter....Pages 215-222 Money is the scribe of a market economy / Jean Cartelier Money without value, accounting without measure: how economic theory can better fit the economic and monetary system we live in / Yuri Biondi Silence is gold. some preliminary notes on money, speech, and calculation / Massimo Amato What kind of calculation is implied in the money rate of interest? / Luca Fantacci A time and a place for everything: foundations of commodity money / Dick Bryan, Michael Rafferty Calculating life and money as resources / Luigi Doria Repressed futures: financial derivatives' theological unconscious / Bill Maurer Representing and modelling: the case of portfolio management / Herbert Kalthoff, Uwe Vormbusch Brief encounters: calculation and the interaction order of anonymous electronic markets / Alex Preda. Money is an important instrument of calculation: as a unit of account and means of payment, it serves the purpose of exchange. Yet, it is increasingly becoming itself an object of exchange and calculation on financial markets, which tend less to the production and exchange of real goods. The question therefore is: has the economy lost its measure? Electronic book text. - Epublication based on: 9780230277779, 2010