Abstract
Money, a central topic for classical sociologists, has been rediscovered in recent times. The chapter briefly introduces the concept of money found in the writings of Parsons, Marx, Simmel and Weber. The study of money in the social sciences has been affected by the intellectual labour division since then: economists have abandoned all theoretical interest in the nature of money, while the sociologists have turned their attention to the cultural and social conditions that allow money to circulate. The theoretical debate over the nature of money and its social effects was abandoned until the 1980s, when it re-emerged thanks to the research carried out by Viviana Zelizer, Geoffrey Ingham, Nigel Dodd and, more recently, Jens Beckert. The contemporary study of money lacks, a fine-grained explanatory model able to explain the reciprocal influences between money and society. To this end, the chapter introduces the recently developed debate around social mechanisms and analytical sociology and their possible application to the study of money. The sociological explanation of money functioning needs to consider technical characteristics, together with individuals’ characteristics (e.g. values, norms, beliefs and preferences). For this purpose, a socio-material mechanism framework has been proposed.
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Notes
- 1.
Although the term and the use of social mechanisms have been debated for some time, the research program became clearer and more coherent in the mid-1990s. The book Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory (Hedström and Swedberg 1998) quickly become a point of reference for the debate on social mechanisms and the most cited text in the field. The next most relevant contribution is Dissecting the Social: On the Principles of Analytical Sociology in which Hedström (2005) proposes a coherent and organic research program for an analytical sociological approach. For recent developments see Maurer (2016), Demeulenaere (2011), Hedström and Berman (2009).
- 2.
“Explaining the behaviour of a social system by means of three components: the effects of properties of the system on the constraints or orientations of actors; the action of actors who are within the system; and the combination or interaction of those actions, bringing about the systemic behaviour” (Coleman 1990, p. 27).
- 3.
“Precise, action-based, abstract, and fine-grained explanations” (Hedström and Swedberg 1998, p. 25).
- 4.
“Hedström has made important clarifications and, in effect, relaxed the requirements for the kinds of mechanisms that can be used in solid social mechanisms-based explanations. For example, in stressing that the idea of social mechanisms, “does not tell us how to conceptualise human action” (Hedström and Ylikoski 2010, p. 60), he emphasised that intentional action manifested in desires, beliefs, and opportunities (DBO) are not the only things that qualify as micro foundations. Habits, routines, scheme-following, and other more or less unconscious behaviours may also be evoked as micro-level mechanisms. Moreover, the level of complexity, or inversely, the extent to which social-mechanism-based explanations should build on abstractions and simplifications, is now seen as a choice of the analyst” (Edling and Rydgren 2016, p. 1138).
- 5.
- 6.
In vitro experiments are those realised by economists when they mathematically model the functioning of a market and try to hypothesise how it would function best. In vivo experiments are when from theory the next step is a regulatory government body designing the functioning of the market (Callon 2009, p. 357; Callon et al. 2002).
- 7.
Although in many cases the hypothesis of economic theories having performative effects on market functioning may be the subject of debate, in the case of carbon trading their effects appear evident. This does not detract from legitimacy, nor does it exclude the possible relevance and complementarity of other explanatory models of the phenomenon (e.g., neo-institutionalism, rational choice, social networks, etc.) but it focuses attention on aspects and explanatory links that are often little considered. In fact, in the case of carbon trading, scientists—despite disagreeing with one another on various aspects of this subject—provide the definition and quantification of the good that has to be exchanged in the market (the emissions), while the policy maker, with the advice of economists and jurists, designs and implements the functioning of the market, identifying the internality and the externality of the system.
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- 9.
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Bazzani, G. (2020). A Mechanism Approach for Money. In: When Money Changes Society. Wirtschaft + Gesellschaft. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28533-3_2
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