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Money: Anthropological Aspects

Abstract

From its traditional concern with ‘primitive’ moneys and definitional quandaries over the nature of money in small-scale and nonmarket societies, anthropology more recently has considered money’s meanings in multiple, overlapping spatial, cultural, and temporal milieu, as well as the pragmatics of money – what it does and how it signifies, rather than what it is or what it signifies. Early twenty-first century business interests in divesting the state of its monopoly over the legitimate means of exchange open new frontiers for the anthropology of money and value.