The so-called special purpose moneys of the anthropological record were once seen as evolutionary precursors of the modern all purpose money in which all of Aristotle's classic four functions-as medium of exchange, mode of payment, unit of account, and store of value-were unified. For anthropologists, the description and theorization of monetary practices in soft currencies, cash, and new forms has become a compelling topic beyond the classic comparative study of the widely varied systems of the past. Economic theory has largely concentrated on hard currencies, with reserve functions. Very large numbers of ordinary people-the clients, customers, citizens, and workers in the nonincorporated domains of economies and through all of the passing vicissitudes of life-live largely in soft currencies or cash forms of hard currencies. At the soft end of the spectrum are not only the national soft currencies with fluctuating value on the money markets, but monetary forms created by private businesses for their own clients: moneys for online games, mobile money forms, and special purpose coupons and vouchers. Since the rise of money markets in the 1970s, they are often referred to in terms of relative hardness (that is, their capacity to hold value over time). In conclusion, the paper returns to the exchange function of cash, soft currencies, and new money forms.Īn online currency converter ( 1) lists over 180 world currencies along with certain precious metals-gold (the ancient value par excellence), silver, and platinum-presently in circulation in the global economy. ( v) The social niches in which these qualities are brought together in transactional regimes. ( iv) The importance of the temporal reach of what constitutes wealth: over the short run, the life span, intergenerational succession, and in (legal) perpetuity (as for corporate and sovereign debts and specified assets). ( iii) Fictional units of account that serve to mediate both the memorization of nonreductive transactions and their nature as conversions. ( ii) Several types of positional ranking ranging from simple stepwise ordinal scales to iconic ordinality that creates a parabolic curve of value. ( i) The widespread occurrence of conversions, which bring together ranking principles within transactions. The paper identifies five findings that suggest foci for future research. There are four main sections to the paper devoted to ( i) the present continuum of hard to soft currencies as an instance of multiplicity, including discussion of different combinations of the classic four functions of money, especially the relationship between store of value and medium of exchange ( ii) the logic of anthropological inquiry into multiple currency economies ( iii) the case of the monies of Atlantic Africa, applying the analytics of exchange rates as conversions to African transactions and ( iv) the return to economic life in a present day Nigerian economy lived in soft currency and cash. Current variation in the forms of money challenges economic anthropologists and historians to review theory and comparative findings on multiple currency systems.
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