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224 Faidra Papavasiliou Discussion The personal meanings articulated by users indicate that even tenuous contact with the local currency system produced experiences evoking “senses of community.” There is the ability to obtain and enjoy “special” goods that connect them to place in a fundamentally material way, or the opportunity to create bonds (either temporary or sustained) with new people, made intelligible by the common participation in the alternative network. There is the realization of belonging and the affirmation of a local identity, shared by the participants and admired by those from the outside. And for some, this network offers a space in which to examine critically and even to challenge the established economic norms of the “regular” market. Regardless of the small size of complementary currency exchange, it reflects the emergence of an alternative consumption discourse, where the mainstream money (dollars) is connected to necessity, to the danger of scarcity, and to obligation, while the alternative currency is connected to something different, frequently a sort of reward, sometimes a potential burden, but overall something that opens both material and conceptual space for people to reexamine the naturalized conflation of value with price and validate and promote the inclusion of meanings such as social and environmental justice and equity into the calculus of consumption. In Ithaca, the money used colors the experience, understandings, and as a result the direction of material exchange, demonstrating that if, as Keith Hart has aptly argued, the medium of exchange is primarily a vehicle of information, then different currencies can codify and promote different ways to trade and consume. Minimally, this challenges the neutrality of money as an economic metric of objective value. The case of alternative currency indicates that money can shape how we understand, represent, and count economic value. In the search for fairness, we may thus need to reproblematize and repoliticize not only specific trade activities but the medium by which they are carried out as a force that affects the terms as well as outcomes of global trade. N o t e s 1. Money’s symbolic power in shaping economic realities is well illustrated by two examples of recent work on money. Mahir Şaul (2004) traces the use of money as a political tool by colonial authorities in West Africa to break down the preexisting regional Fair Money, Fair Trade 225 trade networks that used cowry shells and to establish colonial economies. Beth Notar (2004) traces how money was used to build identities and networks of political/ideological loyalties in China. 2. Money is a very ancient institution, but even a cursory examination of numismatic history will show that in ancient monetized economies, not all state-issue coinage was meant for standard commercial use but reflected the existence of different “spheres of value” (Alpha Bank Numismatic Collection Online, 2007, http://www.alphabank.gr/page/ default.asp?id=686&la=2). 3. I would like to draw attention to the fact that the glossary available on the website of the Chicago Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank calls money not a store of value, which is the overwhelmingly common wording for that function of money, but a store of purchasing power (http://www.chicagofed.org/glossary/). 4. In the United States, alternative currencies are perfectly legal under the federal Constitution and under most state constitutions, provided that income is reported and taxes are paid. W o r k s C i t e d Appadurai, A. 1996 Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Benson, L., and F. Papavasiliou 2004 The Social Equity Challenge: Creating and Sustaining a Diverse Community by Means of Local Currency. Paper presented at the Local Currencies in the Twenty First Century Conference, Bard College, New York, June 25–27. Bohannan, P. J. 1959 The Impact of Money on an African Subsistence Economy. Journal of Economic History 12: 491–503. Boyle, D. 1999a Alternative Currencies, Alternative Identities. London: Center for Reform. 1999b Funny Money: In Search of Alternative Cash. New York: HarperCollins. 2002 Money Changers. London: Earthscan. Cahn, E. 2004 No More Throw-Away People. Washington, DC: Essential Books. Cahn, E., and J. Rowe 1992 Time Dollars: The New Currency That Enables Americans to Turn Their Hidden Resource—Time—into Personal Security and Community Renewal. Emmaus, PA: Rodale. Complementary Currency Resource Center 2009 World Map of Complementary Currency Systems. http://www.complementarycurrency .org/ccDatabase/maps/worldmap.php, accessed January 2009. Collom, E. 2005 Community Currency in the United States: The Social Environments in Which It...

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