Anthropology and Politics of Commodity Exchange

The mark of a civilized economy is national money the English pound theAustralian dollar the Indian rupee. The mark of a savage economy is untamedmoney in the f... » 

The mark of a civilized economy is national money the English pound theAustralian dollar the Indian rupee. The mark of a savage economy is untamedmoney in the form of cowrie shells silver gold and so on. The power of thestate is crucially dependent onits ability to domesticate savage money and toreproduce its control over it. This is a constant struggle and especially sofor an imperial state with ambitions of international statehood.The English pound conquered cowries and silver at the end of the last centuryand the American dollar almost succeeded in domesticating gold the lastvestige of savage money. However a new era of savage money is dawning in thetwilight of the Americanempire. Money has an equivocation rather than adefinition. Naming it does not nail it. It is a chameleonlike symbol whichisforever changing as mercantile relations between people vary over time andplace.This volume is not simply another general theory of world system. It is atheoreticall «