Chris Desan on Making Money (Recall This Buck)
Our\xa0Recall this Buck\xa0series, back in 2020 and 2021, explored the history of money, ranging from the earliest forms of labor IOUs to the modern world of bitcoin and electronically distributed value. We began by focusing on the rise of capitalism, the Bank of England, and how an explosion of liquidity changed everything.\nWe were lucky to do so, just before the Pandemic struck, with\xa0Christine Desan\xa0of Harvard Law School, who recently published\xa0Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism\xa0(Oxford University Press, 2014). She is also managing editor of\xa0JustMoney.org, a website that explores money as a critical site of governance. Desan\u2019s research explores money as a legal and political project. Her approach opens economic orthodoxy to question by widening the focus on money as an instrument, to examine the institutions and agreements through which resources are mobilized and tracked, by means of money. In doing so, she shows that particular forms of money, and the markets within which they circulate, are neither natural or inevitable.\n\nChristine Desan, \u201cMaking Money\u201c\n\nUrsula Le Guin The\xa0Earthsea\xa0Novels (money hard to come by, but kinda cute)\n\nSamuel Delany, the\xa0Neveryon\xa0series (money part of the evils of naming, slavery, labor appropriation)\n\nJane Austen \u201cPride and Prejudice\u201c\n\nRichard Rhodes, \u201cEnergy\u201c\n\nJohn Plotz, \u201cIs Realism Failing?\u201d (on liberal guilt and patrimonial fiction)\n\nWilliam Cobbett, \u201cRural Rides\u201d (1830; London as wen)\n\nE. P. Thompson, \u201cThe Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century\u201d (notional \u201cjust price\u201d of bread)\n\nPeter Brown, \u201cThrough the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD\u201d\n\nChris Vanden Bossche, \u201cReform Acts\u201c\n\n\u201cSanditon\u201d on PBS (and the\xa0original unfinished Austen novel)\n\n\nStill from \u201cSanditon\u201d\n\nMargot Finn, \u201cCharacter of Credit\u201c\n\nThomas Piketty, \u201cCapital in the 21st Century\u201c\n\nL. Frank Baum, \u201cThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz\u201d (1900)\n\nLeo Tolstoy \u201cThe Forged Coupon\u201d (orig.1904)\n\nRobert Louis Stevenson, \u201cThe Bottle Imp\u201d (1891)\n\nFrank Norris, \u201cThe Octopus\u201d (1901)\n\nD. W. Griffith, \u201cA Corner in Wheat\u201d (1909)\n\n\nRead the episode here.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices\nSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law