Here are 100 books that The Social Meaning of Money fans have personally recommended if you like
The Social Meaning of Money.
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What is my passion? Why sociology? I love sociology for several reasons: first, because you study everything, and I mean everything can be “the sociology of….” Second, because it uncovers the layers of deceit, image, and make-up that cover the surface; third, because it deals with deviance and deviant behavior (see my other Five Best on Deviance); and fourth, it explains social conflict. I’m always learning something new, and I love to impart that love of the unknown and the everyday to my thousands of students.
I could easily have chosen The Power Elite, White Collar, or The Causes of World War Three; in fact, this list could have been composed of just books by Mills. Mills came along when the dominant theoretical outlook was a kind of conservative “functionalism” led by a now somewhat neglected Harvard sociologist named Talcott Parsons and his “grand theories” that could explain “everything."
These have fallen by the wayside and been replaced by Robert Merton's “theories of the middle range” and micro-theories. More powerfully, grand theory and functionalism were replaced by conflict theory; that is, we learn more about a society from its conflicts than from its harmony. But in truth, one needs both perspectives to understand society.
C. Wright Mills is best remembered for his highly acclaimed work The Sociological Imagination, in which he set forth his views on how social science should be pursued. Hailed upon publication as a cogent and hard-hitting critique, The Sociological Imagination took issue with the ascendant schools of sociology in the United States, calling for a humanist sociology connecting the social, personal, and historical dimensions of our lives. The sociological imagination Mills calls for is a sociological vision, a way of looking at the world that can see links between the apparently private problems of the individual and important social issues.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Jan Pahl’s work opened the ‘black box’ of the household for me, to examine how men and women in intimate relationships managed and controlled their money across cultures.
She set up a typology of separate, joint, and independent money management and control that became my starting point for researching money and families also cultures. Her work also started me thinking of the gender of money, that is how men and women use, think, and own money differently, particularly when spending on children and the home.
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Evan Stark’s book introduced me to the concept of ‘coercive control’.
It is a continued and malevolent pattern of domination and entrapment that makes family violence a human rights crime. He also noted that the perpetrator, often a man, uses gendered stereotypes to control the woman, to convince her that it is she who is at fault.
Evan Stark’s insights helped me connect the gendered cultural practices of money with family violence. When these cultural ways of dealing with money were used for entrapment and abuse, money as a medium of care became a medium of coercive control.
Despite its great achievements, the domestic violence revolution is stalled, Evan Stark argues, a provocative conclusion he documents by showing that interventions have failed to improve women's long-term safety in relationships or to hold perpetrators accountable. Stark traces this failure to a startling paradox, that the singular focus on violence against women masks an even more devastating reality. In millions of abusive relationships, men use a largely unidentified form of subjugation that more closely resembles kidnapping or indentured servitude than assault. He calls this pattern "coercive control". Drawing on sources that range from FBI statistics and film to dozens of…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I am a writer and a sociologist of money. I am passionate about money, relationships, and family violence, because I know from my research that talking about money opens up intimate conversations about the way people see themselves, their aspirations and hopes. Sometimes through hearing other people’s stories I have found mine. I realised while researching family violence that I too had suffered economic abuse. For me too economic abuse was ‘hidden in plain sight’. One of the most meaningful things for me is to help women and men overcome family violence and empower themselves to live with freedom.
Nicola Sharp-Jeff’s book makes a great contribution by linking research on economic abuse to policy and practice.
She has been able to use her research to set up an important organisation, Surviving Economic Abuse, to help raise awareness of economic abuse, influence law and policy and work with industry and government to address and prevent family violence.
I recognise the book’s value because I know how difficult it is to draw on research to suggest ways forward for policymakers and industry. This is a necessary step for all researchers if they want to prevent family violence and empower women.
Despite being recognised by victim-survivors as a tactic used by abusers, economic abuse has received little attention in research, policy, or practice. Written by an internationally recognised expert on economic abuse, this powerful book provides a crucial validation of the lived experience of victim-survivors, and highlights the urgent need to develop effective responses to the issue.
Breaking fresh ground, Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse exposes the many ways in which abusers seek to control their intimate partners through economic resources and reinforces the importance of holding abusers accountable for their behaviour. Whilst the focus of this book is on…
I'm an economic anthropologist and teach classes and conduct research in this area. Economic anthropology is different from economics in that it questions many of the things that economics takes for granted. For example, most economists assume that allocating goods through the market by buying and selling is the best way to organize human communities. Economic anthropologists have shown, in contrast, that many societies have been organized according to other exchange principles. In fact, some of the oldest communities in the world, such as Sumer and Babylon, based their economies around elaborate systems of redistribution, in which every citizen was guaranteed food shares.
Money is often thought of as a valuable thing, like gold or silver.
This leads us to presume that it must be finite in quality due to its scarcity. Drawing on anthropological studies of objects such as Yap stones, massive stone disks found on a far-flung island in the Pacific Ocean.
Martin shows instead that money is not so much a thing but an abstract system for tracking who has what and who is entitled to what, similar to what the anthropologist Keith Hart has called a “memory bank.” By rethinking money along these lines, we might be able to rethink how we decide who gets what and who doesn’t get what in our communities.
From ancient currency to Adam Smith, from the gold standard to shadow banking and the Great Recession: a sweeping historical epic that traces the development and evolution of one of humankind’s greatest inventions.
What is money, and how does it work? In this tour de force of political, cultural and economic history, Felix Martin challenges nothing less than our conventional understanding of money. He describes how the Western idea of money emerged from interactions between Mesopotamia and ancient Greece and was shaped over the centuries by tensions between sovereigns and the emerging middle classes. He explores the extraordinary diversity of…
The passionate teaching of Bernard Schmitt at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, kindled my interest in monetary macroeconomics. In Fribourg I wrote my doctoral dissertation while working as Schmitt’s research and teaching assistant. In 1978 I moved to London to conduct research at the LSE as a PhD student under the supervision of Meghnad Desai. I received my PhD in 1982. Back on the Continent, I continued my collaboration with Schmitt, which lasted until his death in 2014. My enthusiasm for research never failed and I hope to have conveyed it to some of my students at the Centre for Banking Studies in Lugano and at USI (Università della Svizzera Italiana).
When I first met him at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland in 1969, I was immediately fascinated by Bernard Schmitt’s passion for scientific research and by his novel approach to monetary macroeconomics.
Three years later I started working with him as a teaching and research assistant and went on working as his closest collaborator until his death in 2014. The other two co-editors of this book also had the privilege to work closely with him.
Conceived as an homage to Schmitt’s legacy, this book is a collection of contributions explaining the historical origin, the analytical content, and the current relevance of Schmitt’s quantum macroeconomic analysis.
Quantum Macroeconomics presents a new paradigm in macroeconomic analysis initiated by Bernard Schmitt. It explains the historical origin, the analytical contents, and the actual relevance of this new paradigm, with respect to current major economic issues at national and international level. These issues concern both advanced and emerging market economies, referring to inflation, unemployment, financial instability, and economic crises.
In the first part of this volume, leading scholars explain the historical origin and analytical content of quantum macroeconomics. The second part explores its relevance with respect to the current major economic issues such as the sovereign debt crisis and European…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Jen Sincero is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, success coach, and motivational cattle prod who’s helped countless people transform their personal and professional lives via her products, speaking engagements, newsletters, seminars and books. Her #1 New York Times bestseller, You Are a Badass®: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life (2013), spent over 4 years on the NY Times bestseller list, has sold over 3 million copies, is available in over 35 languages, and continues to grow in popularity around the globe. Her follow-ups, You Are a Badass® at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth (2017), also a NY Times bestseller, You Are a Badass® Every Day (2018), and Badass Habits (2020) are written with the same signature sass, down-to-earth humor and blunt practicality that made You Are a Badass® an indomitable bestseller and Jen a celebrated voice in the world of self-development.
Written by an extremely smart smartypants, activist, and fundraiser, Lynne Twist shares her fascinating take on money as gleaned from her decades working with everyone from top CEOs to tribal people who don’t even know what money is.
This liberating book shows us that examining our attitudes toward money-earning it, spending it, and giving it away-offers surprising insight into our lives. Through personal stories and practical advice, Lynne Twist asks us to discover our relationship with money, understand how we use it, and by assessing our core human values, align our relationship with it to our desired goals. In doing so, we can transform our lives.
The Soul of Money now includes a foreword from Jack Canfield and a new introduction by Lynne Twist, in which she explores the effects of the Great Recession and environmental concerns about…
I was raised in the Midwest by parents who told me I could have whatever kind of life I wanted. I took them at their word, never considering that my gender might come with limitations. It wasn’t until I had my first child and began investigating Paula’s case that the true complexity of womanhood began to dawn on me. I’ve since spent nine years reading and writing and thinking about the experience of being a woman in the modern world.
This novel might have been published a half-century ago, but the situation—wherein beauty is currency, women’s bodies with their bleeding and their smells are betrayers, and the institution of marriage is, well, an institution—feels more than relevant today. The book’s protagonist, Sasha Davis is a former prom-queen who is aware of all the possibility that exists outside of the confines of her loveless marriage. Liberated, she makes moves to extricate herself from the relationship, but what she can't shed is the very thing that holds her back: her own womanhood. The book’s tone, a sort of “Can you believe I have to put up with this?” is rife with humor even as it lays out the fury-making double standards women had to face then (and now).
The cult classic that defined a generation - first UK publication in 47 years
'An extraordinary novel ... women will like it and men should read it for the good of their immortal souls' Los Angeles Times
Sasha Davis has everything a girl in 1950s suburbia could want: beauty, intelligence and an all-star sports captain boyfriend. All she needs to succeed is to keep her skin clear and her intelligence hidden under her Prom Queen tiara.
But when she drops out of college to marry, Sasha soon realises her life has become a fearful countdown…
I’m a Canadian political economist working in Australia as an Associate Professor in International Relations and Political Economy at the University of Wollongong, just south of Sydney. I’ve been fascinated by the history of capitalism and money since post-graduate school. Eventually I had some time to do a deep dive into the existing scholarly literature on money and have so far written two books on the topic and multiple articles. I hope you enjoy my book recommendations as much as I enjoyed reading them.
This book was a real eye-opener and can be considered seminal across the social sciences for its breadth and depth of analysis on money.
I loved this book because it filled so many gaps in my knowledge. I was drawn to it because I once asked my professor how new money was generated and he said he knew but he forgot.
This made me think that money might not be all that important to understanding capitalism. Alas, I was dead wrong of course and returned to my question years later.
That’s how I found Professor Ingham’s book. I still have comprehensive notes from his work and consult them regularly.
This book is essential for anyone who wants to understand the past and present of money.
In this important new book, Geoffrey Ingham draws on neglected traditions in the social sciences to develop a theory of the 'social relation' of money. * Genuinely multidisciplinary approach, based on a thorough knowledge of theories of money in the social sciences * An original development of the neglected heterodox theories of money * New histories of the origins and development of forms of money and their social relations of production in different monetary systems * A radical interpretation of capitalism as a particular type of monetary system and the first sociological outline of the institutional structure of the social…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a licensed social worker, it struck me as bizarre that none of my training equipped me to talk to my clients about money. In grad school, the opening line from every professor was, “You didn’t choose this field to make money.” Yet? It’s something every single one of us needs and interacts with daily. So I started checking out personal finance books by the armsful. These books are different than novels: they deserve to be updated and modernized. But the same handful of personal finance books have been published and republished for decades, and most of them sound boringly redundant once you get past the intro.
Not only does Finance for the People offer a blend of practical personal finance tips while addressing the emotional side of money, but Paco adds over 50 illustrations to help drive her point home.
Any time a book can explain something in diverse ways–from metaphors or stories to graphics–I find them more approachable. Paco's book helps people think critically and compassionately about how their beliefs about money shape their financial choices.
This book mirrors so many of my beliefs about money, making it a frequent go-to recommendation anytime someone asks me for a personal finance resource.
An illustrated, practical guide to navigating your financial life, no matter your financial situation
"a potent mix of deeply practical and wonderfully empathetic" —Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial
"one of the most approachable financial books I've ever read." —Refinery 29
We are all weird about money. Whether you have a lot or a little, your feelings and beliefs about money have been shaped by a combination of silence (or even shame) around talking about money, personal experiences, family and societal expectations, and a whole big complex system rigged against many of us from the start. Begin with that baseline…
