The Dynamics of Currency Design in the Socio-Historical Context
Research Article
How to Cite
Shtalenkova K.I. The Dynamics of Currency Design in the Socio-Historical Context. Interaction. Interview. Interpretation. 2020. Vol. 12. No. 3. P. 31-49. DOI: https://doi.org/10.19181/inter.2020.12.3.2 (in Russ.).
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show the dynamics of currency design in a socio-historical context, from antique coins to electronic payment transactions. Currency design visualizes the symbolic features of exchange depending on the types of money circulating in certain historical periods. Therefore, the visual aspect of money is important here, which at the level of the visible concerns the material features of money, and at the level of the visual characterizes the specifics of representations used in currency design. It is crucial to analyze the relationship between the visible and the visual in currency design from the point of its functionality, which makes it possible to conceptualize money not as an object, but as a process approached through the material and political systems that create and control money. Hence, currency design highlights the perspective of multidisciplinary potential of money as an object of research, which can be assessed without separating economics from cultural significance. Using the concept of evidence by M. Engelke, this article analyzes the symbolic complex of money functions in the context of the ideological implications shifting with the transformations of currency design. In addition, money is classified according to its visual typology, which demonstrates, in the process of dematerialization, the changes in the symbolic aspect of exchange, which stimulates restructuring of social relations. It may seem that in the conditions of digitalization, social relations are simplified, becoming more free and transparent as once the money becomes invisible, the possibility of ideological manipulation through currency design is vanishing. But, in reality, social relations acquire a more complex and asymmetric features, since the power that controls money not only becomes invisible and, as a result, elusive, but transfuses the very processes associated with the functioning of money.
Keywords:
currency design, dematerialization, digitalization, ideology, money, social evidence, visual
References
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Aumont J. (1997) The Image. L.: British Film Institute.
Baudrillard J. (2000) Simvolicheskii obmen i smert’ [Symbolic Exchange and Death]. M.: Dobrosvet. (In Russ.)
Benjamin W. (2012) Ulitsa s odnostoronnim dvizheniem [One-Way Street]. M.: Ad Marginem Press. (In Russ.)
Bloch M., Parry J. (1989) Money and the Morality of Ecxchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511621659
Borcuch A. (2015) Money and Design. Journal of Economics and Business Research. No. 1. P. 171–181. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2644815
Engelke M. (2008) The Objects of Evidence: Anthropological Approaches to the Production of Knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. No. 14. P. 1–20. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9655.2008.00489.x
Hart K. (2007) Money is Always Personal and Impersonal. Anthropology today. Vol. 23. No. 5. P. 12–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8322.2007.00536.x
Helleiner E. (1998) National Currencies and National Identities. American Behaviour Scientist. Vol. 41. No. 10. P. 1409–1436. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764298041010004
Kakavas G. (2016) Hellenistic Royal Portraiture on Coins. Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World / Ed. by C.A. Picon, S. Hemingway. NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. P. 70–76.
Lauer J. (2008) Money as Mass Communication: U.S. Paper Currency and the Iconography of Nationalism. The Communication Review. Vol. 11. No. 2. P. 109–132. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714420802068359
Luhmann N. (2005) Media kommunikatsii [Media of Communication]. M.: Logos. (In Russ.)
Marx K. (1959) K kritike politicheskoi ekonomii [A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]. Sochineniya [Works]. Vol. 13. M.: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury. (In Russ.)
Marx K. (1960) Kapital [Capital]. Sochineniya [Works]. Vol. 23. M.: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury. (In Russ.)
Marx K. (1969) Ekonomicheskie rukopisi 1857–1859 godov [Economic manuscripts of 1857–1859]. Sochineniya [Works]. Vol. 46. P. 2. M.: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury. (In Russ.)
Maurer B. (2006) The Anthropology of Money. Annual Review of Anthropology. No. 35. P. 15–36. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.35.081705.123127
McGinley Ch. (1993) Coining Nationality: Woman as Spectacle on the 19th Century Currency. American Transcendant Quaterly. Vol. 7. No. 3. P. 247–269.
Nikitin А.P. (2013) Den’gi kak sredstvo sotsial’noi kommunikatsii [Money as Meanss of Social Communication]. Vestnik Kemerovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta [Bulletin of Kemerovo State University]. Vol. 54. No. 2. P. 129–132. (In Russ.)
Orlov A. (2008) Bumazhnye denezhnye znaki v Belarusi [Paper Money in Belarus]. Minsk: Minskaya fabrika tsvetnoi pechati. (In Russ.)
Penrose J. (2011) Designing the Nation. Banknotes, Banal Nationalism and Alternative Conceptions of the State. Political Geography. Vol. 30. No. 8. P. 429–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2011.09.007
Sear D.R. (2006) Greek Coins and Their Values. L.: Spink and Son Ltd.
Simmel G. (2004) The Philosophy of Money. L., NY: Routledge.
Sontag S. (1980) Fascinating Fascism. Under the Sign of Saturn. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. P. 73–105.
Truitt A. (2020) Money. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. URL: https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/money (accessed 2 September 2020).
van Campenhout L., Frens J., Overbeeke K., Standaert A., Peremans H. (2013) Physical Interaction in a Dematerialized World. International Journal of Design. Vol. 7. No. 1. P. 1–18.
Voloshinov V. (1993) Marksizm i filosofiya yazyka [Marxism and the Philosophy of Language]. M.: Labirint. (In Russ.)
Vukichevich Н. (2017) Platezhi: nalichnye vs. beznalichnye [Payments: Cash vs Contactless Payments]. Vodianoi znak. Vol. 125–126. No. 3–4. P. 16–21. (In Russ.)
Zelizer V. (2004) Sotsial’noe znachenie deneg [The Social Meaning of Money]. M.: Izd. dom GU VShE. (In Russ.)
Article
Received: 05.08.2020
Accepted: 25.09.2020
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Other cite formats:
APA
Shtalenkova, K. I. (2020). The Dynamics of Currency Design in the Socio-Historical Context. Interaction. Interview. Interpretation, 12(3), 31-49. https://doi.org/10.19181/inter.2020.12.3.2
Section
Theoretical discourses and debates
