A social constructivist analysis of the 2007 banking crisis: Building trust and transparency through community currencies

Abstract

This article examines the 2007 banking crisis from an interdisciplinary and, in particular, social constructivist perspective to identify its structural and systemic causes. After presenting and explaining a wide meta-theoretical framework that can accommodate different understandings of socio-economic action, it argues that some of the scale-invariant properties of community currency systems could usefully be applied to global finance. On this basis, it presents a concrete proposal for strengthening the democratic dimension of the banking system as a vital nexus between the real economy, government and society.