Finansjeryzacja lokalności i kulturowe spojrzenie na pieniądz finansowy

Abstract

Financialization is “a pattern of accumulation in which profits accrue primarily through financial channels rather than through trade and commodity production”. The expansion of the financial sector is enabled by a credit money mechanism that takes on a fictitious character. As a result, financialization leads to the reproduction of social inequality and the subordination of individual behavior to the logic of financial markets. According to critics of the process, local culture is being destroyed by credit money. In this paper, the author points to the social basis of financialization by demonstrating the ways in which local communities produce money – personalizing it and creating its meaning based on debt relationships. He illustrates the influence of culture on money using the example of microfinance and its criticism. Finally, the author proposes a different perspective on financialization, which – by combining the mutual influence of culture and money – allows for changing the categories of thinking about contemporary sources of locality and the divide between the global and the local. Key-words: financialization, microfinance, money theory, credit money, debt relationships, local communities