Geopolitics of Monetary Innovation in the Longue Durée. Financialization, Digitalization and the Crisis of the Global Hegemony

Abstract

Since the beginning of the new millennium, a great variety of experiences of monetary innovation has taken place worldwide. Actually, very assorted types of social agents, at very different levels of interaction and with very diverse purposes and results, are creating a plethora of global, macro-regional, local or deterritorialized currencies seriously defying both the hegemonic role of the US dollar, and the traditional agents, methods and criteria related to money's creation and circulation. Given such a picture, the main aim of this essay is to characterize and valuate the principle features of the ongoing process of monetary innovation, in light of its modern and contemporary history. We adopt an interdisciplinary theoretical frame, based on the ground of the political sociology and the world system theory, and a genealogical method focused on the monetary history of the United States. The main result here presented is the centrality of the dialectic between innovation and regulation, and of their social and institutional forces. Actually, it can help the comprehension about where, when and why new forms of money appear, as well as the individuation of the main traits characterizing the current stage of global crisis and of its risky implications.