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Making Real Money: Local Currency and Social Economies in the United States

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Making Real Money: Local Currency and Social Economies in the United States Making Real Money: Local Currency and Social Economies in the United States Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Schussman, Alan Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 03/10/2021 15:07:08 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194682 MAKING REAL MONEY: LOCAL CURRENCY AND SOCIAL ECONOMIES IN THE UNITED STATES by Alan Thomas Schussman Copyright c Alan Thomas Schussman 2007 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2 0 0 7 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the disser- tation prepared by Alan Schussman entitled Making Real Money: Local Currency and Social Economies in the United States and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sarah A. Soule Date: Dec 13, 2006 Joseph Galaskiewicz Date: Dec 13, 2006 Kieran Healy Date: Dec 13, 2006 Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. Date: Dec 13, 2006 Dissertation Director: Sarah A. Soule 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Alan Schussman 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The generosity and hospitality of the E. F. Schumacher Society enabled the collection of much of the data used in this dissertation. I thank Susan Witt in particular for inviting me to thumb through the Society’s archives, for the days of conversation and welcome in the Berkshires, and for the courtesy of allowing me use of the figures that illustrate this work. Thanks also to all the organizers of the Local Currencies in the 21st Century conference at Bard College, and all the organizers of local currency across the country who shared their enthusiasm, their insights, and their time with me. I extend thanks to the University of Arizona’s Social and Behavioral Science Re- search Institute for grant money that helped get the project off the ground, and to the National Science Foundation for additional grant support. Thanks to Sarah Soule, Joseph Galaskiewicz, and Kieran Healy for their support over the long process of bringing my dissertation to completion, and their contribu- tions to my thinking about movements, money, and institutions. They also all played formative roles in my broader graduate school career, for which I am grateful. Erin Leahey also gave me valuable feedback and suggestions in the project’s early stages. I certainly would not have made it this far without the help of Sherry Enderle and Vienna Marum, who make possible any graduate student achievement in the department. I enjoyed the friendship and company of many graduate student colleagues, but wish to recognize two in particular. Mary Nell Trautner and I spent a great deal of time sharing ideas and early pieces of our dissertations. And, Jennifer Earl continues to be an invaluable friend, mentor, and colleague. I truly would not be where I am without her. Finally, thanks to my wife, Heather Schussman, and my parents, Lee and Brenda Schussman, for everything. 5 DEDICATION I dedicate this to Heather, who has been with me unfailingly through graduate school and now beyond. Let’s continue to travel together. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES . 8 LIST OF FIGURES . 9 ABSTRACT . 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION . 11 Local currency . 12 Local Currency in the United States . 15 CHAPTER 2 LOCAL CURRENCY IN FOCUS . 17 Contemporary local currency . 21 Other types of community economics . 29 CHAPTER 3 THEORETICAL DISCUSSION . 32 Social movements . 32 The sociology of money . 38 Local currency research . 42 Theoretical opportunities . 43 CHAPTER 4 DATA & DATA COLLECTION . 45 Data and Data Collection . 45 Data discussion and summary . 53 City-level data . 58 CHAPTER 5 REMAKING MONEY . 63 (Re)-Conceptualizing money . 66 Source................................... 69 Flow.................................... 72 Monetarization . 74 Media . 78 Local currency & the work of social movements . 80 Disrupting institutions . 81 Building institutions . 84 Returning to practice and the problems of organizations . 86 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS – Continued CHAPTER 6 OPERATING LOCAL CURRENCY . 89 Movement leaders and entrepreneurs . 89 Who organizes local currency? . 90 Becoming an organizer . 95 Paths to leadership . 102 Problems and issues that organizers confront . 107 Discussion . 119 CHAPTER 7 MAKING LOCAL CURRENCY WORK . 122 Evaluating local currency . 123 Exploring different explanations . 126 Independent variables . 128 Analysis . 129 Discussion . 134 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSION . 136 Reconsidering local currency . 136 Activism in unlikely places . 138 Organizers and organizing . 141 Is local currency real money? . 143 Looking ahead . 145 APPENDIX A FULL TEXT OF ORGANIZER SURVEY . 148 REFERENCES . 179 8 LIST OF TABLES 4.1 Attempted local currency programs in the U.S., by 2005 (N=62) . 51 4.2 Selected organizational statistics . 59 4.3 Selected organizer statistics . 60 4.4 Summary of city-level variables . 61 5.1 Key features of local currency . 68 6.1 Organizer political party identification . 94 6.2 Counts of organizer political orientations . 95 6.3 Rationales for local currency . 98 6.4 Truth table of conjunctions of organizer experiences . 103 7.1 Summary of significant city-level factors (from Collom 2005) . 124 7.2 Age in years and activity status of U.S. local currency projects, 2005 127 7.3 Logistic regression coefficients, currency age greater than 4 years (N=62)130 9 LIST OF FIGURES 2.1 Monroe County-issued scrip currency . 20 2.2 Oldenburg, Germany, currency of 1921 . 21 2.3 The Berk-Share Cordwood note . 23 2.4 The Deli Dollar and Farm Preserve Note . 25 4.1 Local Currencies in the U.S. and their status (2005) . 54 4.2 Age and Status of Local Currencies . 56 4.3 Founding Date and Status . 56 4.4 Mean U.S. currency membership and circulation figures . 57 4.5 Distribution of key variables in surveyed and unsurveyed programs . 62 5.1 Currency produced by the Columbia County Hours program . 79 6.1 Organizer age . 92 6.2 Organizer education . 93 6.3 Organizer household income . 93 6.4 Organizer tenure in community . 94 6.5 Organizer rationales for local currency . 100 6.6 Organizer experience prior to local currency leadership . 101 6.7 Self-reported problems for currency programs . 108 7.1 Local currency age and status . 126 7.2 Estimated effect of household income on probability of longevity outcome131 7.3 QCA solution for currencies over four years of age . 133 10 ABSTRACT Local currencies have been founded in dozens of communities around the United States. By printing their own money that can only be used at participating local merchants or service providers, or in direct exchange with community members, ad- vocates of local currencies try to reinvigorate local commerce, demonstrate community opposition to “big box” retailers and globalization, and support local employment. Although many local currencies have been founded, most of them have had only limited success, but even where local currencies fail to thrive, they raise important questions about the ways in which we organize institutions. This dissertation has two key concerns that emerge from those questions, the first of which is to explore the ways in which the meaning of money is reconfigured by the organizers and the users of local currencies. Second, this project seeks to explain the conditions under which local currencies operate, with the goal of building an understanding of how organiza- tions successfully challenge the deeply embedded and institutionalized practices that surround the use of money. Local currencies are an innovative form of community economic organization that has previously gone under-studied by scholars. This project, the first to address local currencies with a large set of quantitative macro-level data as well as case- oriented archival and survey data, adds to knowledge of movement development and maintenance, and the social construction and use of money. Local currency reminds us that the systems of dollars and cents are socially constructed and that they therefore are changeable. But changing institutions that are part of our everyday life is difficult; because the use of money is so deeply embedded in routines and institutions, it’s difficult to even ask questions about money: Where does money come from? Why do we trust it? And how might alternatives to money work? Local currency reminds us that money is not necessarily as “real” as we tend to think and it invites us to think about the system of institutions in which we live. 11 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Since money is nothing but the indifferent means for concrete and in- finitely varied purposes, its quantity is the only important determination as far as we are concerned. With reference to money, we do not ask what and how, but how much.
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