Money, Sociology of

From premodern societies to the present, money has facilitated the trade of goods, services, and persons. With the rise of the modern nation-state came attempts to affirm national identity through money and to standardize monetary currencies so the state could pay for its wars. These political-economy explanations, however, obscured the other forms and functions that money has taken (and continues to take) in society. Even when money does not appear to take on heterogeneous forms of legal tender, it is accounted for and earmarked by different groups as if it were a multitude of entities. By studying the variation in what money looks like, how it is used, and how its meanings vary, sociological studies capture the cultural codes and multiple identities that constitute money and the marketplace.