Meantime, I just want to give a brief update on my reading. I have this idea at the back of my mind that eventually I'll be able to publish a list of works on Money organised around some coherent structure or set of themes that will be helpful to other folks approaching the subject. The good Lord Keynes complied a bibliography on the origins of money this time last year http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/bibliography-on-origins-of-money.html from a broadly economic perspective. Its a helpful listing, but I think mine would look very different.
Anyway, this post isn't that imagined bibliography. It just the books that I've bought/borrowed or been given most recently. Some I've coveted for ages, others are a lovely surprise. If they fire off any thoughts in your head along the lines of 'If you like that, you might like this' please do stick those thoughts in a comment.
Carrying on the psychoanalytical theme for a moment, I borrowed this from my recent expedition to the BLPES.
It was only published in 2012, so I can forgive myself for not hearing about it. It looks like it has a similar approach to money and economics as the book I picked up from the Freud Museum last summer - Loaded Subjects ed David Bennet . Broadly, its the application of insights from psychoanalysis (clinical) to society and economics. It gathers these together under the Socioanalysis motif. Interesting to me, but as my love for Norman suggests I'm more of a theory man. I find the application of clinical analysis can make things very complicated, very quickly. But I shall read a few of the essays and let you know in due course.
Sticking with Psychology generally, I also borrowed this from the BLPES.
Its a neat and comprehensive guide to what psychology has had to say about money. Published in 1998, it has a pretty healthy amount of psychoanalysis in it, too. Albeit mixed in with a load of other psychologies with which I'm not much enamored - lots of statistical significance tests and all that malarkey. Twenty years ago I'd have thought it was the bees knees. I've just found you can get a secondhand paperback copy for around a tenner, so I'll definitely get this one to add to the shelf. Good as a reference at the very least.
Next up its this odd book God and Money by Nimi Wariboko. It's a theology of money. My guess would be that its a unique work. I'm quite fascinated by it. It's a new perspective for me. Nimi hasn't done himself any favours with me by declaring his desire for a one world currency in the introduction, but never mind. I'll certainly be on the look out for a hard copy of this. Its a 2008 book. I've never seen anything like it, before.
From God to Gods... well Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors by Janet Lee Scott. I got this one a while back - November I think - but thought I'd include it here. Its about - among other things - the Chinese tradition of money burning. They burn 'hell money' to help the dead in the afterlife. Hell money isn't real money (it is possible to write a book on that short sentence, but you get what I mean) and apparently, for the Chinese, burning real money is bad luck. I'm keen to read this prior to my next burning on 23rd Oct 2014 - help put it in a new context.
Yikes. Getting hardcore now. I've seen this Derrida book mentioned a few time in my reading. Most recently in David Graeber's Toward an Anthropology of Value. I strongly suspect that I'm going to have the same opinion of it that Graeber hints at - he's unsurprised that Jacques finds the idea of the gift, impossible. A bit like the idea of forgiveness, also in Derrida's view impossible. Still, there is no way for me to resist a text with both Money and Time in the title. And despite reading the forward and then shouting racist (well, anti-french) abuse at Derrida (yes, I know he's French-Algerian) because of the logical contortions of the last five line sentence, I will persist. Perhaps it works better in french.
The whole postmodernism thing passed my by during my LSE days - I think the word might have been banned in the Economic History department. I'm still not sure I really like the cut of its jib. I always find myself asking 'Yeah, but what is it? This thing you're talking about, is it an abstraction, is it real?' No doubt all that will become crystal clear to me, once I've read enough Derrida, Lacan, Foucault etc. #sarcasm
Which reminds me. I still have Foucault's The History of Sexuality Pts 1, 2 & 3 nestled between Freud and Jung on my top shelf (top shelf for all the sex books, obviously).
Anyway, onward. You know I'm loving Marc Shell? He's the boss. Unfortunately no-one saw fit to buy me his latest offering on Wampum for xmas http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wampum-Origins-American-Money-Shell/dp/0252033663 but never mind. I have got something else from the New Economic Criticism canon which I'll come to in a moment. But given my somewhat sketchy appreciation of postmodernism and my limited comprehension of critical theory generally I thought a quick bit of background study would do me the world of good. I fortuitously stumbled upon this in my local charity bookshop.
I was going to insistent that the charity used the funds I gave them to invest in shares or other such nefarious capitalistic activity, being that I'm not a fan of charity and all that, but given what Comic Relief does with its donations I felt they were fairly likely to invest in weapons manufacturers or tobacco companies anyway, so I just paid my money - all £1.99 of it - and kept my mouth shut.
Smile. I'm joking (sort of).
For some reason, I know the name Terry Eagleton. I must have read an article or two. And without bothering to google him to confirm or deny this, I seem to think he's a lefty intellectual, Professor of Literature? Anyway the clincher was noticing a chapter on psychoanalysis and remembering that Marc Shell is also a Professor of Literature. I have checked the reviews on amazon. Apparently this is a corking little book. I'm looking forward to it. I like a stubby one every now and then.
Eagleton's book is - in large part - a preparation for this monster. A fabulous xmas gift.
I still haven't forgiven myself for my poor reading of Marc Shell's Money, Language and Thought. I knew it was brilliant when I was reading it but I also knew I was - for the most part - just not getting it. Tackling 420 pages of Mary Poovey without some preparation would be asking for trouble. I came to this one through Diane Coyle's review on her blog - I remember Diane saying it was great but not easy and quite long. Given that Diane reads about fifteen books a day, and has a Phd in reading very difficult things, I thought a bit of preparation on my part essential. God knows when I'll get around to it, but that word 'Genres' is the clincher for me. I'll have to read it sooner of later. I've discussed before the idea I explored in my dissertation that (musical) genre discovery/creation is in some sense a representation of (or, actually is) economic growth.
Whilst I'm on the literary theme, I also picked up Ezra Pound's Selected Poems and Dylan Thomas Selected Works on that same visit to the charity shop. I mean the clue is in the name but Ezra Pound has a lot to say about money and language - I'm looking forward to reading what Robert Anton Wilson has to say about him. And obviously Dylan Thomas is just God. And its his centenary this year. 'Nuff said.
I've made a start on this one already.
On the other hand, this one I have a stronger feeling about.
I noticed this a while back but I was put off slightly by the thinking that it would be, more or less, a sociology of exchange relations and economy in areas of intimate service. Not only prostitution, but also intimate nursing care and that sort of thing. Well, I think it is to some extent. But plainly, given her previous work (above) Viviana is very strong on Money. I've read my fill of books that pay little regard to Money, so I'm very hopeful that this work will have interesting things to say about the sex/money nexus. As I've said many times, that's very very important.
And last in this little round-up....
You probably know who Dorothy Rowe is. She was quite famous I think. I have no idea. But title a book 'The Real Meaning of Money' and at some point you're bound to fall under my radar. This a was a BLPES borrow. I'm not sure what to make of it. Ms Rowe seems to have written on many subjects.
I'll reserve judgement. I've noticed I can buy it for just a couple of quid so I might do that, have a copy on my shelf and wait for it to pop into my life.
I'm quite into the whole idea of 'waiting for the right moment to read a book'. Letting them come to you as it were. I appreciate it's not a particularly logical way to approach it, but I'm cool with that. It does seem to work. Reading Norman O Brown's Life against Death this summer for example, that was just a mind blowing experience. I knew the book ticked the right boxes for me - money, psychoanalysis, philosophy - but I waited (mainly by chance I have to say) until the right moment to read it. I think I called it 'immersive reading' in my ramble on it. At the end of the day, some of these books are the result of a lifetime's thought and work. I know I can come across as a bit flippant, but really, I think its important to try to respect that. If you approach a book like its a fast food, to be consumed just to get the calories into you, then you're limiting your appreciation. I prefer to savor the experience as much as I can.
On which note; I still haven't done cover to cover on good old Thomas Crump.
Maybe he'll be my summer break read this year. Then again there is gloriously named Mrs A Hingston Quiggin who's Survey of Primitive Money sits on my shelf awaiting my full attention.
One last thing. If I started listing all the books I want this post would never end. So I'll just mention one (well, one in addition to Marc Shell's Wampum). I want The End of Kinship. Its a critical review of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (which I've never seen or read). So the plan is, see the play, read the book. I know it sounds a bit off piste - like what the hell has it got to do with Money? But its by Marc Shell. And the first chapter is called Civilisation and its Discontents (economists - that's the title of one of Freud's most important books). I don't know exactly what it has to do with money, but I want to find out.