I've just been at the Finance and Society Conference at City University in London for the past couple of days. It was the first 'in person' conference I've attended since 2019 because of the pandemic. I'm not 'in' academia. I'm not doctoral student, researcher, lecturer, or professor. In my day-to-day life I've little contact with anything that resembles university or academic life. Currently, I drive a van to earn my living. When I am lucky enough to attend a conference focusing on my area of interest I find it wholly invigorating. I guess if you're in academia you might get used to being able to chat about the weird, wonderful and esoteric stuff you're reading or thinking about. I don't have that in my day to day life. So it's brilliant to be able to be a pretend-academic for a couple of days every now and then.
My detachment from the community meant though, that I was unaware that Nigel Dodd died just over a month ago on the 12th August 2022. So as I write this on the morning after finding out I'm still coming to terms with my thoughts and feelings. I met Nigel only few times - maybe half a dozen - and we occasionally had some email correspondence. However, his influence on the path of my life cannot be overstated. Without Nigel it's doubtful that I'd have done any of the stuff I've done in the last six or seven years. I don't think I'd have written The Money Burner's Manual back in 2015 if it hadn't been for Nigel so I don't think Church of Burn would exist and I don't think Burning Issue would have been published.
I can't remember when or how it was exactly that Nigel and I first connected - around late 2013 or early 2014. Our conversations would have been about Norman O Brown's Life Against Death - a book largely forgotten as psychoanalysis lost its currency, or at least whose currency was only really circulating in modified form with the French academy. I read it in September 2013 when I was on my first holiday after splitting up with my wife. It blew my mind. Nigel had read it not long before me and had, I think, a similar reaction.
So realising Nigel was keen to explore money from new or different perspectives, I soon got hold of what was at the time his only book - The Sociology of Money (1991). My review is here. The final page had the following lines "[Economic reasoning] should be the object, not the foundation, of the project to explain how money works, to understand its nature and account for its existence in society". I make no comment or presumption about Nigel's opinion of my work, but from my perspective I knew I'd found a kindred spirit.
Nigel and I were both born in 1965. He'd had a glittering academic career which saw him become a Professor of Sociology and Department Head of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Despite my pretensions, my academic 'career' consisted of a 2:1 - about which I'm still bitter about :-) - from the Economic History Department at the London School of Economics. We were about as far apart in the hierarchy as you can get. In fact, you could reasonably argue that I wasn't even 'in' the hierarchy, let alone at the bottom of it. But no matter. Nigel offered me words of encouragement, shared his papers, told me stories, and recommended books. He pretty much insisted I should read Bataille's The Accursed Share. I'm so glad he did because it was the transformative text for me personally and for my project.
A few stories spring to mind.
When Nigel was younger he took a summer job. He worked for a secure transport company that was tasked with transporting old, worn-out banknotes to the top secret, secure-facility incinerator (which I think is somewhere in Essex). He told me he used to enjoy a snooze in the back of the van on top of sacks containing millions of pounds worth of cash. I always wonder if this little connection to money burning played, consciously or unconsciously, into Nigel being so supportive of me and my money burning adventures.
As I indicated earlier, 2013 thru 2014 were tricky years for me. My confidence was at a low ebb. Being in touch with Nigel at that time really helped me. It gave me the feeling that my writing on money was in some sense being validated. It doesn't matter if that's true. The point is that because Nigel was kind enough to take the time to engage with me, I was encouraged to carry on, keep my head in a book and, as best I could, think through and express my ideas about money on this blog. Sometime early 2014, Nigel got in touch to ask if I'd like a preview a draft of his new book. Of course, I jumped at the chance. I read it, loved it, and (completely unsure of the etiquette) sent back 8 pages of corrections. He received them with grace. The Social Life of Money changed my world. There is no other book on money that covers as much theoretical ground. Nothing even close. I thought I had a pretty good grounding in the different schools of thought on money but Nigel showed me so much more. He also managed by a quirk of fate (or twist of synchronicity) to arrange his book launch on what was then my 'annual money burning day'. From 2007 thru to 2014 I'd burned money on 23rd October every year. So of course, when I turned up at the launch in the Old Theatre at the LSE and Nigel asked me about my next burn I had to say 'It's tonight!'
Nigel gave the opening keynote at the Art/Money/Crisis conference at Cambridge University in 2016. I always remember the warm greeting he gave me in front of the assembled academics which was a massive boost to my confidence and allowed me to relax and enjoy what otherwise might have been a very intimidating environment for a van driver who likes to read money books. His tone quickly changed to exasperation though as he told me about how he'd just learned he was being sued by the World Gold Council for remarks he'd made about the relations between gold and shit - a very well known psychoanalytical idea explored fully in Norman O Brown's Life Against Death. It was immediately apparent to me that this was a ludicrous, aggressive action which had no chance of success. But Nigel seemed genuinely upset by it and, even though I'm sure after a few words with a solicitor Nigel would have been reassured, I wish I could have been a better source of comfort for him in the moment.
Nigel published a lot of brilliant papers - many feed into The Social Life of Money. From his work in the 2010s I would recommend Nietzsche's Money (2013) where he writes about Norman O Brown's Life Against Death. In the noughties though, Nigel had a central role in an epic debate about the nature of money
It took place between 2000 and 2007 across various academic journals. It was hugely important. I was actually chatting about it with one of the keynote speakers at the Finance and Society Conference a couple of hours before I found out the sad news about Nigel's death. It involved some stellar sociologist's of money and its genesis was Viviana Zelizer's challenge to the generally accepted conception of money within the academic literature. She argued that money can be bestowed with 'social meaning' and that this disrupts the idea of money having a 'universal' conception. I gave an overview of the debate in The Money Burner's Manual (the key papers are listed here). By 2005 what started as a wide ranging dialogue between several academics began to narrow down to a dispute between Nigel and one of his Cambridge Phd advisors, the renowned sociologist and Emeritus Reader in Sociology and Political Economy and Fellow of Christ’s College, Geoffrey Ingham.
Even though the papers were filtered through the language of an academic journal you can sense the tensions beneath the surface. The 2007 denouement revolved around the work of George Simmel (1858 - 1918). Now, Nigel's other Phd advisor was David Frisby. He'd become a colleague of Nigel's at the LSE in 2005 just a year or two before the final battle. And it just so happened that David Frisby was the world's foremost scholar on Simmel having translated his 1905 masterwork The Philosophy of Money into English for the first time in 1978. (When David Frisby died in 2010 Nigel wrote this tribute.)
So the battle lines were drawn. The details of it might seem arcane to those outside the academic-money-verse but they reach directly to the heart of money. It boils down to ideas about how the Unit of Account (UoA) function of money - i.e. how money is able to measure how many apples it takes to buy a gazebo - comes into being. Many (including me) see the UoA as money's most important and primary function. Geoffrey Ingham had said that Simmel's view supported his own that in order to exist the UoA needs an authority. Nigel was clear. Simmel hadn't said this. What he'd said that the UoA arises from an (unconscious) equivalence between the total supply of money and the total supply of goods. I've since thought and written about this quite a bit. It was something that had stuck with me since I read Simmel back in the late 90s. I won't go into it here because it a strange idea that takes some explaining. But Nigel was spot on in his response to Geoffrey Ingham. Nigel's paper bought the battle to an end.
I count myself as very privileged that a few years after the fact, Nigel relayed a little of the experience of being involved what was quite an abrasive exchange at time. I don't think he'd enjoyed it. I do think it was a major contribution to the academic thought on money.
I invited Nigel to every event Church of Burn put on at The Cockpit, Marylebone but unfortunately never managed to persuade him to be Synod Bishop or just to attend and enjoy the evening. In 2019 Nigel's LSE colleague the late David Graeber was a Synod Bishop for us. David died about nine months later. Nigel sent me a sweet email regretting that he'd been too intimated by David's superstar status to introduce himself on those occasions when they found themselves in close proximity. I found this endearing, although from my humble perspective very weird too! David had been a charming presence at Church of Burn. Through his books and social media presence it was very easy to feel like you knew him a little because his style was personable and down to earth. Even though Nigel's writing style was a little less personal than David's he was an absolutely lovely man to communicate with and - on the odd occasion he took to social media - he was friendly and warm. The point is they also happen to be two of the foremost scholars on money, ever, with offices on the same campus. And yet they'd never spoke! I'm not the best hustler but if I'd been hanging round at the LSE I would definitely would have found a way to bring them together if only to take a selfie with them!
I count myself as very lucky to have known Nigel. It'd be presumptuous of me to call him a friend (although he was such a nice bloke I don't think he'd have minded). But we never went out for a pint or anything like that. He was a friend to me, though - if you know what I mean. He did so much for me. And he totally didn't have to. He didn't have to get involve in projects like the Brixton Pound either with my friend Charlie Waterhouse. But he did because he was a wonderful, compassionate man with a brilliant mind and I'll always be grateful to him for taking the time to connect with me.
Here's my last little story. I'm really proud of this one and it came out of the blue.
It was June 2020 and I hadn't heard from Nigel for a while. The Bank of England was running a public consultation on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Obviously the Covid Pandemic was what was on everyone's minds. Delivery drivers suddenly became 'heroes' and so I'd been busy with boring day to day stuff. No furlough for me unfortunately. With a week or two to go before the consultation deadline I decided that I need to seize the opportunity to make my point and demand that the design of CBDC's must allow their bearers to destroy it. I prepared a draft letter and sent it out to friends and academics asking for co-signatories. The first person to get back to me - within a few minutes - was Nigel. So I wrote a letter to the Governor of the Bank of England signed by myself, Professor Nigel Dodd LSE Sociology, Author The Social Life of Money, and 18 others making our demand that the right for us to destroy our own money should be written into the design of the BoE's CBDC. You can read it here.
Thank you, Nigel, Rest in Peace.