Remaking money for a just and sustainable future

Abstract

Money is central to capitalism and to our many sustainability crises. This seminar nuances this, by now, commonplace knowledge by arguing that it is not money per se but its architecture – its internal design and governance structures – that is at the root of our variegated civilisational challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss, to rising inequality and the erosion of democracy. Yet, history shows, money’s internal architecture can take many forms and, with them, be conducive to different social and economic dynamics. Building on this insight, monetary entrepreneurs – grassroots groups, municipalities and radical crypto-entrepreneurs – are reclaiming, reorganising, and remaking money to advance a sustainable future.

Approaching money as a socio-technical arrangement with infrastructural effects, the seminar discusses first, the relationship between the design of our conventional money and our sustainability predicaments. It then unfolds three monetary initiatives that are re-designing and re-making money to project us towards a just and sustainable future. In doing this, the seminar will outline three principles along which money is designed and organised – the market, the state and the commons – each shaped by a distinct imaginary of money. It will also show how each organising principle incites particular individual relations towards the collective, resulting in different community dynamics. This has implications for markets’ role in the economy and the health of our democracies. That is, in remaking money, monetary entrepreneurs are opening up new horizons to build new civilisational forms.