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

美国亚利桑那州大学当地货币已经在美国的几十个社区成立。当地货币的倡导者通过印制只能在参与的当地商人或服务提供商使用的钞票，或与社区成员直接兑换的钞票，试图重振当地商业，展示社区对“大盒子”零售商和全球化的反对，并支持当地就业。尽管在全国各地建立了许多当地货币，但其中大多数只取得了有限的成功，但即使在当地货币未能蓬勃发展的地方，它们也引发了学术上的问题，即我们组织我们生活的机构的原因和方式。这个项目有两个关键问题：第一，项目试图解释当地货币的运作条件，目的是建立对另类经济组织如何成功地挑战围绕货币使用的根深蒂固和制度化的做法的理解；第二，与此相关，本项目探索组织者和当地货币使用者重新配置货币含义的方式。首先是编制一套市级数据和美国本币项目现状数据；这些数据将用于对本币项目的生存情况进行量化分析。该项目的第二和第三部分是对当地货币组织者和参与者的调查。这些调查将收集有关在全国范围内赞助和推广当地货币的组织的更多信息，并将探索参与这些项目的人的特征，无论是管理这些项目的人，还是通过使用当地货币买卖参与这些项目的人。当地货币是一种创新的共同体经济组织形式，此前学者们对其研究不足。这个项目是第一个用大量量化数据和面向案例的数据处理当地货币的项目，增加了关于组织发展和维护、社会运动参与以及Mone的社会建设和使用的社会学知识

SES-0503199Sarah SouleAlan SchussmanUniversity of ArizonaLocal 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, advocates 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 around the country, most of them have had only limited success, but evenwhere local currencies fail to thrive, they raise scholarly questions about the reasons and the ways in which we organize the institutions within which we live. This project has two key concerns that emerge from those questions: First, the project seeks to explain the conditions under which local currencies operate, with the goal of building an understanding of how alternative economic organizations successfully challenge the deeply embedded and institutionalized practices that surround the use of money; second, and relatedly, this project explores the ways in which the meaning of money is reconfigured by the organizers and the users of local currencies.This project makes use of several research methods. The first is the compilation of a set of city-level data and data on the status of local currency projects in the United States; this data will be used to conduct a quantitative analysis of the survival of local currency projects. The second and third components of the project are surveys of local currency organizers and participants. These surveys will gather additional information about the organizations that sponsor and promote local currency around the country, and will explore the characteristics of the people involved with these projects, both those who manage them and those who participate in them by buying and selling using local currency.Local currencies are an innovative form of community economic organization that have previously gone under-studied by scholars. This project, the first to address local currencies with a large set ofquantitative data as well as case-oriented data, adds to sociological knowledge of organizational development and maintenance, social movement participation, and the social construction and use of mone