ABSTRACT
Money is a puzzle. The standard answer to the question of what is money derives from the late nineteenth-century functionalist account: money is what money does. Conventionally, it is a measure of value (or unit of account); a medium of exchange; a standard of deferred payment; and a store of value. However, there is, in fact, wide and at times quite vigorous disagreement as to what money does and which are the most important of the functions. Does the ‘thing’ have to perform all the functions in order to be money? Is ‘credit’ money? And so on. Further investigation reveals a quite surprising paradox: Money is one of the most important pieces of ‘social technology’ ever developed, but as an object of study in its own right it is neglected by the dominant or mainstream traditions not only in modern economics but also in sociology.
