What is money? A reflection from economical psychology

Abstract

This article is developed through four argumentative lines related to money. On one hand, it starts from a brief introduction which takes into account both its origin, as a rightful son of commerce, and the influence it has had on the spread of ancient empires.In the second part, some historical and contextual aspects are presented. These have materialized money in different ways, from furs and cowry shells to clay beads and salt bars, in the different human settlements. The symbolic dimension of money is exemplified in this part when it is related to power image, its function as a vehicle of information and propaganda, or the mystic- religious meaning it acquires in different cultures.In the third part, the symbolic entity of money is studied in depth from the perspective of Symbolic Interactionism. The belief that a symbol is a social shared fact, and that a phenomenon has a meaning directly related to its practical function, allow us to consider this theoretical framework as a valid construct to study money.Finally, the existence of special forms of money is stated. Beyond the instrumental aspect of money coming from economics, the approach of anthropology and sociology have shown that, in the money, there are social and cultural aspects outside the marketing sphere and that they can even be the cause for “mutations”, for example the virtual money.Key words: Money, symbolic interactionism, economical behavior.