The money makers: The institutionalisation of alternative currencies in North-West Europe

Abstract

This dissertation examines the development and implementation of alternative currencies in North-West Europe. Although often analysed as grassroots alternatives to global financial practice, alternative currencies are, by and large, professionally designed and managed by specialised enterprises. I found that these enterprises engage in intense interactions with established public institutions and businesses, as well as with financial legislation and regulatory bodies. Even though they are privately issued, such currencies are subsidised, purchased, and implemented by local governments and civic institutions. The institutionalisation of alternative currencies thus concerns processes whereby their establishment becomes embedded in formalised practices, procedures, and regimes of regulation. I argue that this is a common feature of alternative economic practice that is consistently disregarded or overlooked, both in activist literature, and in the anthropology of money. This dissertation addresses the question of what this institutionalisation implies for our understandings of (alternative) economies. In doing so, I aim to draw attention to the tight institutional network that connects the multiplicity of agents constituting and structuring economies. There are more than two sides—heads (the state) or tails (the market) to a coin. This dissertation turns to the space in-between—to the edge of the coin—for its inspiration.