N Dodd
Biographic Data
| ID | 31802 |
|---|---|
| NAME | N Dodd |
| GIVEN NAMES | N |
| FAMILY NAME | Dodd |
| SIGNATURE | DODD N |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4321-3893 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 257 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Life World’ on Ledger: A ‘Scenic’ View
This paper explores the sociological and cultural implications of blockchain technology, specifically focusing on three prominent blockchain ecosystems: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Algorand. The study utilizes the concept of the lifeworld, which encompasses collective human perceptions and everyday communicative social interaction, to analyze the formation and perpetuation of lifeworlds within these ecosystems. By employing scene theory as an analytic…
Foreword to the 2017 Edition
The Social Life of Bitcoin
This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is 'trust-free' money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper's heart is the paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a 'thing' that must be abstracted from social l…
The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies
A dollar is a dollar-or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in way…
Utopian Monies: Complementary Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Social Life of Money
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, there has been an explosion of interest in alternative and complementary currencies, by academics, governments, practitioners, and activists who are interested in the social and political possibilities generated by money's myriad forms; and by everyday users of money who are coming face-to-face with new forms of payment such as Apple Pay and PayPal, novel modes of financing such as crowdfunding and peer-to-…
Introduction to BJS special issue
The articles in this issue were all commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the UK's Brexit referendum result in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in November 2016 to present a rapid sociological response to the challenges and questions posed by these tumultuous events. Ostensibly these are two very different kinds of political events. The Brexit referendum in the UK was an unprecedented popular vote …
Afterword
This article discusses various challenges to the classical view of money as primarily a quantitative medium that contributes to the spread of a calculative attitude in our relations. Often associated with Georg Simmel and other social thinkers such as Weber, this somewhat dystopian view of money has more recently been given fresh impetus by a number of ‘post-crash’ publications that cast money as a root cause of increasing debt, greed, and irresp…
Simmel and Benjamin
This chapter brings a much-needed historical perspective to bear on current claims that our period is one of unprecedented acceleration. In fact, speed becomes identified with modernity in classical social theory. As early as 1900, Simmel describes how the acceleration of city life in the modern metropolis gives rise to a new temporality. His analysis of modern time-consciousness as one involving immediacy, simultaneity, and presentism is so pres…
The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational, and Social Temporalities
There is widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be. This work argues that popular and scholarly claims about acceleration gloss over the complex relationship of technology, speed and time
Redeeming Simmel's money
Response to Hau Book Symposium on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Nietzsche's money
Although Nietzsche rarely features in discussions of money, he offered important insights into such matters as the relationship between the money economy and the permanent decadence of modernity, money's impact on social hierarchy and individualism and the moral economy of debt. His remarks on these themes are closely connected to two of his best known, but controversial, ideas: the eternal return and the Übermensch. In this paper, I explore how …
Simmel's Perfect Money: Fiction, Socialism and Utopia in The Philosophy of Money
This article explores the notion of 'perfect' money that Simmel introduces in The Philosophy of Money. Its aim is twofold: first, to connect this idea to his more general arguments about the nature of society and the ambivalence of modernity, and, second, to assess its relevance for contemporary debates about the future of money, especially following the global financial crisis. I argue that Simmel's concept of perfect money can be understood as …
Strange money: Risk, Finance and Socialized Debt
This paper explores an essential but neglected aspect of recent discussions of the banking and financial system, namely money itself. Specifically, I take up a distinction drawn by Susan Strange which has never been fully elaborated: between a financial system that is global, and an international monetary system that remains largely territorial. I propose a sociological elaboration of this distinction by examining each category, 'finance' and 'mo…
Goethe in Palermo: Urphänomen and Analogical Reasoning in Simmel and Benjamin
This paper considers substantive and methodological issues that are raised by the deployment of Goethe's notion of the Urphänomen in the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. The paper is exploratory. I employ Goethe's idea, and his approach to empirical observation and theory more generally, to examine affinities and contrasts between the methodology of Simmel and Benjamin. Like Goethe, both Simmel and Benjamin make imaginative use of analog…
On Simmel's Pure Concept of Money: A Response to Ingham
In “Laundering ‘Money’: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity within the Sociology of Money”, I explored the conceptual ramifications of recent developments in the sociology of money. These developments corresponded to what appear to be two countervailing trends in the world of money: homogenisation and diversification. The second trend, particularly, raises important conceptual questions about how money should be defined, and I sought to address th…
Money
The sociology of money is a new and thriving field. Significant theoretical contributions to a sociological understanding of money were made by Marx, Simmel, and Weber, among others. While Weber focused primarily on the legal status of money – he broadly agreed with Knapp's characterization of money as a “creature of the state” – Marx and Simmel undertook extensive investigations into the nature of money as a medium. According to Marx, money is a…
Foucault's void1
Reinventing monies in Europe
This paper offers much-needed analytical refinement to the sociology of money. I argue that we need to develop a conceptual vocabulary that enables us to take account of two apparently conflicting trends in the world's money flows. While state-issued ‘currency’ is undergoing a process of homogenization, ‘money’ in a generic sense is diversifying through the rapid growth of new monetary forms. I move on to suggest that all forms of money (some cur…
"Laundering "money: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity Within the Sociology of Money
Recent work by sociologists, geographers and anthropologists has drawn attention to the "de-territorialization" of money, and to the emergence of "alternative" monetary forms such as e-money and complementary currencies. The increasingly diverse nature of these forms raises doubts as to whether "money" is a sufficiently coherent entity to be covered by a single definition. In this paper, these doubts are explored through a critical evaluation of …
What Is ‘Sociological’ About the Euro
There are no clear precedents for European monetary integration. It would therefore be unwise to rely too closely on evidence drawn from other monetary systems for an indication of where, when and how problems might arise under the new monetary regime. This article comprises four sections. The first deals with issues of economic convergence and the problems associated with viewing the euro zone countries as an optimum currency area. The second mo…
Economic Sociology in Great Britain
Проект осуществляется при поддержке Московской высшей школы
Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life
The nation‐state should be a central unit of analysis for research into international and transnational regulation. Considering the research implications of this, we focus on the emergence stage of the regulatory process. We discuss how knowledge is contested in discussions between states over regulatory problems. We argue that a range of factors, not just a narrowly conceived national interest, influence their incentive to cooperate. Research is…
Global Uncertainties of Money
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
Money and the Nation-State: Contested Boundaries of Monetary Sovereignty in Geopolitics
Has international monetary integration undermined monetary sovereignty? In this paper, a sociological approach is taken towards two of the major conditions which are reputed to have contributed to the erosion of monetary sovereignty: financial deregulation and the growth of offshore markets. In the first section, the reconstruction of international monetary and financial networks is examined with particular reference to Japan, Germany and Britain…
The Social Life of Bitcoin
This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is 'trust-free' money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper's heart is the paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a 'thing' that must be abstracted from social l…
The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies
A dollar is a dollar-or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in way…
Reinventing monies in Europe
This paper offers much-needed analytical refinement to the sociology of money. I argue that we need to develop a conceptual vocabulary that enables us to take account of two apparently conflicting trends in the world's money flows. While state-issued ‘currency’ is undergoing a process of homogenization, ‘money’ in a generic sense is diversifying through the rapid growth of new monetary forms. I move on to suggest that all forms of money (some cur…
"Laundering "money: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity Within the Sociology of Money
Recent work by sociologists, geographers and anthropologists has drawn attention to the "de-territorialization" of money, and to the emergence of "alternative" monetary forms such as e-money and complementary currencies. The increasingly diverse nature of these forms raises doubts as to whether "money" is a sufficiently coherent entity to be covered by a single definition. In this paper, these doubts are explored through a critical evaluation of …
Introduction to BJS special issue
The articles in this issue were all commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the UK's Brexit referendum result in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in November 2016 to present a rapid sociological response to the challenges and questions posed by these tumultuous events. Ostensibly these are two very different kinds of political events. The Brexit referendum in the UK was an unprecedented popular vote …
Simmel's Perfect Money: Fiction, Socialism and Utopia in The Philosophy of Money
This article explores the notion of 'perfect' money that Simmel introduces in The Philosophy of Money. Its aim is twofold: first, to connect this idea to his more general arguments about the nature of society and the ambivalence of modernity, and, second, to assess its relevance for contemporary debates about the future of money, especially following the global financial crisis. I argue that Simmel's concept of perfect money can be understood as …
Strange money: Risk, Finance and Socialized Debt
This paper explores an essential but neglected aspect of recent discussions of the banking and financial system, namely money itself. Specifically, I take up a distinction drawn by Susan Strange which has never been fully elaborated: between a financial system that is global, and an international monetary system that remains largely territorial. I propose a sociological elaboration of this distinction by examining each category, 'finance' and 'mo…
Goethe in Palermo: Urphänomen and Analogical Reasoning in Simmel and Benjamin
This paper considers substantive and methodological issues that are raised by the deployment of Goethe's notion of the Urphänomen in the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. The paper is exploratory. I employ Goethe's idea, and his approach to empirical observation and theory more generally, to examine affinities and contrasts between the methodology of Simmel and Benjamin. Like Goethe, both Simmel and Benjamin make imaginative use of analog…
Nietzsche's money
Although Nietzsche rarely features in discussions of money, he offered important insights into such matters as the relationship between the money economy and the permanent decadence of modernity, money's impact on social hierarchy and individualism and the moral economy of debt. His remarks on these themes are closely connected to two of his best known, but controversial, ideas: the eternal return and the Übermensch. In this paper, I explore how …
Whither Mammon? Postmodern Economics and Passive Enrichment
Redeeming Simmel's money
Response to Hau Book Symposium on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
On Simmel's Pure Concept of Money: A Response to Ingham
In “Laundering ‘Money’: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity within the Sociology of Money”, I explored the conceptual ramifications of recent developments in the sociology of money. These developments corresponded to what appear to be two countervailing trends in the world of money: homogenisation and diversification. The second trend, particularly, raises important conceptual questions about how money should be defined, and I sought to address th…
Money and the Nation-State: Contested Boundaries of Monetary Sovereignty in Geopolitics
Has international monetary integration undermined monetary sovereignty? In this paper, a sociological approach is taken towards two of the major conditions which are reputed to have contributed to the erosion of monetary sovereignty: financial deregulation and the growth of offshore markets. In the first section, the reconstruction of international monetary and financial networks is examined with particular reference to Japan, Germany and Britain…
What Is ‘Sociological’ About the Euro
There are no clear precedents for European monetary integration. It would therefore be unwise to rely too closely on evidence drawn from other monetary systems for an indication of where, when and how problems might arise under the new monetary regime. This article comprises four sections. The first deals with issues of economic convergence and the problems associated with viewing the euro zone countries as an optimum currency area. The second mo…
Foucault's void1
Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life
The nation‐state should be a central unit of analysis for research into international and transnational regulation. Considering the research implications of this, we focus on the emergence stage of the regulatory process. We discuss how knowledge is contested in discussions between states over regulatory problems. We argue that a range of factors, not just a narrowly conceived national interest, influence their incentive to cooperate. Research is…
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
Money and the Nation-State: Contested Boundaries of Monetary Sovereignty in Geopolitics
Has international monetary integration undermined monetary sovereignty? In this paper, a sociological approach is taken towards two of the major conditions which are reputed to have contributed to the erosion of monetary sovereignty: financial deregulation and the growth of offshore markets. In the first section, the reconstruction of international monetary and financial networks is examined with particular reference to Japan, Germany and Britain…
Whither Mammon? Postmodern Economics and Passive Enrichment
Global Uncertainties of Money
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy
Geopolitics and the Regulation of Economic Life
The nation‐state should be a central unit of analysis for research into international and transnational regulation. Considering the research implications of this, we focus on the emergence stage of the regulatory process. We discuss how knowledge is contested in discussions between states over regulatory problems. We argue that a range of factors, not just a narrowly conceived national interest, influence their incentive to cooperate. Research is…
What Is ‘Sociological’ About the Euro
There are no clear precedents for European monetary integration. It would therefore be unwise to rely too closely on evidence drawn from other monetary systems for an indication of where, when and how problems might arise under the new monetary regime. This article comprises four sections. The first deals with issues of economic convergence and the problems associated with viewing the euro zone countries as an optimum currency area. The second mo…
Economic Sociology in Great Britain
Проект осуществляется при поддержке Московской высшей школы
Reinventing monies in Europe
This paper offers much-needed analytical refinement to the sociology of money. I argue that we need to develop a conceptual vocabulary that enables us to take account of two apparently conflicting trends in the world's money flows. While state-issued ‘currency’ is undergoing a process of homogenization, ‘money’ in a generic sense is diversifying through the rapid growth of new monetary forms. I move on to suggest that all forms of money (some cur…
"Laundering "money: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity Within the Sociology of Money
Recent work by sociologists, geographers and anthropologists has drawn attention to the "de-territorialization" of money, and to the emergence of "alternative" monetary forms such as e-money and complementary currencies. The increasingly diverse nature of these forms raises doubts as to whether "money" is a sufficiently coherent entity to be covered by a single definition. In this paper, these doubts are explored through a critical evaluation of …
On Simmel's Pure Concept of Money: A Response to Ingham
In “Laundering ‘Money’: On the Need for Conceptual Clarity within the Sociology of Money”, I explored the conceptual ramifications of recent developments in the sociology of money. These developments corresponded to what appear to be two countervailing trends in the world of money: homogenisation and diversification. The second trend, particularly, raises important conceptual questions about how money should be defined, and I sought to address th…
Money
The sociology of money is a new and thriving field. Significant theoretical contributions to a sociological understanding of money were made by Marx, Simmel, and Weber, among others. While Weber focused primarily on the legal status of money – he broadly agreed with Knapp's characterization of money as a “creature of the state” – Marx and Simmel undertook extensive investigations into the nature of money as a medium. According to Marx, money is a…
Foucault's void1
Goethe in Palermo: Urphänomen and Analogical Reasoning in Simmel and Benjamin
This paper considers substantive and methodological issues that are raised by the deployment of Goethe's notion of the Urphänomen in the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin. The paper is exploratory. I employ Goethe's idea, and his approach to empirical observation and theory more generally, to examine affinities and contrasts between the methodology of Simmel and Benjamin. Like Goethe, both Simmel and Benjamin make imaginative use of analog…
Strange money: Risk, Finance and Socialized Debt
This paper explores an essential but neglected aspect of recent discussions of the banking and financial system, namely money itself. Specifically, I take up a distinction drawn by Susan Strange which has never been fully elaborated: between a financial system that is global, and an international monetary system that remains largely territorial. I propose a sociological elaboration of this distinction by examining each category, 'finance' and 'mo…
Simmel's Perfect Money: Fiction, Socialism and Utopia in The Philosophy of Money
This article explores the notion of 'perfect' money that Simmel introduces in The Philosophy of Money. Its aim is twofold: first, to connect this idea to his more general arguments about the nature of society and the ambivalence of modernity, and, second, to assess its relevance for contemporary debates about the future of money, especially following the global financial crisis. I argue that Simmel's concept of perfect money can be understood as …
Nietzsche's money
Although Nietzsche rarely features in discussions of money, he offered important insights into such matters as the relationship between the money economy and the permanent decadence of modernity, money's impact on social hierarchy and individualism and the moral economy of debt. His remarks on these themes are closely connected to two of his best known, but controversial, ideas: the eternal return and the Übermensch. In this paper, I explore how …
Redeeming Simmel's money
Response to Hau Book Symposium on Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The social life of money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
Simmel and Benjamin
This chapter brings a much-needed historical perspective to bear on current claims that our period is one of unprecedented acceleration. In fact, speed becomes identified with modernity in classical social theory. As early as 1900, Simmel describes how the acceleration of city life in the modern metropolis gives rise to a new temporality. His analysis of modern time-consciousness as one involving immediacy, simultaneity, and presentism is so pres…
The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational, and Social Temporalities
There is widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be. This work argues that popular and scholarly claims about acceleration gloss over the complex relationship of technology, speed and time
The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies
A dollar is a dollar-or so most of us believe. Indeed, it is part of the ideology of our time that money is a single, impersonal instrument that impoverishes social life by reducing relations to cold, hard cash. After all, it's just money. Or is it? Distinguished social scientist and prize-winning author Viviana Zelizer argues against this conventional wisdom. She shows how people have invented their own forms of currency, earmarking money in way…
Utopian Monies: Complementary Currencies, Bitcoin, and the Social Life of Money
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, there has been an explosion of interest in alternative and complementary currencies, by academics, governments, practitioners, and activists who are interested in the social and political possibilities generated by money's myriad forms; and by everyday users of money who are coming face-to-face with new forms of payment such as Apple Pay and PayPal, novel modes of financing such as crowdfunding and peer-to-…
Introduction to BJS special issue
The articles in this issue were all commissioned in the immediate aftermath of the UK's Brexit referendum result in June 2016 and the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in November 2016 to present a rapid sociological response to the challenges and questions posed by these tumultuous events. Ostensibly these are two very different kinds of political events. The Brexit referendum in the UK was an unprecedented popular vote …
Afterword
This article discusses various challenges to the classical view of money as primarily a quantitative medium that contributes to the spread of a calculative attitude in our relations. Often associated with Georg Simmel and other social thinkers such as Weber, this somewhat dystopian view of money has more recently been given fresh impetus by a number of ‘post-crash’ publications that cast money as a root cause of increasing debt, greed, and irresp…
The Social Life of Bitcoin
This paper challenges the notion that Bitcoin is 'trust-free' money by highlighting the social practices, organizational structures and utopian ambitions that sustain it. At the paper's heart is the paradox that if Bitcoin succeeds in its own terms as an ideology, it will fail in practical terms as a form of money. The main reason for this is that the new currency is premised on the idea of money as a 'thing' that must be abstracted from social l…
Foreword to the 2017 Edition
Sociology (19 works) · Economics (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory (8 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (7 works) · Law (6 works)