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 irresponsible banking. Against this, I argue for a more nuanced, qualitatively rich perspective on money, one that is evident in this collection, which undertakes what might be called a ‘qualitative’ analysis of money’s quantitative features. This special issue presents an approach to money that treats it as a pluralistic phenomenon, with many different sides.