Based on an interdisciplinary approach (economics, sociology, anthropology and history), this article aims at elucidating what can be called the nature of money, drawing from works published in Aglietta and Orléan (1998) and Théret (2006). The nature of money is to be related to its quasi-universal presence in different types of societies, and to seize it, we examine the three states in which a currency can be observed - incorporated, objectified, institutionalised -, the way each of these states is generating a particular form of monetary reliability - ethical (trust), methodic (confidence), and hierarchical (credibility), and their articulation. Money as currency can also be grasped through its three functional forms- account, "monnayage", and payment - constitutive of its intimate structure which is reproduced by their dynamic linking. In conclusion, we present a matrix correlating states and functional forms of money, and develop the idea of money as a cultural capital from which we draw two of its features which most of the time are discarded: value is granted to a money only in the societal environment where it is recognised and functions as a cultural capital; as an operator of societal totalization, money is also operating the naturalisation of social relationships, which, save in periods of crisis, allows the distributive dimension of the monetary regimes and correlated social and territorial conflicts to be concealed.
Money; Trust
