Situated on the border between the anthropology of science (economics) and the anthropology of monetary cultures, this article investigates the social and cultural meanings of money through an analysis of the inter-connections between academic and everyday monetary ideas and practices. The text critiques the normative analytic matrix predominant in much of the sociological literature, a product of economic science itself, concerned with diagnosing the ‘nature’ of ‘monetary problems’ and distinguishing ‘normal’ currencies from ‘sick’ ones. it also critiques the matrix predominant in much of the anthropological literature, which observes currencies through the lens of the great divide between ‘modern’ currencies and all the ‘others.’ Focusing primarily on the empirical cases of brazilian and Argentinean inflation in the second half of the 20th century, it suggests a research agenda that takes into consideration: 1. the presence of monetary models and instruments created by specialists in the everyday meanings and practices associated with money; 2. the presence of everyday monetary ideas and practices in the forms through which specialists perceive and intervene in currencies; 3. the fact that the universes in which these academic ideas and monetary instruments are produced - that is, the universes relating to monetary theories and policies - can be analyzed with the same tools used to study any other native universe; and 4. that this universe of ideas and practices is, of course, situated in time and demands an historical analysis.
Money; inflation; Monetary cultures; Numbers