The social ambiguity of money: empirical evidence on the multiple usability of money in social life

Abstract

In regard to the purpose of money use, economic theory provides a functionalist answer, while a dominant sociological view focuses on culture. However, Simmel noted the paradoxical nature of money in this respect. Money brings together both quantity and quality; therefore, it simultaneously has different potentialities for its usage. We conducted an exploratory factor analysis by using a representative sample (n = 2000) of the population in Austria to explore the potentialities of money usage. We found seven factors: freedom, community, status, institutional control, conflict, work-related control and household control. A discussion of the factors reveals the simultaneous, ambiguous existence of the qualitative and quantitative potentialities of the usage of money. We conclude that the ambiguity of money can only be described in all its contradictoriness by distinguishing between the concrete earmarking money for specific social purposes (Zelizer) and the potentially unspecific, open usability for alternative concrete or fictional purposes (Simmel).

KEYWORDS:

• Sociology of money
• economic sociology
• money usability
• functions of money
• earmarking money

1. Introduction

Money is omnipresent. We all use money ubiquitously. Ubiquity means here that money is used not only by individuals but also by collective actors and not only for market-oriented purposes but also for multiple, nonmarket-oriented purposes. Money is used for everyday social life purposes and extraordinary events and in the market and nonmarket organizations or communities. Therefore, money has become a ubiquitous social institution in modern societies.

However, orthodox economic money theory still reduces money usage to a few economic functions of money, such as the exchange, unit of account and store of value functions. In current money sociology, orthodox economic theory’s narrow view on money has been repeatedly criticized. In particular, it has been argued that a broader social analysis of money should consider the multiple spectrum of money usability beyond conventional market transactions. Accordingly, exchange theory ignores that the usage of money can be driven by economic (market-rational) or noneconomic (traditional, value-rational, affective; Weber, 1978, p. 24ff.) motives or action goals. In modern capitalistic societies, money symbolizes purchasing power, economic success and welfare. Money stands for a variety of social phenomena, such as freedom (Simmel, 2004), dependence or social security (Deutschmann, 2011; Ganßmann, 2013), organizational or institutional power (Schimank, 2015), social distinction and prestige (Lamont, 1992), and communal expectations and obligations (Zelizer, 1994; Morduch & Schneider, 2017). Even children of elementary school age have a broad understanding of the economic and noneconomic usages of money (Kraemer et al., 2017).

However, sociological money theory has thus far failed to systematize the broad spectrum of social money usages. In the broad sociological theory of money of recent decades, we frequently find hints on the social usage of money. However, systematization and synthetization of the social usages outlined in sociological money theory are still missing. In this paper, we assemble various arguments from the sociological theory of money to one heuristic of money usage. In addition, we draw on a representative original household sample (n = 2000) of the population in Austria where we asked various questions concerning people’s perceptions of money usability. Therefore, the main aim of this article is to distil from sociological money theory a heuristic of the social usage of money and to empirically explore different money usages. We want to present the argument that neither narrow economic functionalism nor cultural reductionism can capture some fundamental characteristics of money that were discussed more than a century ago by Georg Simmel.

We proceed as follows. First, we extract from the sociological literature on money an analytical heuristic framework of social money usage in everyday life. Second, we introduce the method and data of the representative original household sample to explore the dimensions of money usability. Third, we present the results of the exploratory factor analysis. This section also includes the operationalization of the theoretical arguments presented in the outline of the paper (items used in the factor analysis). Finally, the findings are discussed and concluded against the background of the controversies between the quantitative and qualitive money approaches. We argue that the whole ambiguity of money can only be described in all its contradictoriness by distinguishing between the concrete earmarking of money for specific social purposes in social life (Zelizer) and the potentially unspecific, open usability for any other or fictional purposes (Simmel).

2. Money usages: an analytical heuristic

People ubiquitously use money for various purposes. However, despite the ubiquitousness of money in market and nonmarket relations, orthodox economic theory remains strongly limited to the market exchange ‘function’ of money. This means that according to the economic money orthodoxy, money exists because it facilitates the exchange of commodities. By assuming that money only exists because it augments economic progress, orthodox economic theory remains within the boundaries of economic functionalism. Therefore, traditionally, mainstream money economists assume that money has three fundamental functions, namely, that it is a neutral medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value (Hume, 1752; Menger, 1900; Mises, 1924 [1912]; Smith, 1776; Mishkin, 2016, p. 95ff.).

Alternative economic theories and sociological contributions have criticized the neoclassic mainstream approach. Economists (Wray, 2012; Bianco & Sardoni, 2018; Werner, 2014a, 2014b) and sociologists (Ingham, 2004; Huber, 2017; Sahr, 2017; Pettifor, 2017) criticize that mainstream money economics ignores the specific production condition of money. In particular, it has been argued that mainstream economists hardly consider that most money is produced by private banks rather than by any public institution. In addition, it has been noted that money just functions as a ‘store of value’ in the absence of high inflation. In times of high inflation, the promise of purchasing power that money represents loses its credibility. Particularly important for the sociology of money is the (empirical) finding that money is not always the same entity. Accordingly, contrary to the economic perspective, it has been shown that in different contexts, money is used quite differently.

Embedded into different social, cultural and institutional contexts, money is used quite differently depending on the specific context. Apart from Simmel (2004 [1900]), who studied the use of money more than a hundred years ago from a sociological perspective, more recent sociological contributions shed light on the social and cultural dimensions of money usage. Drawing on Simiand (1934), Viviana Zelizer (1994; 2011) examined various processes of earmarking monies in people's everyday practices (multiple monies) (see also Bandelj et al., 2017). Moreover, Nigel Dodd (1994:, p. 152; 2014:, p. 269ff.) argued that what money is and what it is used for is determined only in the act of using it.

Thus, in contrast to orthodox economic theory, it may be considered from a sociological perspective that money does not have a function in its actual use. Its ‘function’ only arises from the social processes of using it. In contrast to economic-functional approaches, therefore, the sociological view of the social practices of money usage must also be addressed. Money is an ‘absolute means’ (Simmel) that social actors can use for very different purposes and connect with very different social meanings (Zelizer). Thus money is used for various market- and nonmarket-oriented everyday life purposes. Here, we start from the basic consideration that the special characteristic of money is precisely that it can be used fungibly (Simmel) or nonfungibly (Zelizer), depending on the social context of use. The social earmarking of money in people's everyday practices, described so eloquently by Zelizer, can be dissolved again at any time, as Steiner (2009) has pointed out, i.e. quite in the sense of Simmel's classic ‘absolute means’ thesis. In other words, the social ambiguity of money in modern economies and societies consists precisely of a latent but uncircumventable charged relationship between social processes of ‘earmarking’ (Zelizer) and ‘disearmarking’ (Steiner, 2009, p. 100). To systematize different sociological concepts of money usages and to develop a viable concept for empirical research, we distinguish between the following four additional sociological dimensions of money usages: money as freedom; money as a status signal; money as a means for community-building and money as a means to regulate and discipline behaviour (Zelizer, 1994; Kraemer, 2015, p. 194ff.).

Money as freedom

In his canonical Philosophy of Money, Georg Simmel (2004 [1900], p. 285ff.) made a particularly powerful case for money as a modern vehicle of ‘individual freedom’. Money creates countless opportunities for the people who possess it and denies opportunities for the people who do not possess it. The possession of money amounts to ‘empowerment’ (cf. Dodd, 1994) in the sense that the owner of money has the choice to purchase something immediately or to refrain from purchasing and to save money for future transactions. Such empowerment has a wide scope. According to Simmel, this empowerment is rooted in the nature of modern money as an ‘absolute means’. This means is absolute in terms of its social, material, temporal and spatial usability in an unprecedented manner. In other words, money is a ‘key device to manage personal and social contingencies’ (Deutschmann, 2015, p. 370).

In the social dimension, money can be used indifferently in a normative sense. A person can engage in business transactions with any other person regardless of the class positions of the exchange partners or the ethnic, national, and religious communities or cultural lifestyles with which they identify. Moreover, such transactions require no value consensus between market actors that extends beyond the acceptance of basic market norms.

In the material dimension, money symbolizes a promise of services for any desired purpose and—within the limits of one’s budget—represents a generalized opportunity to gain possession of anything offered in markets. The full potentiality of money comes to the fore, most notably when we call to mind that such opportunities extend not only to goods produced in the present but also to goods that have yet to be invented and marketed in the future (Deutschmann, 2011). Apart from the protected realm of legally nonmarketable objects, such as human beings and organs, political offices, academic titles or court verdicts, almost anything can be purchased at market prices (Carruthers & Ariovich, 2004). Simmel perceives the immense opportunities for money usage as being rooted in the increased opportunities of ownership. Property rights in things involve the exclusive right to use a specific object, whereas ‘the possession of money implies the possibility of the enjoyment of an indefinite number of objects’ (Simmel, 2004, p. 310). Within the limits of the amount of money at one’s disposal, the right to enjoy a good is extended to potentially any object of value. Money thus relativizes the social significance of ownership in terms of the possession of things. That is, money is a generalized claim to property ownership that transcends the institution of property. The owner of tangible property quickly comes up against ‘the limitations of ownership’ (ibid. 329). The owner of money, by contrast, can conceptualize the ownership of attributable objects without having to give up the opportunity of ownership at the same time.

Provided that inflation is low, the access to unspecified objects granted by the possession of money is furthermore ‘stable in the temporal dimension’ (Luhmann, 1988, p. 253; author’s translation from German). In contrast to other tokens for services, such as train or airline tickets or season tickets for theatres or ballgames, money can be cashed in without being bound to any specific expiration date. Money owners can store their claims to services temporally to use them at a later point in time. This provides social protection against the imponderabilities of the future (Ganßmann, 2013, p. 106). Furthermore, borrowing money makes it possible to utilize future exchange opportunities today.

Finally, the unique freedom-granting dimension of money also applies in the spatial dimension. Money is mobile and can be transferred from one continent to another in a split second. Investors can make investment decisions on any continent of their choice, shift money to tax havens, or threaten to close a production site and move to a low-wage country (Harrington, 2016). Money expands the scope of exchange opportunities in the social, material, temporal and spatial dimensions in an unprecedented manner. However, the opportunities to utilize this ‘invisible potential’ (Deutschmann, 2011, p. 91) of money are extremely unequally distributed throughout society (Piketty, 2014). Recently, Pistor (2019) described that the freedom function of money can be increased to almost limitless levels, especially in terms of time and spatial dimensions. Impressively, she showed, using the example of current developments in national and international law, that money in the form of capital can be protected even in turbulent economic and financial crises, shielded from the tax receivables of the state (corporate enterprises, special-purpose entity, shadow banking system), and profitably invested in increasingly ‘creative’ asset classes (e.g. intangible assets, securitizations). It is important to note that the freedom function of money is a synthesis of economic and social conceptions of money. In other words, what we have described here as ‘money as freedom’ also includes the economic conception of money. However, in the latter operationalization of the concept, we use Simmel’s four-dimensional approach of money as freedom and do not operationalize the economic functions of money separately. The reason is that the basic economic function of money as a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value is evident in everyday life and would be trivial to try the empirically established fact that, e.g. people calculate prices, interest rates, etc. in national currencies.

Money as a status signal

In modern societies in which monetary transactions are the only way that objects of the value of whatever type can be acquired, money signals ‘absolute wealth’ (Deutschmann, 2015, p. 382). Money ownership as such —regardless of whether this money is spent or not—acts as a status symbol that signals the social position and aspirations of the owner (Lamont, 1992). Conversely, not possessing money is a signal of social exclusion from the indeterminate opportunities of ownership, as outlined above. Simmel (2004:, p. 428ff.) considered that although status positions in feudalistic societies depended on the ownership of land, in capitalist societies, money is the generalized claim to property that replaced land ownership as the main indicator of status. The transition in the foundations of status from land to money ownership, Simmel argues, has led to the detachment of social status (‘being’) from the ownership of tangible objects (‘having’). Therefore, it is not so much the actual ownership of an object that signifies social affiliation with a status group but rather the sheer potential to purchase appropriable objects that money ownership represents.

According to Veblen (1899), the ‘leisure class’ signals its status and social aspirations through money consumption. Inspired by Veblen, the Austrian economist and sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1924) investigated the ‘social stratification of prices’. He argues that a low price of an item is a signal that anybody can afford it. In contrast, a high price indicates a ‘luxury good’ whose buyers belong to the moneyed classes. According to Wieser, prices—whether for luxury goods or the mass-produced goods of daily consumption—invariably depend on household purchasing power and, thus, on the unequal distribution of income and wealth. Consequently, shifts in the structure of prices always involve changes in income stratification, which indicate ongoing processes of upwards and downwards social mobility. Therefore, via high and low prices, money becomes a signal of low and high status. Thus, in modern capitalist societies, money becomes the main status signal. From a different—cultural, sociological—perspective, Wherry (2008) demonstrates that prices are embedded in the constituents of social meaning systems. He also emphasizes that prices are not culturally neutral, but he interestingly points to an intersection of meaning attribution with the ‘identity’ and social location of the purchaser. For Wherry, prices are used to compare the social ‘qualities’ and ‘characteristics’ of differently socially situated people.

Money as a means for community-building

Money is used to maintain and strengthen communities. In the case of community building, money is hardly a means of exchange but is usually a gift. The act of giving money can be driven by a variety of motives. A gift must be reciprocated by the return of a gift (Mauss, 2002) or the needy members of a community must be supported (on the normative order of the ‘domestic world’, cf. Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, p. 241ff.). A patron may want to provide financial support to a community of artists to enable them to pursue a unique idea in circumstances free of economic want, although its commercial success may seem unattainable from the outset (on ‘the inspired world’, ibid: 227ff.). Citizens pay membership fees to political parties and nongovernmental organizations. They may donate money to demonstrate community spirit and a sense of solidarity with equals or the like-minded. Wealthy citizens establish private foundations to promote the ‘common good’ (Bishop & Green, 2008; on ‘the civic world’ Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, p. 251ff.).

In addition, money is used within households to maintain and strengthen community ties. Max Weber (1978, p. 356ff.) distinguishes between the household as a ‘unit of economic maintenance’ and the nature of interaction among its members, which he describes as ‘household communism’. This distinction is significant in matters relating to the use of money within communities. In the first case, which refers to a household’s outward relationships, money is used to provide the members of the household with everyday goods from markets (substantive rationality in Weber’s terms). In the second case, which pertains to a household’s internal relationships, money serves as a generalized means of symbolically attesting to communal bonds based on a sense of solidarity. Parents give their children money as a gift, they transfer a monthly sum to their children to cover the rent to support them in pursuing their university education, they bequeath money to their offspring, etc. The purpose of this money usage is to reinforce social cohesion among the family, emphasize the bonds between friends or show one’s appreciation for the recipient of the gift of all variants of communities.

The common denominator in all of these cases is that neither the giver nor the receiver of money harbours the expectation that the gift or donation must be reciprocated or compensated for in the form of monetary payments sometimes in the future. Money is given without expecting an equivalent quid pro quo. In communities, acts of giving money rest on different grounds of validity than in market relations. This is not to say that giving money in community settings is necessarily always motivated by altruism. If money exchanges hands in communities without any legal claim on the part of the giver to receive some equivalent compensation, this act of giving money can also enhance the prestige of the giver and strengthen his influence on future decisions, demonstrate the dependence of subordinates or reinforce hierarchies of recognition. Referring to partner relationships, Ludwig-Mayerhofer et al. (2006) have shown that financial arrangements by which communities administer and distribute money serve to reproduce the distribution of social roles and social inequality.

Money as a means to regulate and discipline behaviour

Since Parsons (1967), money in sociological theory has been described as a prototype of a ‘symbolically generalized media of communication’. These definitions have devoted too little attention to the opportunities of using money to regulate or discipline behaviour: money is used as an instrument for influencing the behaviour of social actors through paying or charging money. In this context, particular mention needs to be made of the fact that employing money to influence or regulate other people’s behaviour can be driven by motives of an instrumentally rational, value rational or traditional nature. Of course, expectations of certain behaviour can be disappointed even though money has been offered or charged. Oftentimes, the monetary induction of behaviour ends once a provided service is paid for or a debt is settled. However, paying or owing money can also create relationships of dependency. This is the case when an actor is permanently reliant on payments, for instance, because the person lacks an alternative source of income or a loan cannot be repaid overnight. Typical instances of relationships of dependency that extend or graduate over time are employment contracts and credit or instalment loan agreements. In communities, regular monetary transfers can have a similar disciplining effect.

Money regulates the behaviour of people. For example, consider the ‘money nexus’, the link between money and labour. Free labour is one of the formative characteristics of modern societies. It is an ‘enforced’ necessity simply because there is no alternative to it. Even the various forms of social welfare, for example, in the case of unemployment, are seen as temporary and are bound to economic integration into the labour market. In contrast to neoclassic economics, where the agent is seen as free to choose whatever portion he wishes between work and leisure (where time is considered to be a continuous variable), the consideration of money in the context of labour markets changes everything. The choice is not between leisure and work. The ‘choice’ is between accepting a given and expected level of work for a corresponding wage or not participating in the labour market at all. However, for most people, there is no choice because selling their time is the only legal possibility to obtain the ‘absolute means’ (Simmel), namely, money. The ultimate question is not to work or not to work but rather to own sufficient money or not (Ganßmann, 2013). Ultimately, it is a decision about whether to be able to participate in all types of markets, to save wealth, to enjoy the freedom of choice, to change the behaviour people (even the people unknown to us) or to be excluded from all of this. The omnipresence of money and the multiple usability that it serves makes it a ‘must have’ for everyone living in a modern, ‘functionally differentiated capitalist society’ (Schimank, 2015).

3. The social ambiguity of money: an integrative approach

In the older and more recent literature on the sociology of money, an integrative perspective is hardly found that takes into account the various dimensions of the social usability of money in a balanced matter. Usually, the vast majority of authors focus on specific dimensions or aspects of the use of money, while other dimensions are neglected or not addressed. This selective approach can already be found in Simmel's Philosophy of Money (2004). With the thesis of money as an ‘absolute means’, Simmel has worked out the social, material, temporal and spatial freedom potential of money. Simmel ignored the fact that money can be used in modern societies as well as totally opposite purposes that limit the freedom of individual choice in favour of normative purpose bonds. Money can always be used not only as a socially indifferent but also as a socially ‘qualitative’ means, for example, to strengthen the moral integrity, cohesion and internal solidarity of social groups or communities. Weber's remarks on the economic sociology of money (1978, p. 93ff.) are also characterized by similar one-sidedness. Weber (similar Ganßmann, 2013) has worked out the central role of money as a means of rationalizing and disciplining the behaviour of economic actors in modern economic orders but without taking into account the symbolic meaning of money for processes of social differentiation, status signalling and community building at the same time. In contrast, the recent cultural sociology of money, founded by Zelizer (1994), has shown that the everyday use of money is associated with specific normative expectations and obligations. Zelizer has demonstrated that money is by no means used in a socially indifferent or even impersonal way in private households, in coupledom and in the everyday life of ordinary people. She argues that money is differentiated according to different sources of income and ‘coloured’ with specific, collectively shared expectations and obligations. Zelizer does not deny the potentially unlimited usability of money but stresses that it is usually culturally constrained. As she shows, however, the earmarking of money, for example, in coupledom, does not have to be consensually agreed upon at all. Zelizer does not deny the potentially unlimited usability of money but stresses that it is usually socially constrained. It can always be controversial and give rise to all kinds of conflicts. Nor is Zelizer under any illusions that the social budgeting of available money for specific purposes always already produces or reproduces social and gender inequalities, power relations and hierarchies of control. However, Zelizer has not problematized in the same way, to what extent this same money can also be used as a socially ‘disembedded’ means of individual freedom in the sense of Simmel to relieve themselves of such normative expectations and obligations. For Zelizer (ibid. 24), earmarking means that money ‘can be transformed from fungible to nonfungible, from profane to sacred’. According to Zelizer, the socially indifferent potentiality of money described by Simmel is limited to close ties. Based on Zelizer, it can be argued that earmarking is traditionally legitimized in close ties, value-rational or purpose-rational, but can also be structurally or institutionally predetermined. Zelizer concedes, however, that the respective earmarking can be questioned or even simply ignored—and thus dissolved—by the actors involved. She does not deny the ‘all purpose’ dimension of modern money. Additionally, she does not discard the rationality of monetary valuation in capitalist markets. However, Steiner (2009: 100) rightly criticizes that the ‘process of disearmarking’ is not systematically addressed in Zelizer's work. Following Steiner's criticism of Zelizer, the ambigiuous openness of money to processes of earmarking and disearmarking should be discussed in more detail. Under specific social conditions, which must be neglected here, normatively restrictive earmarking can in any case not only be collectively reframed but also unilaterally cancelled or mutually dissolved, and thus, the ‘all purpose’ potential of money described by Simmel can be activated. In the following, we make the distinction between different sociological dimensions of money usage proposed in Chapter 1 fruitful as a heuristic framework to make the wide range of usability for diverse social purposes visible. We start from the thesis that the different dimensions of money usability are not mutually exclusive. Rather, the contradictory potentiality of money—to enable freedom and at the same time to establish dependencies, to strengthen and weaken social cohesion, to underline social obligations and at the same time to symbolize social distinctions—points to its fundamental ambiguity as a central social institution in modern, functionally differentiated capitalist societies.

We also assume the following: in social life, a clear-cut assignment of an empirically observable use of money to a single ‘usage’ is neither possible nor practicable. Let us illustrate this with a fictitious example as follows. An actor gives away money (gift) to another family member to strengthen the ties of the family community (community-building). The presentee is glad about the gift because he knows about the multiple usability of money. He or she can even use the money for purposes that would be displeasing to the giver (freedom). The presentee can exchange it for goods on markets (means of exchange) and thus underline its status aspirations (signalling). He or she can also use the money to influence the behaviour of other actors outside the family through cash payments (behaviour control). With the same gift of money, quite different purposes can be pursued, regardless of the intention of the giver. This will be discussed further in the concluding section of this paper.

The following are the arguments presented thus far. Classic orthodox mainstream economics focuses on money as a purely economic phenomenon. According to this school of thought, money is used as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and as a store of value. By using sociological money research, we argued that money is always used for a variety of social purposes and may have multiple meanings depending on the social context in which it is used. In the next section, we put our heuristic of the ‘sociological dimensions of money usages’ into an empirical test. These dimensions of money usage may be interpreted as a spectrum of the potentialities of money usage, that is, the usability of money. We wanted to know for what purposes money can be used and what effect it has in some circumstances. We asked for people’s opinions and agreement regarding certain aspects of the above-presented heuristics of social money potentialities (Simmel). In the study, we did not observe the actual use of money for different social purposes but asked the subjects for what purposes they could potentially use money by asking for their opinion on and degree of agreement with a set of developed items.

4. Method and data

To examine the social usability of money and its associated intentions in social life, the aforementioned heuristic is applied. For each dimension, that is, money as freedom, as a signal, as a means of community building and as a means for regulating behaviour, several items were operationalized (see Table 1). We used a 24-item questionnaire with a 4-point Likert scale to measure the degree of the respondents’ agreement with statements about the potential usability of money (manifest), which we assume to correspond with different usages of money in everyday social life (latent dimensions). The respondents were asked to state their level of agreement with the items shown in Table 1 (see Section 4). The items of the scale are subdivided into four dimensions that represent the dimensions of the heuristic outlined in Section 2. The first dimension represents community-building. Given that communities are not only represented in the form of strong family ties but can also be expressed by donations to charitable organizations or NGOs, this item includes gifts, heritage or donations. Furthermore, and against a somehow harmonic view of communities, we also included an item that examines whether money is also associated with ‘disharmony’. The second group of items conceptualizes money as a means of freedom from a temporal, social, material and spatial perspective. The third grouping of items represents money as a symbol of status, distinction, recognition or rejection. The fourth and last group refers to the role of money as a means for regulating the behaviour of other people. Here, we distinguished between state-citizen relations, employers–employees relations, private debt relations and household relations to cover a wide range of social relations. Some similarities (in some cases very strong similarities) exist among the items developed in the research field of the psychology of money (Furnham, 1984, 2014). However, all the items that we used were either adapted or newly developed consistent with the research focus, which was to identify the factors of the social usage of money.

Table 1. Factor loadings, eigenvalues, explained variance and α.

Item	F1	F2	F3	F4	F5	F6	F7
Money makes one independent from others	.771
With money, one can protect oneself from risks (e.g. unemployment, poverty)	.747
The benefit of money is that it can be used worldwide	.709
With enough money, I can do whatever I want	.472
Money is a means of self-fulfilment	.444
Gifts strengthen family relationships		.866
To pass on money strengthens family ties		.864
Money donations to clubs/societies symbolize the affiliation with a community		.702
Only with money, one can belong to the higher circles of society			.717
To be a member of society, money is indispensable			.694
To possess money is a sign of success in life			.574
Money is an important means to distinguish oneself from others			.475
The state affects the behaviour of people through money transfers				.814
The state affects the consumer behaviour of people through taxes				.761
If one takes out a loan, the bank always has more pull				.663
Money often leads to quarrels in families					.896
Money often leads to quarrels between friends					.895
To not endanger my job, I am willing to do a lot of what my employer wants from me						.755
More money motivates me to work more						.740
I have to earn money to make a living						.672
Many parents try to influence the behaviour of children with money							.755
The person in a household who earns the most also has the biggest say in financial matters							.698
Eigenvalues	4.632	2.171	1.651	1.501	1.400	1.302	1.033
Explained variance	19.298	9.046	6.879	6.252	5.833	5.425	4.304
Cronbach’s Alpha	.669	.781	.620	.661	.858	.569	.432

Note: Factor loadings under 0.30 are not shown in the table.

The sample (n = 2000) includes individuals over the age of 15 years in Austria. The data were gathered in a nationwide survey and are representative of the country’s population (the distributions of the common sociodemographic variables have a close fit to the distribution within the general population, see Appendix 1). The survey was conducted by the Institute for Empirical Social Studies (IFES, Vienna) by using stratified multistage clustered random sampling on an existing household list of postal addresses (the response rate was 46.6%). The respondents visited their homes and trained staff conducted computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPIs).

Of the 2000 participants, 51% were female. The mean age was 48.42 years (SD = 18.25). With respect to education level, 14% finished compulsory education (without completion), 44% had apprenticeship as their highest educational level and 17% had finished vocational school. Overall, 13% had reached a general qualification for university entrance (Matura) and 11% of the sample had a tertiary education. In all, 64% were working in the workforce, 28% were retirees, 2% were homemakers, 3% were students and 4% were unemployed. Regarding household income, 9% earned less than €1200, 10% earned up to €1500, 8% earned up to €1800, 9% earned up to €2250 and 20% earned up to €3000, while 28% earned more than 3000 (16% declined to answer).

To examine whether people use or, more precisely, associate the potential of using money, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis. Exploratory factor analysis assumes that behind a set of manifest items, latent dimensions—or factors—exist that group certain items. For our research question, this approach seemed to be appropriate for two reasons. First, it is difficult to observe money usage directly. Therefore, we used the degrees of agreement or disagreement in statements about the potential usage of money. Second, we were interested in the question regarding how the broad spectrum of these potentialities of money usage might be grouped together. That is, we wanted to know the factors of money usage. Because we formulated no theoretical relationships between certain items and corresponding factors, exploratory factor analysis was the method that we chose.

Here, we want to stress that the design of the questionnaire reflects the participantś degree of agreement with statements with respect to the different potential usabilities of money. Underlying the respondents’ answers to the named statements, that is our assumption here, is what Giddens (1984) has called ‘practical consciousness’ or Bourdieu (1990) referred to in The Logic of Practice. We are aware that agreement or disagreement with statements can only be a proxy for behaviour. In this context, the research by Morduch and Schneider (2017) and Morduch (2017) on the US Financial Diaries project should be mentioned. We agree with Morduch and Schneider (2017, p. 14) that within the framework of a representative sample, the concrete money behaviour of people in everyday life cannot ultimately be empirically researched. The authors demonstrate that based on financial diaries, money behaviour can be captured far better in all its depth and richness. In contrast, our quantitative research strategy aims to generate nationally representative results on the potentialities of money usage in everyday life (usability) as reported by the respondents. Connected to that, the degree of agreement with statements of different forms of money usabilities, although an individualistic trait, transcends the actor and points towards a ‘relational approach’ (Zelizer, 2012) to money. Even though the agreement (or disagreement) is expressed by an individual, the content of the statements is socially relational. In other words, we surveyed individuals’ degrees of agreement with statements pointing to social relations structured by money.

5. Results

In Section 2, we developed a sociological heuristic to examine the social dimensions of money usage on a quantitative data basis. Subsequently, we draw on original data from our empirical study, a population survey in Austria, to conduct an exploratory factor analysis. We systematized the sociological literature on money usage into the four categories of money as freedom, money as a signal, money as a means of community building and money as a means to regulate and discipline behaviour. The exploratory factor analysis yielded seven factors, which, based on the item loading on a particular factor, were named freedom, community, status, institutional control, conflict, work-related control and household control.

We conducted a principal component analysis on 24 items with an orthogonal rotation (varimax). Two of the items showed no clear loadings on a specific factor. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value (KMO) = .784 shows that the sample is adequate for further analysis. The KMO value of the study is much closer to the ‘meritorious’ level of KMO >.80 than the ‘middling’ level of KMO >.70 (Kaiser, 1974). The eigenvalues of the factors were calculated, and eight factors met Kaiser’s criterion for eigenvalues higher than one. The scree plot suggested six factors with a clear inflexion at the sixth factor. Because of the divergent results of the scree plot and the Kaiser criterion, we also took theoretical considerations into account. The eigenvalue between Factors 6 and 7 drops considerably (Table 1), and Factor 8 remains just over one. Additionally, there were almost identical high item loadings on Factor 8 and Factor 3, which caused interpretation problems. Consequently, we retained seven factors. Table 1 shows the rotated factor loadings.

The clustering of items around Factor 1 suggests that this factor represents freedom. The following items are included in Factor 1: ‘Money makes one independent from others’; ‘With money, one can protect oneself from risks (e.g. unemployment, poverty)’; ‘The benefit of money is that it can be used worldwide’; ‘With enough money, I can do whatever I want’ and ‘Money is a means of self-fulfilment’. Factor 2 represents community and includes the items ‘Gifts strengthen family relationships’, ‘To pass on money strengthens family ties’ and ‘Money donations to clubs/societies symbolize the affiliation with a community’. Factor 3 represents status, and the items that load on this factor are ‘Only with money, one can belong to the higher circles of society’, ‘To be a member of society, money is indispensable’, ‘To possess money is a sign of success in life’ and ‘Money is an important means to distinguish oneself from others’. We named Factor 4 institutional control, which corresponds to the following items: ‘The state affects the behaviour of people through money transfers’; ‘The state affects the consumer behaviour of people through taxes’ and ‘If one takes out a loan, the bank always has more pull’. Factor 5, which is named conflict, includes the items ‘Money often leads to quarrels in families’ and ‘Money often leads to quarrels between friends’. Factor 6, work-related control, corresponds to the items ‘To not endanger my job, I am willing to do a lot of what my employer wants from me’, ‘More money motivates me to work more’ and ‘I have to earn money to make a living’. Finally, the items ‘Many parents try to influence the behaviour of children with money’ and ‘The person in a household who earns the most also has the biggest say in financial matters’ load on Factor 7, which was named household control. We then calculated the factor values (Mean = 0, SD = 1). Next, we computed and saved the factor regression scores for the factors. Table 1 shows the factor values and the respective alpha values. It is interesting to note that Factor 5, conflict, was retrieved as a separate factor; however, there is a high correlation between the factor scores of Factors 5 and 2 (r = −.36), which both represent the aspect of money directed towards the community (see also the respective items in Table 1).

We conclude this results section of the paper by pointing out several correlation coefficients between the calculated factor scores and some sociodemographic and socioeconomic variables. The goal of this paper was to show the broad variety of forms of money usage and to give an empirical underpinning. Additionally, we aim to show how the factors relate to relevant sociological variables. As Table 2 shows, the correlations between the calculated factors and the variables age, gender, education level, household income and social strata are all weak at best. While not all results are statistically significant, gender has a somewhat weak influence on the conflict factors, and status and age have a rather weak correlation with status and institutional control. Household income has the highest correlation coefficient of .167 with household control. Additionally, for the nominal variable ‘occupational status’ (with 15 categories), we calculated values of Eta-squared, which can have values between 0 and 1 and is to be interpreted similarly to the percentage of the explained variance in the analysis of variances. As Table 3 shows, for all factors, it cannot be shown that occupational status contributes to the explanation of the variance of the factor scores.

Table 2. Bivariate correlations.

	Freedom	Community	Status	Institutional control	Conflict	Work-related control	Household control
Age	.033	.071**	.117**	−.098**	.005	.052*	.033
Gender	−.011	.053*	.092**	.018	−.108**	.046*	−.016
Education level	−.075**	.057**	.062**	−.071**	−.002	.062**	.061**
Household income	−.005	−.018	.080**	−.056*	.044	.075**	.167**
Social strata	.017	.012	−.095**	.050*	−.045*	−.053*	−.133**

*** P < 0.01; ** P < 0.05; * P < 0.1.

Table 3. Eta-squared for occupational status and factors.

	Freedom	Community	Status	Institutional control	Conflict	Work-related control	Household control
Occupational status	.006	.016	.030	.017	.016	.032	.025

6. Discussion

The results indicate that people know in a practical sense much about the potential of money usage for a variety of social purposes, while major social variables (gender, age, education level, occupational position, social strata and income) do not have a noteworthy influence. As already suggested by Simmel (2004), people associate the use of money as a vehicle of freedom in different dimensions (F1). They know that money in the social dimension is a means to become independent from other people. Freedom through money also means in the time dimension to sustain the options of choice in difficult life phases such as unemployment, financial losses, and divorce or the death of a spouse or life partner. Additionally, the spatial dimension of money grants the freedom to use it globally. At the same time, sufficient money gives the impression that many personal wishes become possible. In addition, money as a means of self-fulfilment is based on its social dimension of freedom in the sense that the independence of other people leads to an individualistic usage for oneself.

The respondents have a very concrete, practical knowledge of the broad spectrum of the usability of money. However, this knowledge is not limited to buying goods, paying bills, financing investments or settling debts. Money can also be given without wanting to ‘trade’, ‘exchange’ or ‘account’ for something. Our results also statistically confirm Zelizers’s (1994; 2011) suggestion that money can also be given away, donated or bequeathed to build, symbolize and strengthen the cohesion of a community (family, partnership) or to support charitable organizations. Gifts and heritage donations may be both a symbol and a means to reproduce the underlying social bond (F2).

The respondents also agree that money can be used as a means of social distinction to signal status or underline social aspirations. Money could open doors in the ‘higher circles’ of society, while on the other end, it is also a necessity to participate in the material culture of modern life. Here, the money nexus becomes evident because no job means no money and no money means social exclusion. In the view of the respondents, money is also attributed to success, and it is a means of distinction from other people (e.g. who are not as successful) (F3).

Therefore, the respondents also agree that money is used not only on markets as a means of payment and as a unit of account. The spectrum of money usability is even more extensive. People know that money is paid, cut, or cancelled or that one can threaten not to pay to influence, control or discipline other people’s behaviour (F4, F6, F7). Accordingly, money is paid or a payment is cancelled to enforce desired behaviour, sanction deviant behaviour, or underpin personal or factual dependencies. At the same time, the respondents are aware that the behaviour of other people through payments or claims can be influenced not only by market relations but also by state citizens (taxes, subsidies, fines and social transfers) and creditor-borrower relations (F4), in industrial relations (bonuses, F6) or in communities such as families and partnerships (F7). In addition, we showed—also in the sense of Zelizer—that money not only has symbolic implications for the underlying social relationships but can also be a means for conflict (F5), for example, in households or between friends and family. As noted before, Factors 2 and 5 correlate quite highly and have a negative relation. Money can serve as a means to strengthen and symbolize community ties, or it can be a vehicle for conflict within these same communities. With our heuristics, we can show the extraordinarily wide range of social money usability, which is very familiar to the respondents. As the results of the factor analysis indicate, people have a practical sense of what one can do with money in everyday life and what purposes one could pursue with money as soon as one had ‘a lot’ or ‘very much’ money at one's disposal (usability). At the same time, the respondents knew little to nothing about an institution as central as money, as we determined in another partial analysis of the survey (Kraemer et al., 2020). Both empirical findings are noteworthy. The respondents have, beyond age, gender, education, employment status, household income and social strata a profound, almost virtuoso everyday practical sense about the ambiguous usability of money for special and all purposes (practical knowledge in the sense of Giddens 1984; Bourdieu, 1990). At the same time, people know—independent of age, gender, education, employment status, household income and social strata—little to nothing about the institutional foundations of the modern monetary order (theoretical money knowledge). They mostly believe in money myths. Elsewhere, we have shown that money myths are widely distributed by the respondents in a variety of forms; for example, the assumptions that money is covered by physical assets such as gold or other precious metals, and that customers’ deposits are passed on by the banks as loans to borrowers, or that only central banks create money by printing and issuing banknotes, not private banks by lending, which the central banks authorize them to do. The vast majority of the respondents do not know that deposits are created by ‘keystroke’ (Wray, 2015: 66) when a bank customer demands a loan or overdraws the account. Most respondents believe that deposits or debit cards are the same as cash. However, respondents have illusory notions about the fact that money is covered by rare materials or value stocks.

We finally discuss our empirical findings in light of the recent criticism of Simmeĺs sociology of money. Zelizer (2011) and Dodd (2014) (see also Bandelj et al., 2017) criticized Simmel’s money sociology as a ‘quantitative’ theory and, in contrast, formulated a ‘qualitative’ sociological theory of money. These authors do not investigate the social consequences of the ubiquitous use of money for culture and society as Simmel did. Instead, they problematized how people use money in everyday life for multiple social and cultural purposes. The central thesis of Zelizer or Dodd is that money can no longer be conceptualized as a homogenizing, purely quantitative, culturally indifferent ‘absolute means’ (Simmel). Consistent with Zelizer's ‘special monies’ thesis, we have shown in our study that money can be used not only in a ‘quantifying’ sense to buy any commodities, settle accounts or liquidate debts. Even beyond markets, money can be given away, bequested, shared collectively or used in organizations or communities as a vehicle for disciplining the behaviour of other people.

The advantage of a qualitative approach is that the social and cultural context of money practices can be examined, such as in families, partnerships and communities. For example, Zelizer has shown that the specific social meaning of money usage depends on the ‘origin’ of money, social settings, class position, gender, role expectations or even ethnic affiliation. For Zelizer (1994), the purpose for which money is used makes a significant difference when it is acquired as earned income (‘husband’s salary’, ‘venture money’) or as a ‘household allowance’ (‘women's’ or ‘pin money’). In all of these cases, money is not used as a socially indifferent, purely quantifying means but as ‘special purpose money’, such as for nonmarket-, community- or household-oriented purposes to strengthen normative expectations and to symbolize shared values. Such cases remain misunderstood when described in terms such as ‘objectification’ or ‘reification’. Our empirical findings confirm that money can be used for special social purposes (see F2, F3, F4, F5, F6 and F7). Thus ‘objectification’ cannot be used in such cases. Our empirical findings emphasize the usability of money for special social purposes.

With our quantitative data, however, we cannot show, for example, how conflicts about the everyday use of money (F5) are fought out or resolved. Following Zelizer and contrasting with the assumptions of neoclassical ‘economics of the household’ (see Becker, 1981), Morduch (2017, p. 32ff.) has shown how such potential conflicts can be defused in everyday life, using examples from US Financial Diaries. Morduch reports that in the household a certain part of the income is socially labelled and divided (‘mental accounts’), for example when couples have different expectations about the individual needs for which the available money should be used. Nor can we show with our data to what extent the increasing digitalization of money affects the everyday usability of money reported by the respondents. In this context, we would only like to refer to Tiessen (2015) and Guseva and Rona-Tas (2017), who have worked out that in contrast to Simmel's classical assumption regarding the anonymous, silent and invisible usability of cash, debit and credit cards or other app-based payment methods opens enormous possibilities for surveillance and social control and thus also narrow the individual freedom potential of money (F1). Admittedly, Guseva/Rona-Tas note, using the example of spouses, that in some cases separate cards allow greater financial independence from each other. But ‘plastic money’ can also become a mechanism of control over dependent family members (F7), for example when husbands issue secondary cards to their wives and children to track every purchase. Finally, Carruthers (2017) and Polillo (2017) have shown how Zelizer's theory of the social meaning and earmarking of money could also be made fruitful beyond interpersonal relations at the meso (companies, markets and industries) and macro (economy, state) levels of social orders.

The benefits of a pluralistic ‘theory of money's qualities’ (Dodd, 2014, p. 271) are to shed light on the social and cultural embeddedness of money on micro, meso and macro levels of social orders. Such forms of embedding have not been considered by the sociology of money in Simmel's tradition or by other influential social theories (Parsons, 1967; Habermas, 1984, 1987; Luhmann, 1988; Giddens, 1990) that characterized money as a socially indifferent, ‘generalized media of communication’. This reductionism can already be found in the economic sociology of Max Weber (1978: 93ff.), who described money only as a means of rational calculability. It is well known that Polanyi (2001) [1944] followed this view (see critically Heejebu & McCloskey, 1999; Krippner 2001; Block, 2014; Dodd, 2014: 278ff., Deutschmann, 2015; 2019: 18ff.).

All strong assumptions about the instrumental rationality of money are problematic if money usages in everyday life are studied from a sociological perspective. Money is more than a ‘black box’ (Dodd, 2014: 295) of rational calculation. However, a central problem of the new sociology of money (Zelizer, Dodd) should be pointed out. Simmel's sociological analyses of money are not to be suspended because money in families, friendships and the community can also be shared or given away or money usage in everyday life can be linked to multiple socially ‘qualitative’ expectations. Similarly, money can be used for any imaginable purpose at the meso and macro levels of social orders. To illustrate it exemplarily on the micro-level of the social: a radical revision of Simmel's argumentation is only plausible if one could look at the money, where it comes from, and for what purposes it can be used. Even in closed community relationships, the presentee can ignore the donor's normative expectations and use the money gift for entirely different purposes. For example, the presentee can counteract the donor's expectations and not save the gift of money but spend it on short-term consumptive purposes. In the sense of ‘quantity theory’, the presentee could very well use the gift of money for any social purpose considered ‘amoral’ by the giver (see F1).

If one interprets the empirical findings against the background of the controversies in the recent sociology of money, then an integrative perspective is obvious that focuses on the social ambiguity of money: Money can very well be used ubiquitously in the sense of the ‘quantity theory’ based on Simmel. At the same time, it can be used in the sense of the ‘qualitative’ theory based on Zelizer. Money can be used completely disparately for market or nonmarket, economic or political purposes as well as for egocentric or altruistic, authoritative or deliberative, community-oriented or societal purposes. Whether money is ‘embedded’ in social meanings or whether it can be extracted and ‘disembedded’ from specific normative expectations and obligations depends on the respective social context in which it is used. Depending on the social context (market, hierarchy, community), it can be charged with the most diverse and contradictory meanings. For example, economic actors that can pay bills without payment must be embedded in normative expectations that go beyond the successful processing of the commodity-money transaction. Even in forced contexts without any alternative options for action, the use of money can be normatively neutralized. Drivers have to pay fines or taxpayers have to pay tax claims. However, it is irrelevant whether such payments are made reluctantly or with the explicit admission that you have done something ‘wrong’. In contrast, money is donated, given away or shared together at community events precisely to meet specific normative expectations or not to disappoint them. Paradoxically, money can be used both as an ‘absolute means’ (Simmel) for socially indifferent purposes and as a means for socially multiple, ‘qualitative’ (Zelizer) purposes. Because of this normatively open usability and ambiguity of money, the fundamental Simmel critique of the cultural sociology of money by Zelizer and Dodd is not very convincing.

This ambiguity of money would be made unrecognizable if the latent tension between ‘all-purpose money’ and ‘special purpose money’ were unilaterally resolved in favour of one or the other perspective. On the other hand, the ambiguity of money remains virulent as soon as practices of earmarking and disearmarking are taken into account. This tension, which Steiner (2009, p. 100) has described as an inescapable ‘duality’, can only be maintained if not only the actual use of money for specific social purposes but also the potentially alternative usability for any other purpose is addressed. Some empirical evidence for such an integrative perspective can also be found in Zelizer's work (1994; 2011). She, for example, draws a distinction between more (lottery winnings) and less (inheritance) free or fungible money or between contractually agreed earmarking (home mortgage) and unmarked money in private households. This would be followed by a theoretical perspective that distinguishes between different patterns of earmarking (weak vs. strong, discrete vs. direct, volatile vs. stable, part-time vs. permanent, atomistic vs. arm's length ties, bottom-up vs. top-down) and relates these to the respective cultural, historical and institutional contexts (cf. Zelizer, 2012, p. 161ff.).

7. Conclusion: special and fictional earmarking

In this article, we developed a heuristic framework to empirically show the extraordinarily wide spectrum of the potentialities of money usages in everyday life. In the last chapter, we combined the results of the found spectrum of money usages with the argument that too narrow of an approach to money—either in an economic functionalist or in a sociological culturalist fashion—may not do justice to the ambivalence of money that Simmel (2004) analysed more than a hundred years ago. We argue that money is a ubiquitous social institution. In contrast to orthodox economic money theories, which view money from the standpoint of its economic functions, we derive a broader sociological perspective on money usages. Although we do not deny the economic usage of money, we show in this article that people can also use money for a wide range of noneconomic purposes. People use money not just to pay for goods or to settle debts. Money is also not merely a medium of exchange or a unit of account. Actors use money in everyday life not only to purchase products or compare prices but also to signal social distinctions, show social affiliations, declare one's solidarity, or to influence or discipline the behaviour of other people. In the perception of people, money symbolizes individual liberty, social security, social status, aspirations and a means to control or to discipline the behaviour of other actors. However, sociological research has thus far not offered a systematization of the sociological analysis of money usage, and these theoretical findings thus far have not been empirically researched.

Accordingly, we can conclude as follows. Precisely because money is an ‘absolute means’ (Simmel), it is usable as a purely quantitative measure of ‘rational’ calculation and for multiple ‘qualitatively’ social purposes (Zelizer). That is, the ‘quantity’ of money (Simmel) is always a prerequisite for using it ‘qualitatively’ for multiple purposes (Zelizer, Dodd). This inner connection between quantitative and qualitative usabilities is quite present in Simmel's Philosophy of Money. For example, Simmel describes the ‘distinctive parallel movement’ (1978, p. 303) of money in modern societies; paradoxically, money works both as deindividualizing (quantitative exchange value of money) and individualizing (multiple qualitative usability of money) (see also Paul, 2017, p. 196ff.). Our empirical findings show that the respondents are well aware that money can be used as an ‘absolute means’ in terms of its social, material, temporal and spatial dimensions (F1). Money as an ‘absolute means’ can also be used qualitatively for multiple social or cultural purposes (F2–F7). The respondents seem to be well aware that the use of money is accompanied by contradictory and paradoxical effects on culture and society. Our empirical findings show at the same time that the spectrum of the ‘qualitative’ purposes of money is wide. Money opens potential freedom in the present and the future and simultaneously constrains choices by creating dependencies. These potentialities are dependent on the actual accessibility to money (income, wealth or creditworthiness), which, in turn, is very unequally distributed. This relationship between choice and constraints is especially relevant regarding organizations and institutions, which can influence or even control the behaviour of actors through the medium of money. This raises the question concerning how our findings at the micro level of individuals may be relevant for explanations of meso and macro phenomena.

We argue that an integrative theoretical approach must focus on the ambivalence and ambiguity of money. On the one hand, such an approach is a basis for conceptualizing money not only as a vehicle to maintain, repair or stabilize communities, as Zelizer has repeatedly pointed out. On the other hand, existing communities and close social networks can also be ‘monetized’ and thereby weakened when money is no longer a gift or a collectively shared symbol of mutual kindship. This is precisely the freedom function of money: it can also be used to dissolve social relations (e.g. when children leave their home family or women become independent from pin money). However, services or goods are settled with payments that are valued by a fixed price, similar to anonymous market exchange. Additionally, personal dependencies and moral obligations inside communities can be strengthened, mapped or even dissolved through monetary payments and transferred into objective-oriented, morally less rigid or thinned-out relationships. Against this background, it is an open research question whether such contradictory, seemingly paradoxical processes can be observed not only in communities and close social networks but also in and between all kinds of private or public organizations. For example, money payments or promises in and between organizations can, on the one hand, trigger or stimulate, discipline and function as an inclusive instrument, while on the other hand, it can have exclusive effects and can be used for creativity. After all, the survivability of all organizations in ‘functionally differentiated capitalist societies’ (Schimank, 2015) depends sooner or later on whether they can maintain or even improve their liquidity status in the future.

The ambiguous ‘quality’ of modern money consists of the fact that its usability is ultimately undetermined and can be used for completely divergent purposes on micro, meso and macro levels in modern societies. Since money is an ‘absolute means’, it can be used in the present or in the future—potentially—for any concrete purpose. This can and does restrict its open, multiple usability (earmarking). At the same time, due to its unique ‘quantitative’ characteristics, money can also be used to dissolve existing earmarking (disearmarking) and to create new earmarking (re-earmarking). As Beckert (2016) has shown, money or credit is even a proven vehicle for stimulating all kinds of ‘fictional expectations’ both in organizations or corporations (innovation, investment) and in private consumer behaviour, which can dissolve special traditional earmarks. In such cases, the concrete present-related purpose of money is projected into an unknown future and thus, to a certain extent, transferred into fictional earmarking. The respondents in our sample are also well aware that money is not only used for specific social purposes but could itself become a catalyst for an imagined future of absolute wealth (‘with enough money, I can do whatever I want’, ‘money is a means of self-fulfilment’, see F1). Seen in this light, the ambiguity of money also lies in the fact that its earmarking can be dissolved and transcended at any time. It is evident that many private households hardly have a sufficient budget and must hence spend a relevant share of their income on special social purposes or needs. Nevertheless, money is ‘saved’ or ‘put aside’ if only to provide for unexpected needs or to be able to fulfil unpredictable wishes ‘sometime’ in the future (‘daydreams’). Additionally, for example, money is ‘invested’ in financial markets in the expectation of making more money (M–M’). In all such cases, even in everyday life, special earmarking money could also be transferred into all possible fictional earmarking.

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the thoughtful comments of the reviewers, the editors and the discussants at workshops and conferences in New York (SASE), Barcelona (ESA), Darmstadt (Schader Foundation), Vienna (Viennese Sociological Association), Graz (School of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Graz), Göttingen (Section Economic Sociology, German Sociological Association) and Frankfurt (CashCon-Conference). We also thank Max Haller and Markus Schweighart for helpful methodical suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data associated with this study are available upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Austrian Central Bank, Anniversary Fund: [Grant Number 17080].

Notes on contributors

Klaus Kraemer

Klaus Kraemer is full professor of Applied Sociology: Economy, Organisation, Social Problems at Department of Sociology, University of Graz, Austria. His current main areas of research are economic sociology, sociology of money, and sociology of modern capitalism.

Luka Jakelja

Luka Jakelja is university assistant and doctoral candidate at the Department of Sociology, University of Graz. His main research areas are economic sociology and sociology of money.

Florian Brugger

Florian Brugger is an university assistant at the Department of Sociology at Karl-Franzens-University Graz. He works in the fields of economic sociology, sociology of markets, sociology of money, development economics, international capital flows, economic theories and their impacts, and technological progress.

Sebastian Nessel

Sebastian Nessel is currently a lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz and co-coordinator of the European Sociological Association´s RN09 “Economic Sociology”. Prior to this he was an assistant professor at the University of Graz. His research interests are the sociology of money and finance, institutional and field analysis, and social movement research. Currently he works on consumer capitalism in the 27 EU Member States.

1

Sample distribution (gender, age, education, employment status, household income and social strata)

Table

	No. of respondents	Percent
Total	2000	100
Gender
Men	976	49
Women	1024	51
Age
15–29	401	20
30–44	460	23
45–59	567	28
60+	571	29
Education
Compulsory education without completion	289	14
Apprenticeship	883	44
Vocational school	339	17
General qualification for university entrance	268	13
Tertiary education	220	11
Employment status
Employed	1272	64
Self-employed	93	5
White-collar employees	754	38
Public service	82	4
Skilled workers	235	12
Unskilled workers	91	5
Not employed	728	36
Retiree	562	28
Stay-at-home mothers/fathers	38	2
Students	56	3
Unemployed	73	4
Household income
Up to 1200 euro	181	9
Up to 1500 euro	207	10
Up to 1800 euro	156	8
Up to 2250 euro	178	9
Up to 3000 euro	397	20
More than 3000 euro	559	28
Social-strata-index
A (high)	245	12
B	358	18
C	776	39
D	425	21
E (low)	196	10