CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2024
| Author | Kiss, Lorant |
|---|---|
| Title | Making a Statement with Payments: Re-embeddedness of Money through Platforms |
| Summary | Contrary to former conceptualizations of money as a tool of rationalization and ordinalization, in the platform economy it is becoming a cultural experience endowed with meanings both by platforms mediating money practices (i.e.: payments) and users trying to domesticate money. Earlier narratives of the ‘disembeddedness” view emphasized that money belongs to a neutral and impartial domain, the economy, independent from social contexts and modern narratives. Modern narratives of ordinalization highlighted how money is becoming central to a classification system in which value judgements are expressed through quantitative hierarches and the subject is turned into a calculative, self-regulating agent which interiorizes rankings and ‘scorified’ hierarchies. However, I argue that money is increasingly an experience which is shaped by platforms anticipating that it must be domesticable by the user. Platforms, therefore, do not counter users’ attempts at domestication of money, instead, they attach meanings and values to money practices which can be successfully reanimated by users with their own meanings. The ultimate goal of platforms is to make money practices mediated by them integrated into users’ everyday experiences, therefore, they design attractive experiences which users could find convenient, familiar and smooth. In the language of subjective resistance to financialization, meanings are increasingly articulated by platforms. I call this process ‘re-embeddedness of money’ as it is a paradigm shift compared to earlier money practices of market participants. |
| Supervisor | Dora Piroska |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2024/kiss_lorant.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University