Call for paper for the Special issue on:

“Rethinking Money, Rebuilding Communities. A Multidimensional Analysis of Crypto and Complementary Currencies”.

Guest Editors:

Marco Fama, Università della Calabria, Università di Bergamo

Ricardo Orzi, Universidad Nacional de Luján, Argentina

Stefano Lucarelli, Università di Bergamo, CNRS Paris

Call for Papers:

The overall goal of this special issue is to stimulate the debate on the experiences of monetary innovation emerged after the 2007 financial crisis, exploring in depth their multiple social, economic and political dimensions.

In particular, the special issue aims to provide a theoretical interpretation and an empirical survey of Crypto Currencies and Complementary Currencies, understood as innovative social technologies that have the potential of charging social and economic relations of new meanings, enabling the pursuit of a set of collectively defined goals which the exclusive circulation of official money could not achieve.

We assume that, in the current context of economic and environmental crises, social innovations in the monetary field could play a fundamental role in building connections among communities and in triggering virtuous mechanisms of wealth creation and distribution that better respond to local needs. However, ongoing experiments are still too marginal and its concrete effects largely uninvestigated.

Complementary Currencies are generally portrayed as tools able to enhance the resilience of local communities, strengthening exchanges, trust and cooperation among its users. However, there still is little empirical evidence on its socio-economic impact, also due to the persistence of unsolved methodological controversies. In any case, evaluation models should not be limited to the identification of quantitative variables and indicators, but attempt to bring to light the multiple social and political implications of the phenomenon.

Crypto Currencies are a different, and in many aspects more controversial, phenomenon. However, its underlying technologies have opened new interesting possibilities that are now being explored also in more socially-oriented experiences which call for attention.

In both cases, focusing on the strictly intertwined social, economic and symbolic dimensions of the ongoing experiments is fundamental to gain insight and to provide helpful recommendations for practitioners and policy makers.

This special issues aims to nourish the academic and public debate on monetary innovations with rigorous analysis based on an interdisciplinary approach, integrating sociological, political and economic perspectives. It welcomes papers that investigate the socio-economic impact of Crypto Currencies and Complementary Currencies, exploring their limits and potentialities, as well as the underlying participation processes, possible conflicts and contradictions.

Articles, employing different theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches, should explore one or more of the following thematic areas:

• analysis on the nexus between money and social behaviour, focusing on whether and how this relationship is redefined in alternative monetary circuits;
• epistemological and methodological reflections on evaluation procedures of Complementary and Crypto Currencies;
• case study analysis with a particular focus on participation processes, subjectivities involved and the political and symbolic dimensions;
• evaluation of experiences of monetary innovation and their impact on trust, social capital and local development;
• identification of best practices and analysis of the possible role of institutions in supporting experiences of monetary innovations.

Timeline:

Articles, written in English, should be submitted to the editors according to the following schedule:

–  Submission of long abstracts (about 1,000 words): 15^th of April 2019

–  Selection of long abstracts: 10^th of May 2019

–  Submission of full articles: 27^th of August 2019

–  Provision of peer review feedback: 15^th of October 2019 June 2019

–  Submission of revised drafts: 30^th of January 2020

–  Publication of the issue: 15^th of March 2020

Articles should be no longer than 10,000 words, including notes and references. A maximum of 10 articles will be published.

Please refer to the editorial guidelines available at:

http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Please address any queries to the Editors – Proposals and papers have to be sent to the guest editors:

marco.fama@unibg.it

ricardoorzi@gmail.com

stefano.lucarelli@unibg.it