ALTERKA – MONEY OR GIFT? THE SOCIAL MONEY PROJECT
Marlena Rycombel, Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw
Abstract
Alterka, a complementary currency used by the Wymiennik (‘Swapper’) community in Warsaw, fulfilled each classical function of money. The main goal of this paper is to describe the structural features of alterka as well as to present the ways in which it was conceptualised by the users. Alterka was actually not seen as money by the participants of the Warsaw-based system, which is quite fitting with the European discourse on alienating money. A different set of moral meanings was attributed to alterka than to conventional money; it was regarded as the antithesis of globalised official money and as a currency that enables the realisation of an alternative paradigm of economic bonds based on shared goods, with the gift culture as a source of inspiration. The research into Wymiennik can in turn inspire to see beyond the gift-commodity dichotomy, so popular in European thinking, and points to the relevance of reflection on local currencies from the perspective of money anthropology.
Keywords
Alternative money, community currency, gift, social movements, money discourse.
To cite this article: Rycombel (2022) ‘Alterka – Money or gift? The social money project’ INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY CURRENCY RESEARCH – VOLUME 27 (2, 2022); www.ijccr.net; ISSN 1325-9547; DOI – http://dx.doi.org/10.15133/j.ijccr.2022.007
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