Swartz L. New Money. How Payment Became Social Media 2020

Textbook in PDF format

One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems—cash, card, app, or Bitcoin—are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what’s at stake when we pay. This accessible and insightful analysis comes at a moment of disruption: from “fin‑tech” startups to cryptocurrencies, a variety of technologies are poised to unseat traditional financial infrastructures. Swartz explains these changes, traces their longer histories, and demonstrates their consequences. She shows just how important these invisible systems are. Getting paid and paying determines whether or not you can put food on the table. The data that payment produces is uniquely revelatory—and newly valuable. New forms of money create new forms of identity, new forms of community, and new forms of power.
The Communication of Money: How Money Became Social Media
Transactional Pasts: A Very Short History of Money as Communication
Transactional Identities: Paying with New Money
Transactional Politics: Getting Paid and Not Getting Paid
Transactional Memories: Social Payments and Data Economies
Transactional Publics: Loyalty and Digital Money
Transactional Futures: Living with New Money