Login
       
  • Is gold jewelry money?

Oakley, Peter, 2017, Journal Article, Is gold jewelry money? Social Analysis, 61 (4). pp. 17-30. ISSN 0155-977X

Abstract or Description:

This article explores the extent to which gold jewelry, an object type conventionally looked on as a means of display, should also be seen as a type of money. Drawing on historical evidence and ethnographic research, the analysis considers the ways in which two examples—the Renaissance money chain and the modern jewelry collection—exhibit characteristics fundamental to money: liquidity, partibility, and recursive divisibility. As a result, this study proposes that gold jewelry can best be described as a type of para-money. The article concludes that due to its ambiguous state, gold jewelry is able to act as a mediator in social situations where exchanges of money proper are considered unacceptable, and that this is an important yet under-acknowledged aspect of its social identity.

Official URL: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/abstract/journals...
Subjects: Other > Social studies > L600 Anthropology > L610 Social and Cultural Anthropology
Creative Arts and Design > W700 Crafts > W720 Metal Crafts > W721 Silversmithing/Goldsmithing
School or Centre: School of Arts & Humanities
Funders: AHRC
Identification Number or DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2017.610402
Date Deposited: 01 Mar 2018 11:04
Last Modified: 18 Aug 2020 10:16
URI: https://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/id/eprint/3211
Edit Item (login required) Edit Item (login required)