Money as Socially Real Fantasy

Here are the radio stories (from various podcasts) that I’ve mentioned in our discussions. I highly recommend them all, especially as we continue to talk through economic issues for the next few weeks. I will list them here in the order that I think makes the most sense, but it’s not chronological.

Two quick -- and utterly classic -- readings on the topic. I highly recommend skimming them before you listen to the stories. To think -- this all begins with an anthropologist! The links below go to pdfs available to you via Collab.


WIlliam Henry Furniss. 1910. The Island of Stone Money. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Introduction and chapter 7.

Milton Friedman. 1991. “The Island of Stone Money.” In his, Money Mischief: Episodes in Monetary History. New York: Harcourt Brace. Pages 3-8.

From “This American Life” -- Click the links to download or stream the episodes.
The Invention of Money

The Giant Pool of Money.

Return to The Giant Pool of Money.

The Watchmen.



Additional reading, that I have found exceedingly helpful:

Julian Dibbell. 2006. Play Money: Or, How I Quit my Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot. New York: Basic Books. (This is the book Dannah mentioned in our last discussion)

Lawrence Weschler. 1999. Boggs: A Comedy of Values. Chicago: U Chicago Press.

Michael Lewis. 2010. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: W.W. Norton.

Barbara Ehrenreich. 2009. “Introduction,” “Motivating Business and the Business of Motivation,” and “God Wants you to be Rich.” From her Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America.

Sam Walker. 2007. Fantasyland: A Sportswriter's Obsessive Bid to Win the World's Most Ruthless Fantasy Baseball. New York: Penguin.

Here is my “Fantasy” course in which I also teach these materials.


Some documentary films to check out:

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Alex Gibney, dir. 2005

Inside Job. Charles Ferguson, dir. 2010.

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer. Alex Gibney, dir. 2010.

The Queen of Versailles. Lauren Greenfield, dir. 2011. (This is the film that Dannah mentioned in our last discussion.)