Beyond Money: Rethinking Payments. Introduction

This chapter reconsiders the nature and functions of money by moving beyond functionalist and evolutionary narratives that equate monetary history with the linear expansion of coined currency and state-issued money. By combining the analytical lenses of economic history, anthropology, sociology, and political theory, the contribution conceptualizes money as a social technology embedded in institutional arrangements, cultural norms, and power relations. Challenging rigid distinctions between “monetary” and “non-monetary” economies, the volume foregrounds the plurality of payment practices that structured economic life in preindustrial Europe and its colonial extensions. Money thus appears not merely as a neutral medium of exchange, but as a relational and symbolic device shaping social hierarchies, political authority, and mechanisms of economic coordination. The introduction outlines the volume’s interdisciplinary and empirically grounded approach, emphasizing concrete practices of valuation, settlement, and circulation across diverse historical contexts. In doing so, it provides an analytical framework for understanding money as a historically contingent and contested institution, whose meanings and functions varied across time, space, and social settings.