The Culture of Money aims to build a Black wealth movement through the adoption of three community-shared values: know more, own more, and pass down more.

The classic warts-and-all portrait of the 1980s financial scene. The 1980s was the most outrageous and turbulent era in the financial market since the crash of '29, not only on Wall Street but around the world. Michael Lewis, as a trainee at Salomon Brothers in New York and as an investment banker and later financial journalist, was uniquely positioned to chronicle the ambition and folly that fueled the decade.

The book discusses how culture simultaneously shapes and is shaped by the economy. Over the past few years, as the world has staggered from one financial crisis to another, the neat separation of economics and culture has been consistently challenged. To understand the current state of affairs, it has become increasingly necessary to understand the conjuncture that rules the production of value in economic systems, how money shapes social relations and affects discursive practices. By discussing the vocabulary, by understanding the rhetoric and interpreting the narratives, be it of crisis, austerity, growth, welfare, neo-liberalism or socialism, new modes of imaging the economic system may be made possible. The book is structured in four chapters dealing with theory and conjuncture (“Philosophies of Money”), with the visual arts and investment (“The Arts and Finance”), with literary representation and narrativity (“Literature and Money Matters”) and with the cognitive impact of fiduciary representation (“Cognitive Moneyscapes”). This collection analyses the process whereby a material icon invested with the symbolical power to rule social exchange becomes an explanatory narrative determining the way societies produce meaning.

The Culture of Money aims to build a Black wealth movement through the adoption of three community-shared values: know more, own more, and pass down more.

This book’s premise is not only the commonly accepted cultural relativity of economic concepts, but also the observation that the current shift in the meaning of concepts like “market,” “currency,” “exchange,” and “money” suggests that culture is undergoing a change with unpredictable economic and political consequences. The essays in the book raise basic questions concerning exchange – what is exchanged, who exchanges and how, which kind of currency is used, and indeed what is money and how does it convey and retain value over time. These issues are all classical objects of economic theory, but less often have they been approached from a cultural perspective. Works treating economic and monetary issues from a cultural perspective are few and far apart, and this book aims to contribute to such a perspective with a variety of approaches.

It is widely known that - at least in current societies - culture depends on money. Less attention has been given to the contrary fact: money also depends on culture. This interdisciplinary anthology scrutinizes this two-way connection between culture and money, and its implications for economic theory.

Drawing on remarkably frank, in-depth interviews with 160 successful men in the United States and France, Michèle Lamont provides a rare and revealing collective portrait of the upper-middle class—the managers, professionals, entrepreneurs, and experts at the center of power in society. Her book is a subtle, textured description of how these men define the values and attitudes they consider essential in separating themselves—and their class—from everyone else. Money, Morals, and Manners is an ambitious and sophisticated attempt to illuminate the nature of social class in modern society. For all those who downplay the importance of unequal social groups, it will be a revelation. "A powerful, cogent study that will provide an elevated basis for debates in the sociology of culture for years to come."—David Gartman, American Journal of Sociology "A major accomplishment! Combining cultural analysis and comparative approach with a splendid literary style, this book significantly broadens the understanding of stratification and inequality. . . . This book will provoke debate, inspire research, and serve as a model for many years to come."—R. Granfield, Choice "This is an exceptionally fine piece of work, a splendid example of the sociologist's craft."—Lewis Coser, Boston College