Monetary Inclusion and Exclusion

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the money medium and the analysis of mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. Such mechanisms currently follow a logic of plural or multiple inclusion as opposed to assimilation. In a full-grown monetary economy, money and property have emerged as regulative structures for the participation in economic practice. Discussing the approach of Luhmann, a distinction is drawn between center, semi-periphery, and periphery of the economic system. While the money medium includes the general population into the periphery of the economy through consumption, this contribution can show that the inclusionary mechanism of the center is creditworthiness. It can be demonstrated that in its historical formation the form of credit is organized in a twofold fashion itself: to make profit and to promote social inclusion. Microcredits are analyzed as a global form of inclusion into the center that does not bear on the distinction poor/wealthy.