Funny Money: An ethnography of local currencies

After having completed a MSc in Economics and Management for Arts, Culture, Media and Entrainment at Bocconi University, Milan – Italy (2009), Mario Campana (@mariocampana) joined Cass Business School in 2010 as PhD student in Marketing. His main research interests are ascribed in the areas of consumer research, consumer culture theory, communities and money. In particular, his dissertation explores the relationship between the consumption of money and ideology, studying the phenomenon of local currencies.

Editor’s note: Mario Campana (@mariocampana), a PhD student at City University London’s Cass Business School, researches the growing trend of local currencies – of which there are currently over 3000 around the world.

He recently presented at EPIC, where in a Pecha Kucha presentation he discussed his research into the Brixton Pound, a neighborhood in South London. Expanding upon the research presented in the rapid-fire format of his last presentation on this aspect of his research, this article expands upon his ethnographic inquiry into Brixton’s local currency, delving deep into the social forces driving the development of the currency and the surrounding community. Such forces include issues of gentrification, and the conflicting notions of community and belonging between previously settled and locally rooted immigrants from the Caribbean and the recent influx of young, wealthy, and upwardly-mobile settlers from other parts of the city.

For more posts from this EPIC edition curated by contributing editor Tricia Wang (who gave the opening keynoted talk at EPIC this year), follow this link.

10 Brixton Pounds 

When we talk about money, we usually refer to national or supra-national currencies such as the Sterling, Euro, and Dollars. However, the variety of money is much more extended, and there are many other currencies used to demarcate different types of exchanges. In the last few years particularly, the phenomenon of complementary currencies has been rejuvenated. A recent study counted over 3000 systems globally (Longhurst and Seyfang, 2013).

In this post, I am going to discuss what I presented  in the Pecha Kucha session at EPIC 2013. My focus is on a specific complementary currency: the Brixton Pound in London. I have been conducting an ethnography on this local currency since March 2011. During the first year of my PhD in Marketing, I became interested on how consumers approach and stigmatise the mainstream financial system, especially during the last financial crisis.

Local currencies represent a good context to show how communities try to build resilience to fight financial instability. Furthermore, the Brixton Pound was the first local currency to appear in a huge metropolitan area. In an era where cities are increasingly global and old bricks-and-mortar neighbourhoods have been substituted by new shiny buildings (Zuckin, 2009), it is quite unique for a neighbourhood to claim its own historical, cultural and economic identity through the creation of a currency.