Routinizing and scrutinizing: Divergent yet potentially complementary modes of valuing money's material forms

Abstract

This essay contrasts and explores the complementarity between “routinizing” modes of valuation (relating money tokens to monetary value) that predominate in the contemporary global north with “scrutinizing” modes found in the past and on the periphery of more familiar forms. The former treat the relationship between pecuniary media and money value as independent from the physical condition of specific money tokens which are held to be universally fungible. By contrast, the latter foreground the characteristics of notes and coins as singularized objects that exist within and are potentially reconfigured semiotically by the workings of time upon their physical surfaces. Scrutinizing modes may in turn be divided between systems that seek pristine money tokens that elide their own historicity and those that treat wear and tear as indexical of previous instances of successful valuation. Ultimately the essay identifies three provisional ideal typical modes for practices of money's valuation. Two of these, the systems of routinization in the contemporary global north and of circulation-focal scrutinization, might be taken to be antithetical. By contrast, the third, the hybrid routinizing-scrutinizing model(s) we encounter on the peripheries of the contemporary state-money system or anywhere confidence about money's value starts to break down highlights the potential coexistence and complementarity of different monies within a single disjunctive system. Such complementarity often takes the form of routinized low value and scrutinized high value currencies, yet local, historically sedimented practices are foremost in the formation of such hybrid forms. Examples are drawn from nineteenth century America and China and from contemporary Southeast Asia.