Universality of the monetary phenomenon and plurality of moneys : from colonial confrontation to confluence of the social sciences

When analysing any social phenomenon, encounters among different social science disciplines and fields of investigation dispersed over time and space may well produce illusory rapprochements. Such encounters nevertheless have great potential for producing truly common knowledge. In matters of money, they provide an incentive to perceive money as a virtually universal phenomenon, while pointing up a considerable diversity of monetary instruments, uses and representations, without there necessarily being any continuity within that diversity.