Currencies of Imagination

Currencies of Imagination
Author: Ivan V. Small
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501716905

In Vietnam, international remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora are quantitatively significant and contribute important economic inputs. Yet beyond capital transfer, these diasporic remittance economies offer insight into an unfolding transformation of Vietnamese society through the extension of imaginations and ontological possibilities that accompany them. Currencies of Imagination examines the complex role of remittances as money and as gifts that flow across, and mediate between, transnational kinship networks dispersed by exile and migration. Long distance international gift exchanges and channels in a neoliberal political economy juxtapose the increasing cross-border mobility of remittance financial flows against the relative confines of state bounded bodies. In this contradiction Ivan V. Small reveals a creative space for emergent imaginaries that disrupt local structures and scales of desire, labor and expectation. Furthermore, the particular characteristics of remittance channels and mediums in a global economy, including transnational mobility and exchangeable value, affect and reflect the relations, aspirations, and orientations of the exchange participants. Small traces a genealogy of how this phenomenon has shifted through changing remittance forms and transfer infrastructures, from material and black market to formal bank and money services. Transformations in the affective and institutional relations among givers, receivers, and remittance facilitators accompany each of these shifts, illustrating that the socio-cultural work of remittances extends far beyond the formal economic realm they are usually consigned to.

Currencies of Imagination

Currencies of Imagination
Author: Ivan V. Small
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1501716891

In Vietnam, international remittances from the Vietnamese diaspora are quantitatively significant and contribute important economic inputs. Yet beyond capital transfer, these diasporic remittance economies offer insight into an unfolding transformation of Vietnamese society through the extension of imaginations and ontological possibilities that accompany them. Currencies of Imagination examines the complex role of remittances as money and as gifts that flow across, and mediate between, transnational kinship networks dispersed by exile and migration. Long distance international gift exchanges and channels in a neoliberal political economy juxtapose the increasing cross-border mobility of remittance financial flows against the relative confines of state bounded bodies. In this contradiction Ivan V. Small reveals a creative space for emergent imaginaries that disrupt local structures and scales of desire, labor and expectation. Furthermore, the particular characteristics of remittance channels and mediums in a global economy, including transnational mobility and exchangeable value, affect and reflect the relations, aspirations, and orientations of the exchange participants. Small traces a genealogy of how this phenomenon has shifted through changing remittance forms and transfer infrastructures, from material and black market to formal bank and money services. Transformations in the affective and institutional relations among givers, receivers, and remittance facilitators accompany each of these shifts, illustrating that the socio-cultural work of remittances extends far beyond the formal economic realm they are usually consigned to.

Rethinking Money

Rethinking Money
Author: Bernard Lietaer
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-02-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1609942981

This study reveals how our monetary system reinforces scarcity, and how communities are already using new paradigms to foster sustainable prosperity. In the United States and across Europe, our economies are stuck in an agonizing cycle of repeated financial meltdowns. Yet solutions already exist, not only our recurring fiscal crises but our ongoing social and ecological debacles as well. These changes came about not through increased conventional taxation, enlightened self-interest, or government programs, but by people simply rethinking the concept of money. In Rethinking Money, Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne explore the origins of our current monetary system—built on bank debt and scarcity—revealing how its limitations give rise to so many serious problems. The authors then present stories of ordinary people and communities using new money, working in cooperation with national currencies, to strengthen local economies, create work, beautify cities, provide education, and more. These real-world examples are just the tip of the iceberg—over four thousand cooperative currencies are already in existence. The book provides remedies for challenges faced by governments, businesses, nonprofits, local communities, and even banks. It demystifies a complex and critically important topic and offers meaningful solutions that will do far more than restore prosperity—it will provide the framework for an era of sustainable abundance.

Creative Confidence

Creative Confidence
Author: Tom Kelley
Publisher: Crown Currency
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0385349378

IDEO founder and Stanford d.school creator David Kelley and his brother Tom Kelley, IDEO partner and the author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation, have written a powerful and compelling book on unleashing the creativity that lies within each and every one of us. Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the "creative types." But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world's top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason

Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason
Author: Talia Morag
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2016-06-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1317220471

The emotions pose many philosophical questions. We don't choose them; they come over us spontaneously. Sometimes emotions seem to get it wrong: we experience wrongdoing but do not feel anger, feel fear but recognise there is no danger. Yet often we expect emotions to be reasonable, intelligible and appropriate responses to certain situations. How do we explain these apparent contradictions? Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason presents a bold new picture of the emotions that challenges prevailing philosophical orthodoxy. Talia Morag argues that too much emphasis has been placed on the "reasonableness" of emotions and far too little on two neglected areas: the imagination and the unconscious. She uses these to propose a new philosophical and psychoanalytic conception of the emotions that challenges the perceived rationality of emotions; views the emotions as fundamental to determining one's self-image; and bases therapy on the ability to "listen" to one’s emotional episode as it occurs. Emotion, Imagination, and the Limits of Reason is one of the first books to connect philosophical research on the emotions to psychoanalysis. It will be essential reading for those studying ethics, the emotions, moral psychology and philosophy of psychology as well as those interested in psychoanalysis.

Money at the Margins

Money at the Margins
Author: Bill Maurer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2018-03-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785336541

Mobile money, e-commerce, cash cards, retail credit cards, and more—as new monetary technologies become increasingly available, the global South has cautiously embraced these mediums as a potential solution to the issue of financial inclusion. How, if at all, do new forms of dematerialized money impact people’s everyday financial lives? In what way do technologies interact with financial repertoires and other socio-cultural institutions? How do these technologies of financial inclusion shape the global politics and geographies of difference and inequality? These questions are at the heart of Money at the Margins, a groundbreaking exploration of the uses and socio-cultural impact of new forms of money and financial services.

Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World

Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World
Author: J. Noel
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0230620817

This book situates the study of Black Religion within the modern temporal and historical structures in the Atlantic World. It describes how black people and Black Religion made a phenomenological appearance in modernity simultaneously and were signified in the identity formation of whites and their religion.

The Monetary Imagination of Edgar Allan Poe

The Monetary Imagination of Edgar Allan Poe
Author: Heinz Tschachler
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2013-06-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1476605831

In this first-of-its-kind treatment, Heinz Tschachler offers an account of Edgar Allan Poe's relation to the world of banking and money in antebellum America. He contends that Poe gave the full force of his censure to the acrimonious debates about America's money, Andrew Jackson's bank war, the panic of 1837 and the ensuing depression, and the nation's inability to furnish a "sound and uniform currency." Poe's attitude is overt in his early satires, more subdued in "The Gold-Bug," and almost an undercurrent in writings that enter into and historicize the discovery of gold in California. In Poe's writings much is concealed, though his art also reveals while it conceals, in this instance, a deep felt desire for an authority that would guarantee a measure of permanence and continuity to the nation' s currency. That kind of currency was finally furnished by Abraham Lincoln (both were born in 1809; Poe died in 1849), at one time a dedicated reader of Poe's tales and sketches. Wielding his "power of regulation," Lincoln came to save the Union not just militarily but also economically. Under him, the United States government finally provided the kind of "sound and uniform currency" that Poe in his writings could only name and rehearse.

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power

Crises of Imagination, Crises of Power
Author: Max Haiven
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2014-03-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1780329547

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine the forces used as weapons against community, solidarity, ecology and life itself? In this stirring call to arms, Max Haiven argues that capitalism has colonized how we all imagine and express what is valuable. Looking at the decline of the public sphere, the corporatization of education, the privatization of creativity, and the power of finance capital in opposition to the power of the imagination and the growth of contemporary social movements, Haiven provides a powerful argument for creating an anti-capitalist commons. Capitalism is not in crisis, it is the crisis, and moving beyond it is the only key to survival. Crucial reading for all those questioning the imposition of austerity and hoping for a fairer future beyond it.

Imagination: a Very Short Introduction

Imagination: a Very Short Introduction
Author: Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198830025

Examining philosophical, evolutionary, and literary perspectives, this book explores imagination as a cognitive power and an essential dimension of human flourishing. It demonstrates how imagination plays multiple roles in human cognition and shapes humanity in profound ways, making possible our experience of a meaningful world.