Did your bank send you a Valentine? This year (as happened last year) I will be both sending and receiving Valentine’s messages from my zopa borrowers and my zopa lenders. I personally have always found it fascinating that anyone would even consider sending me a message ‘of love’ just because I lent them money. Is it Mauss’ theory of gifting in action – a ritual of recognition of the inalienable quality of the money I have given and the obligation to reciprocate (with interest)? I don’t expect such a message from my bank (or perhaps even a thank you) because, ironically, the personal finance revolution has had the effect in reality of ‘de-personalizing’ my money. We made a virtue of the fact that being ‘financially savvy’ meant liberating your money from your own personal world and social relations to benefit from the abstract, impersonal world of finance – freed from the moral economy to join the global /consumer economy. My money became digitized, objectified (in a card) and productized and somewhere in the process I became alienated from my money (both in my eyes and for some individuals within the banking system). One of my big marketing 'soap boxes' is the shift from 'needs' to 'meaning' when trying to understand the "why" of consumption. In essence, talking about 'needs' is to focus on what a product 'does' (usually defined in terms of some essential functional or emotional benefit). By contrast, talking about "meaning" is to look at what a product 'creates' through its usage - where the 'social life' of the product can transcend its manufactured or 'designed' utility and it end up performing a very different role and value in my life. Importantly, meaning is not always something that can be articulated by a respondent as it is often implicit or ‘understood’ in our actions and not always "rationalized" and made explicit. In essence, my money was now organized around my financial ‘needs’ – rather than any wider sense or meaning that I was trying to create – my ‘who’, my ‘why’, my ‘place’, etc. Money was there to provide utility, to satisfy my needs and in doing so I would (so Howard and the others on the TV would tell me) I would find happiness and security. This seems to be an increasingly relevant point of view given the many macro-level debates about 'banking' as utility vs. the role of banking in providing an individual 'service' or being about my money (as opposed to the state's or anyone else's). Consigning banks to the realm of 'utility' will only serve to complete this process of objectification. Money - economic money - will become about 'need' and then it will present an interesting dilemma for the nationally sponsored bodies which would run such hypothetical organizations. If money is about need - and I need a mortgage for a house - how is the state going to decide who gets what in the distribution of credit? It puts a whole new spin on the phrase ‘right to buy’ and suddenly money is going to get simultaneously very personal and very political.
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