Cash or Card: Consumer Perceptions of Payment Modes - Scholarly ...

2.2: The Emergence of the Money Concept
The use of token based objects (commodities) as representations of value in commercial
exchanges has been a facet of societies for millennia. Underlying the use of tokens is the
notion that they are a measure of account, and a means of storing and transporting abstract
value (Keynes, 1930; Grierson, 1977; Hicks, 1989; Hoover, 1996). According to Weber
(1920) the means of storing and transporting this abstract value consists in the social
organisation of the monetary system. It is only by social agreement that a ‘token’ is able to
embody the value agreed and by doing so removes the need to anchor the value of the token
to the time and space of any actual transaction. The form of the token also varies across time
and space. Examples include gold, silver, copper, salt, peppercorns, large stones, decorated
belts, shells, alcohol, cigarettes, cannabis, candy, barley, etc. The use of a transferable
‘token’ originates in the agrarian economies of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian empires
(c.3000 to 500 BC). Clay tokens were used to represent items of agricultural surpluses and
units of work in terms of time or production. The first true (metal) coins date from c. 640 BC
in the near Eastern Kingdom of Lydia with gold and silver accorded the highest value
(Davies, 1996: 63).
The commodity theory of money, sees money as a ‘good’ linked to a precious metal (or
alternate physical objects) or its convertible paper symbol i.e., “Money was essentially
material and tangible; it could be stored and passed from hand to hand - it circulated’
(Ingham, 2004). As Marx in 1844 contended “Money, inasmuch as it possesses the property
of being able to buy everything and appropriate all objects, is the object most worth
possessing” (p.375). Though there is this notion that money is an object, it is essentially
incorporeal - the tokens are objects that are only rendered valuable by social agreement.
However when researchers talk about ‘money’ in terms of utility and emotional and/or
cultural associations it is often not clear whether it is the concept of money or the
representations of money, or both that is the focus.
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