Markets are artifacts of language - so Douglas R. Holmes argues in this deeply researched look at central banks and the people who run them. Working at the intersection of anthropology, linguistics, and economics, he shows how central bankers have been engaging in communicative experiments that predate the financial crisis and continue to be refined amid its unfolding turmoil - experiments that do not merely describe the economy, but actually create its distinctive features. Holmes examines the New York District Branch of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, and the Bank of England, among others, and shows how bank officials have created a new monetary regime that relies on collaboration with the public to achieve the ends of monetary policy. Central bankers, Holmes argues, have shifted the conceptual anchor of monetary affairs away from standards such as gold or fixed exchange rates and toward an evolving relationship with the public, one rooted in sentiments and expectations. Going behind closed doors to reveal the intellectual world of central banks, Economy of Words offers provocative new insights into the way our economic circumstances are conceptualized and ultimately managed.

About the Author
Douglas R. Holmes is professor of anthropology at Binghamton University, SUNY. He is the author of Cultural Disenchantments: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy and Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism.

Reviews
"This remarkable ethnography of monetary policy making by central bankers, and the academics with whom they engage intellectually, sets a new standard for the anthropology of finance. Up to now, we have lacked a careful, detailed account of how economic facts are performed that is rigorous and empirical enough to convince those whose intellectual propensities lie elsewhere. Economy of Words is such a book." (Annelise Riles, author of Collateral Knowledge)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226087627
Author Douglas R. Holmes
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 397g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 15mm * 1mm