Money as the Social Reality

About the authors:

Vladimir A. Davydenko, Dr. Sci. (Soc.), Professor, Head of the Research Center, University of Tyumen; v.a.davydenko@utmn.ru; ORCID: 0000-0001-8389-4254

Darya V. Lazutina, Cand. Sci. (Econ.), Associate Professor, Director of the Financial and Economic Institute, University of Tyumen, Tyumen, Russia; d.v.lazutina@utmn.ru, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2423-961X

Elena S. Korchemkina, Cand. Sci. (Econ.), Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Finance, Money Circulation and Credit, Tyumen State University; dozlen@mail.ru

Abstract:

The article attempts to present the notion of “money” from the point of view of the notions “social reality”, “life world”, and “everyday world” in the framework of the interconnected (paired) conceptual-categorical schemes “money power” by T. Veblen, “the understanding sociology” by M. Weber, “the intersubjectivity of the life-world” by A. Schutz, and “the discretionary time horizons” by E. Jacques. The scientific novelty of the article consists in the fact that the social reality through “the prism of money” is considered in line with the phenomenological methodology of “the life-worlds” of an individual and reference groups as a combination of “possible or actual horizons of human experience” (E. Husserl). The money being rooted in human consciousness and in its individual world in this case acts as the different instruments of equivalent exchange liquid resources necessary for its sustenance in the market economy, and therefore money has a unique value for the life-world. The empirical verifications of perceiving money as “the everyday world” in the social reality are given from the point of view of the analysis of incomes, expenditures, and households consumption in different status (quintile and decile) groups on the basis of quarterly surveys of 48 600 households (2002-2016) carried out by Rosstat and based on representative panel studies by RLMS-HSE (1994-2014) according to the grounds of socioeconomic status (education, income, profession), and other Rosstat data. The article presents the analysis of perceving money as a social reality by different Russian social groups in the periods of survival social policy (1991-1999.), increase in the resource base and rapid economic growth (2000-2013), the start of the long economic crisis 2014 up to the present 2016, and a forecast for the 2018.

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