Sociology

Georg Simmel's The Philosophy of Money centers on the subject of money and its social meaning to the individual and the society. In his discourse, Simmel discusses how money becomes the symbol of a rational society, which is highly impersonal, rational, and calculable. This argument is due to the characteristically lesser interaction between or among people interacting on strictly impersonal situations, i.e., business transactions where there is an exchange of money (from the buyer) and good or service (from the producer/seller). Furthermore, societal relations among people may decrease, but individual empowerment, because it "increase personal freedom and fosters social differentiation" (Coser, 1977:193-4). In effect, through Simmel's discourse on the social meaning of money, society shift from being a close-knit to a mass society.

If Simmel's arguments about the social meaning of money will be applied in the context of the credit card industry, most of the viewpoints he expressed are indeed characteristic of the interaction among people who transact by means of credit cards. When Simmel stated, "If, thus, value is at the same time the offspring of price, it seems to be an identical proposition that their height must be the same" (Simmel, 1900). This contention is the quantitative of money or other medium used commensurate to the value of money. By mentioning the quantitative aspect of money, and, in this case, credit cards, Simmel goes on to distinguish the qualitative from the quantitative aspect: that credit cards may have the same value of money, but these monetary media cannot replace the degree of social interaction of people conducting these transactions through these monetary media. Thus, because credit cards are examples of monetary media that lessens social interaction but provides 'personal freedom,' society today is characteristically a mass society because of the credit card industry.

Bibliography

Coser, L. (1977). Introduction to Sociology. New York: Harcourt-Brace.

Simmel, G. (1900). A Chapter in the Philosophy of Value. American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 5.