Ideas in the City —Phoenix Rising: Money

Spending, lending, earning, borrowing, paying, renting, budgeting, profiting, losing, bankrupting – the talk of money is everywhere, but money is hard to come by. It is the great constraint; but it is the means to all kinds of ends.

Money is a curse, it is a gift, and it is a metaphor. From cowrie shells and counting sticks used 20,000 years ago to e-transfers and cryptocurrency, we have been working with and for money since the dawn of time, and it seems we will never be free of the need for it. We long for it, we shape our lives in pursuit of it, we value ourselves and others in terms of it, and we fight over it. Too much money, too little money, money in the wrong hands — we blame much on money, yet we generally believe that it is indispensable.

Money has a remarkable ontological fluidity across the moral, social, political, cultural, and psychological domains. Has any human invention meant so much and yet had such contested meanings?

Join Mount Royal University speakers as they discuss these and other questions about our ideas of money and how they have shifted over time. Speakers include:

• Rob Currie-Wood, Department Economics, Justice, & Policy Studies
• Meg Braem, Department of General Education
• Mark Novak, Department of Humanities
• Sinc MacRae, Department of Humanities
• Robert Boschman, Department of English, Languages, and Cultures
• Carolyn Willekes, Department of General Education
• David Clemis, Department of Humanities
• Moderator: Dr. Anupam Das, Department of Economics, Justice, & Policy Studies

In partnership with Faculty of Arts and Calgary Public Library.

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