Sorry if this query is a bit simplistic (or the suppositions just ignorant) to many on this list, but I would appreciate a refresher - any comments and literature suggestions (I know Marx deals with money in Cap #1 and I need to reread it) would be great.
How can money be a "universal" store of value and unit of exchange? I am asking this because I am trying to determine if the globalization of the US dollar can be argued to also be a process of social and cultural homogenization - (but not in the most commonly cited way through the cultural McDonaldsization of the world), but rather more subtly as the imposition of the value system underlying the dollar on the rest of the world? If, as I suspect, money in its various guises, developed at local (perhaps regional) levels among people with shared common values, then money is only capable of acting as a true store of value and unit of exchange among people with the same social values (or else, how does money reflect the differences in values of different societies?). In other words, does money necessitate that those who use it must necessarily share the same social measures of value? Jayson Funke Graduate School of Geography Clark University 950 Main Street Worcester, MA 01610
