The Social Life of Sardex and Liberex: Kin or Acquaintances? A Comparison Between Two Mutual Credit Circuits in Italy

Money is as plural and dynamic in XXI century as probably it has ever been: “The money form is not standing still” wrote anthropologist Keith Hart (2001: 237) when different money markets and new electronic payment systems were at dawn. Today, this is even truer as technology drove not only many alternatives for payments, but also supported the creation of virtual coins such as Bitcoin or Faircoin. Yet, the rising plurality of money witnessed in the last 30 years originates off a truly rich combination of forms, actors and objectives. Voucher, electronic money, local notes or hours are some of the actual forms while local governments, private companies, and community or neighborough groups could be the actor promoting very different projects. They could aim at developing local economy or serving social policy purposes, at integrating marginal groups or defining exclusive club membership and promoting environmental awareness or customer loyalty. Within the changing landscape of existing forms of money, this article focuses on complementary currencies and, more specifically, on mutual credit systems, that is to say systems for multilateral clearing of debts. Section 1 offers an overview of complementary currencies across their forms, actors, and objectives introducing the debate about the nature of money. Section 2 and 3 illustrate our case studies – Sardex and Liberex – two Italian mutual credit circuits based in Sardinia and Emilia-Romagna. Sardex attracted much attention across disciplines – ranging from sociology and economics, from anthropology to policy studies – and produced research that serves as our benchmark to study Liberex, one of the Sardex’s younger sisters . Section 4 builds on the comparative results of previous sections and draws some conclusions.