> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://forforest.gitbook.io/for/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://forforest.gitbook.io/for/for-en/context/2.1-designing-an-alternative-currency.md).

# 2.1 Designing an alternative currency

According to Escobar, Western capitalist economies have been built on an "ontological dualism" that rigorously separates human and nonhuman (nature), subject and object, mind and body. Drawing on this perspective, anthropologist Alf Hornborg advocates the redesign of "polycentric economic and monetary systems." He argues that the currency systems we now take for granted function as tools that psychologically and socially legitimize the treatment of nature as an inexhaustible "resource," while causing us to forget the diverse ways of being that humans originally possess and our relations of interdependence with nature, thereby designing subjects subordinate to the logic of a single market. Hornborg’s ideal is a currency that has the capacity to repair and strengthen the "web of relationships." Specifically, he proposes a "Complementary Currency" that can be used alongside existing money to autonomously sustain and manage "social metabolism" within local communities. The design philosophy of FoR is strongly related to Hornborg’s line of thought.

Meanwhile, Lana Swartz, in her book New Money: How Payment Became Social Media, reconsiders currency as a "communication medium" and analyzes how contemporary payment systems are reshaping our social connections and identities. She describes fiat currency as a "mass money medium"—a public infrastructure designed by the state to form the nation as a vast "transactional community." By contrast, contemporary payment apps and platform-specific currencies (such as Starbucks points or Bitcoin) function as "social money media." These are "plural monies" customized for small groups. Through "how we pay," we express who we are and where we belong. Swartz calls this "transactional identity" and defines money as "not merely a tool of exchange, but a powerful social medium that determines who can participate in a society and who is regarded as valuable." This understanding of "plural monies" also resonates with Hornborg’s idea of complementary currency in a plural world, indicating the potential to leverage digital technology for its implementation.

Looking at Escobar’s pluriverse from another angle, it is also possible to refer to mechanisms of value exchange that existed before, or alongside, capitalism. According to insights from traditional anthropology, represented by Marcel Mauss’s theory of the gift, the dynamics of "gift" and "debt" reveal how partial and biased the nature of fiat money, which we now take for granted, actually is. In systems of gift exchange, a distinctive feature is that as objects move, the giver’s personhood and spirit move with them, creating an obligation for reciprocation on the part of the recipient. Whereas modern fiat money is designed to settle and sever relationships between parties the moment a transaction is completed, these mutual exchanges—also called "reciprocity"—aim at the ongoing "formation and maintenance of relationships" between the parties. This suggests the possibility that money may have functions not only for the roles we currently assume it has, but also for ensuring a specific quality of relationship.

The discussions of ontology, media theory, and cultural anthropology surrounding money converge on a single conclusion: money is essentially a "medium for weaving society," and the autonomous redesign of money can become a pluralistic design practice for overcoming the externalities of market economies and reconfiguring our relationship with nature. In other words, it is both an attempt to rewrite, by our own hands, the social ledger of "who we are connected to and what we value," and a media practice for constructing our own "transactional identity."

***

**References**

* Hornborg, A. (2024). Defetishizing money: Perspectives from economic anthropology: Gudeman Lecture, University of Minnesota, March 20, 2023. *HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory*, *14*(2), 310–324. [https://doi.org/10.1086/731656](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://doi.org/10.1086/731656)
* Hornborg, A. (2025). Limiting money: Redesigning the artifact that shapes modern people. *Sustainability Science*, *20*(4), 1185–1193. [https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01491-y](https://www.google.com/search?q=https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-024-01491-y)
* Swartz, L. (2020). *New Money: How Payment Became Social Media*. Yale University Press.
* Marcel Mauss. (2014). The Gift and Two Other Essays (translated by Takumi Moriyama). Iwanami Shoten.


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