El dinero desde “medio de intercambio” hasta “medio simbólico.” Elementos luhmannianos para la observación del dinero

Abstract

The aim of the article is the development of a theoretical program for the observation of money based on social systems theory. For this purpose, the processes allowing the observation of money as medium of exchange in economy are described. Social sciences deployed their own explanations about money in a wide range of formalists, psychoanalysts, religious, functionalists, culturalists, phenomenological and classic systemic descriptions. Such theories contain implicit observations of macro, meso and micro social formation levels. Based on the state of art on this topic, the place of money in the sociology of Niklas Luhmann is described. The article concludes with a characterization of money as a symbolic medium reaching self-referentiality of the economic system, the bifurcation of money’s meanings in organizations, and its emergent properties associated to the dilemma agency/constriction in interaction systems.