English abstract

In the artcle’s first part, the global economic crisis that began with the banking collapse of 2008 is attributed to the end of the system of money that dominated the twentieth century, «national capitalism». This entails the break-up of «all-purpose money» or national monopoly currency and its replacement by a distributed global network of financial agencies issuing specialized monetary instruments in multiple forms. The political challenge is to devise forms of government adequate to controlling money in this new form. But the old ideas persist to the detriment of finding effective solutions. The article’s second part takes off from the recent publication of The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide, an international collaboration that grew out of the «alter-globalization» movement. A human economy gives priority to what people really do and has the interests of humanity as a whole in mind. A programme for building a human economy in the current historical context is outlined; and the prospects for economic anthropology after the financial crisis considered briefly in conclusion.

Keywords:anthropology,human economy,money,national capitalism,world crisis