Money is the Root of All Evil – Or Is It? Recreating Culture through Everyday Neutralizing Practices

Abstract

Alternative organizations exist within the prevalent social order which they simultaneously attempt to resist. To construct and maintain alternative cultural practices, they must continuously deal with symbolic threats. By illuminating processes of cultural creation stemming from the day-to-day neutralization of threats associated with money, this ethnographic study of an intentional community moves the question of boundaries beyond issues of exclusion/inclusion. Instead, it argues for a full appreciation of the role of transgression and disorder in the shaping of organizational cultures. Two sets of everyday neutralizing practices – distancing and re-appropriating – have been identified as factors that facilitate the emergence of a relational and politicized culture of exchange.