Ever since demonetization, Dr. Fr. John P J has been thinking about publishing a book. He tossed the idea to us about what it could be and how we could go for really formalizing it. It just seemed like a neat idea, and gave us a ton of latitude to take things in our own way and focused heavily on the conceptualization of the entire process that could provide useful information about the impact of Demonetization to a broad audience.

November 8, 2016 declaration by Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi that all 500-and 1000-rupee bank notes of the Mahatma Gandhi Series would ease being legal tender from midnight of 9th November 2016 was greeted with shock and dismay. India is, not the first country to demonetize its currency. Several countries have used the practice due to various reasons. The U.S., Ghana, Nigeria, European Union, Soviet Union, North Korea, and Zimbabwe are some of the countries that have demonetized their currencies. The reasons are almost similar to the reasons as to why India demonetized its currency. The Indian government claimed that the objectives of demonetization were to remove fake currency from circulation, tackle terrorism funding, left-wing extremism, remove black money, create a cashless economy, and to convert the informal economy into a formal economy. This was expected to help in expanding the tax-base and employment. However, demonetization had several disadvantages too. It reduced the level of cash in circulation. The cash-crunch was caused by the introduction of the Rs. 2,000 notes into circulation. This high value currency made it difficult to carryout financial transactions due to unavailability of other denominations to match the need for equivalent change. People could not make use of Rs. 2000 notes for to make small purchases. Demonetization also inconvenienced members of the public as the government only abolished certain currency from circulation and kept others. It necessitated people to spend a longtime queuing outside banks and cash machines to get new currency. People lost valuable time that they could have spent undertaking other economically productive activities. It also led to the slowdown of the economic growth while some people even engaged in fraud and corruption. Demonetization, for instance, also provided money changers an opportunity to convert black money to white at no cost. In reality, demonetization affected only a small proportion of the assets accumulated through illegal activities. Another disadvantage of demonetization is that it does not control the source of the illegal funds. This book provides background of demonetization details, pros and cons.

Subversive political writings by the acclaimed author of Empire.

Investigations of what increasing digital connectivity and the digitalization of the economy mean for people and places at the world's economic margins. Within the last decade, more than one billion people became new Internet users. Once, digital connectivity was confined to economically prosperous parts of the world; now Internet users make up a majority of the world's population. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on people and places at the world's economic margins. Does the advent of a digitalized economy mean that those in economic peripheries can transcend spatial, organizational, social, and political constraints—or do digital tools and techniques tend to reinforce existing inequalities? The contributors present a diverse set of case studies, reporting on digitalization in countries ranging from Chile to Kenya to the Philippines, and develop a broad range of theoretical positions. They consider, among other things, data-driven disintermediation, women's economic empowerment and gendered power relations, digital humanitarianism and philanthropic capitalism, the spread of innovation hubs, and two cases of the reversal of core and periphery in digital innovation. Contributors Niels Beerepoot, Ryan Burns, Jenna Burrell, Julie Yujie Chen, Peter Dannenberg, Uwe Deichmann, Jonathan Donner, Christopher Foster, Mark Graham, Nicolas Friederici, Hernan Galperin, Catrihel Greppi, Anita Gurumurthy, Isis Hjorth, Lilly Irani, Molly Jackman, Calestous Juma, Dorothea Kleine, Madlen Krone, Vili Lehdonvirta, Chris Locke, Silvia Masiero, Hannah McCarrick,Deepak K. Mishra, Bitange Ndemo, Jorien Oprins, Elisa Oreglia, Stefan Ouma, Robert Pepper, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Julian Stenmanns, Tim Unwin, Julia Verne, Timothy Waema

Project Society After Money is an interdisciplinary project between commons theory, evolutionary political economy, media studies and sociology, that enter into a dialogue with one another in order to look at their specific theories and criticisms of money. Conceived as the beginning of a necessary interdisciplinary dialogue, the possibilities of post-monetary forms of organization and production are taken into account and examined. On one hand there is a lot of talk about 'digital revolution', 'mediatized society', 'networks', 'Industry 4.0'. On the other hand the present is described in terms of crisis: 'financial crisis', 'economic crisis', 'planetary boundaries'. At once there is the description of a media-technological change along with massive social and ecological disruptions. Society After Money is based on the premise that there might be a conflict between digital media/digital technology and the medium of money – and perhaps new digital possibilities that allow alternative forms of economy. It criticizes what is normally seen as self-evident and natural, namely that social coordination has to be done by the medium of money. We're left with a highly innovative collection of contributions that initiates a broader social discourse on the role of money in the global society of the 21st century.