A Social Relationship -- Not an Object

• If money is a social relationship, it is not a tangible object

• But it can be represented by objects of varying degrees of tangibility

        "[A]lmost anything can be money -- tokens, scrip, coins, paper,
        checks, or, these days, bank credits.  What a community is doing is
        representing its IOUs -- whether in clay tablets, screawled-on napkins
        marked 'IOU,' or electronic marks on bank computers. ... [M]oney is 'that
        which pays' -- that which is counted as paying or settling debts, so as to
        facilitate a community's bookkeeping." (27)

        "What is money, then?  That thing, whatever it happens to be, that a community
        agrees to count as settling accounts between them.  Whatever it is, that's
        their money." (27)