Public Controversies About the Meanings of Money

Abstract

This article reflects on the social and moral meanings of money transferred through social policies. Over the past decade a set of social policies that transfer cash to the poorest households emerged. These interventions activated debates among different expert understandings involved in the design and implementation of social policies, focusing on the conditions accompanying monetary transfers. Through ethnographic analysis, we show that debates over the meaning of the money transferred to the poorest transcend expert knowledge, enabling a set of perceptions and appreciations that connect judgments and moral evaluations about the poor and poverty. We aim at presenting how the money transferred through social policy acquires the quality of becoming public money, becoming a cultural device of interpretation.