Money Frontiers: The relative location of euros, Turkish lira and gold sovereigns in the Aegean

This chapter explores how people’s understanding of the relative value of euros, Turkish lira and gold sovereigns is connected with both historical and contemporary relations between places and peoples. It will argue that these three currencies represent different understandings of relations within, between and across frontiers: historically transnational (gold sovereigns); state-based (Turkish Lira); and the somewhat ambiguous form of cross-border relation implied by the euro. By comparing different social perspectives of the relation between location and these three forms of currency in the Aegean region, the chapter makes a contribution towards understanding how currencies both shape and are shaped by the border dynamics of any given region, both as material objects (cash); and as traces of wider political, social and historical contexts. The chapter provides a different vantage point from which to think about the euro-zone; and it explores the implications of the obvious point that the value of all currencies, however value is defined, is always at least partially dependent upon their cross-border value. In that sense, all currencies have relative locations.