What is money? Based on extensive historical and ethnological research, the famous French ethnologist Marcel Mauss has developed a previously overlooked outline of a theory of money, centered around the observation that money is part of the social contract and magical-religious concepts. By integrating religion and economics, Mauss successfully avoids the rigidity of neoclassical or neo-Marxist economic thinking and describes money as a societal phenomenon. His ethnological perspective opens new insights into the economic foundations of modern societies. A discovery!.