Reading Response 2

One part of this reading that jumped out to me was the line about how we define monetary payments and how this frames the way we look at them. Zelizer argues that you can categorize the types of payments as either “gifts, entitlements, and compensations”. Each one of this key words leaves behind a different way that the exchange of money is evaluated. Each categorization helps to define the type of social relation that the “buyer” and “consumer” have with each other. This quote got me thinking about this class as a whole, and what exactly it means to define money and writing. I think that the categorizations play a large role in how we define the interaction between money and writing. Depending on what type of job or career you have, you could argue that you receive money for writing in any of the 3 categories of exchanges. The relationship between the consumer and the writer could fall into either being a gift, entitlement, and compensation type of money transaction. I feel like this is what makes selling writing so versatile, since many other industries don’t have this flexibility in how you sell your writing. The way you can get paid and the way that people view these transactions is a lot more creative than in other fields, and has the opportunity to manifest itself it so many ways. Whether it’s working for a company or working for a specific client, the relationship a writer has with it’s consumer is very flexible and can branch out into several categories.