In my book “Before Bablyon, Beyond Bitcoin” I made the point that I had turned to work of social anthropologists to help me to make sense of the impact of new technology on money and the relationship between social, economic, business and technological pressures on the various functions of money. I found the perspectives of the discipline indispensable in formulating models of the future. This is why I was delighted to be invited to the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) Annual Conference 2020. I’m going to take part in Panel 057, “Digital encounters, cashless cultures: Ethnographic perspectives on the impact of digital finance on economic communities”.
This panel explores new approaches towards value, economy, money, debt, finance and fiscal relations. In doing so, it discusses how global turns towards digital finance (e.g. mobile wallets; credit and debit cards) impact cash dependent and marginalized groups, communities and families worldwide. In particularly interested in following the narratives around these issue because, as I have long maintained, we need to being to develop strategies toward cashlessness rather than simply allow cashlessness to happen. I am not smart enough to know what all of those strategies should be, although I am smart enough to know that they require knowledge that it far beyond that of the technology and the business model, so I am genuinely keen to learn.
Just to show the variety of topics that will be discussed, here is the list of papers in the session:
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Economy of lies: Drunk husbands, digital savings and domestic workers in Kolkata, India
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Cutting the wire: financial exclusion and online work among Syrians in Lebanon
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Debt economies as urban survival strategies in the collapsed economies: examples from post-Soviet economies and Turkey compared
Spheres of exchange 2.0: Conversions and conveyances in Bitcoin economy -
Accessing Cash(lessness): Cash-dependency, Digital Money and Debt Relations Among Homeless Roma in Denmark
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Self-making stories: Accounts of cryptocurrencies from the ground
An ethnography of unsettled debt. Cashlessness and betrayal in Brazil -
An ethnography of Italian Bitcoin Users
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Coercive Political Economies, the Anthropology of Risk and Social Financing. Ethnographic notes from North India (Rajasthan)
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Banking on digital money: Swedish cashlessness and the fraying currency tether
The authors of the papers in this session have produced a series of blogs that explore a fascinating variety of perspective on money and what it means, from financial inclusion and
Snippings 