By bringing together insights from Europe and the Americas on the reliance of credit in building inclusive societies today and in the past, we reflect upon the price of inclusion and the ambivalent nature of debt relations. Fluctuating between reciprocity and domination, debt broadens the scope of manoeuvre for individuals and collectives, but increased dependence …
ByAnit Mukherjee, Policy Fellow at the Center for Global Development, Washington DC USA. Photo by Anit Mukherjee Across the world, digital technology is transforming how citizens interact with the State and with each other (Gelb, Mukherjee & Navis, 2020; Misuraka, Pasi & Viscusi, 2018; Milakovich, 2012). Moving towards a digital economy creates possibilities for governments …
Digital Economy, Cashlessness and Access to Credit: Case Studies of India and Kenya Read More »
By Yathukulan yogarajah yyoga001@gold.ac.uk Economic and Financial Anthropologist PhD Researcher Goldsmiths, University of London New Cross London SE14 6NW UK Buyers of cryptocurrencies – whether students in London, church goers in Uganda who have been told of them by their priest, or university students in India who have pooled their assets in order to purchase …
by Rano Turaeva, Ludwig Maximillian University Nurdan Atalay Bandirma Onyedi Eylul University, Turkey Debt relations and economic exchange based on debts are not only the matter of economic exchange and value but rather social embedded into the social web of the relevant location, shared norms, identities, networks and relations of trust and power relations. Debt …
By Martin Tremčinský martin.tremcinsky@fsv.cuni.cz PhD Researcher Charles University, Prague The relatively recent advancement in digital technologies has brought into economic practices all over the world a proliferation of methods of payment, from plastic cards and mobile money to digital walletsnd cryptocurrencies. Businesses together with consumers have started to have a vast number of methods of …
Spheres of exchange 2.0: Conversions and conveyances in Bitcoin economy Read More »
by Lucia Michelutti and Tommaso Sbriccoli l.michelutti@ucl.ac.uk & tommasosbriccoli@gmail.com Lucia Michelutti Professor of Anthropology Head of the Social Anthropology Section Department of Anthropology University College London Puchri ka pau dhan Adha dhan to ghena Pura dhan to iman hai marag marag rehna One with a tail [whose honor is low, like that of an animal] gets …
by Atreyee Sen Atreyee.Sen@anthro.ku.dk Associate Professor Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen Photo by: Atreyee Sen With more than half a billion internet and digital subscribers, India is one of the fastest-growing markets for digital consumers, second only to China. Through Aadhaar, the world’s largest bio-metric identification system, the central government has driven individual citizens to …
By Andreas Hackl Andreas.Hackl@ed.ac.uk University of Edinburgh Photo: “A Syrian student at a digital skills training in Lebanon shows an app he uses for online learning and job searching.” By Andreas Hackl Amid worldwide lockdown measures during the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work from home has become the new normal alongside a spread of mass unemployment. …
BY Giovanni Daniele Starita gstarita94@gmail.com PhD Student University of Perugia (the name in Italian is Università degli Studi di Perugia) In 2018, I spent a few weeks researching Bitcoin usage in Rovereto. It is a small city in Trentino, a region in northern Italy, and it is known as a “Bitcoin Valley”, a term used …
Ideas of a Bitcoin user on open source development Read More »
By Marie Kolling mako@diis.dk Postdoc Danish institute for International Studies Photo: “Credit has become a normalized feature in household economies also among Brazil’s low-income population. Many banks have formed partnerships with retailers to gain access to low income clients, making retailers the major issuers of credit cards, which are much easier to access for the …
Debt and Reputational Collateral on the Fringes of Brazil’s Credit Economy Read More »