Anthropology of Finance Research Papers (original) (raw)

2025, Journal of Cultural Economy

The papers in this collection explore how people make use of financial practices and institutions to organize, extend, and manage care relations. Much work in the social sciences views financial practices and money as corrosive to social relations. Our research uses situated ethnography and qualitative interviews to gain insights into how people use finance to practice, contest, and organize care in their families and communities. Such approaches alert us to the significant potentialities of finance in creating, sustaining and transforming relations, and to the central roles of financial discourses, practices, and institutions in structuring contemporary social arrangements. Ethnographically informed accounts of how people in Kenya, Vietnam, the United States, Brazil, and Tanzania engage with health insurance, home-based care, cash-based social assistance, caring for animals and crowdfunding highlight the constitutive relations between finance and care in diverse settings. By exploring how people use finance to organize, negotiate, and transform care, we show how financial products, services, and narratives are used creatively to practice care and to make claims about caring for others. Insights into people's everyday interactions around caring, money, and finance reveal the life worlds and values which inform people's relations and give care and money meaning.

2025

It is wonderful to be back in Scarborough. I say back because many of my earliest and fondest childhood memories were of summer holidays spent here. Being a cricket fan, the Scarborough Festival – the cricketing jamboree held at the end of August each year since 1876 – has always held a place in my imagination. Alas I have never been, but am hoping one day to break my duck. I want to discuss the economy and the role of monetary policy in supporting it. And with apologies to the non-cricketers in the audience, to do so I will borrow a cricketing metaphor – the “corridor of uncertainty”. The corridor of uncertainty is every bowler’s dream and every batter’s nightmare. It refers to a ball which pitches in such a position – the corridor – that the batter does not know whether to be playing off the back foot or the front foot. This, I will argue, is similar to the dilemma facing monetary policymakers on the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) today. Should monetary policy hold back un...

2025, Dimensioni e problemi della ricerca storica

Spreading the Centre: Otomi Artefacts Between Exhibition and Disintegration The Otomi of the Sierra Madre Orientale organize their ritual actions around the construction of ceremonial deposits (also named offerings) set up in oratories, private or communal, or in the landscape itself. Such deposits represent the core of the ritual act: the nerve centre in which the gesture turns into effective action on the world. A plural, mobile centre scattered in space and in a long temporality. This article aims to rethink the logic expressed by the centre/periphery pair by highlighting its inadequacy in accounting for indigenous notions of spatiality and temporality. Beginning with the Otomi case and the native conception of artefacts as living beings, it then analyses the processes of constituting ethnographic collections: a movement that proceeds from the source communities toward the museum as the central, and authoritative, institution of staging Otherness.

2025

Questo articolo si inserisce nel filone di studi che ripensano la questione della moneta attraverso una prospettiva multidisciplinare, riconosciuta come fondamentale per comprendere le sperimentazioni monetarie contemporanee e, in effetti, la natura stessa della moneta. Collegandoci alla proposta di Gómez e Dini (2016), utilizziamo i dati ottenuti da uno studio empirico su un caso situato in Argentina per contribuire alla ricerca sull'origine e sul significato della moneta. Attraverso l'analisi dei Chipicos, emessi da una cooperativa argentina, questo lavoro esplora le dinamiche sociali ed economiche emergenti, considerando anche le interconnessioni tra circolazione monetaria e riproduzione sociale. Inoltre, si indaga la questione sociologica dell'ontologia monetaria in relazione ai valori e alla moneta. L'analisi rivela come le monete alternative possano influenzare le relazioni sociali e offrire una prospettiva critica sulle teorie monetarie esistenti, arricchendo il dibattito accademico con contributi da filosofia, antropologia e sociologia.

2024, The Journal of Pacific History

2024, MONETA E CREDITO

2024, Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics (SAPERE)

2024, Etnoecologia e saperi marginali. Crisi ambientale e conoscenze indigene nel Messico nahua

La tesi è il risultato di una ricerca etnografica svolta tra ottobre e dicembre 2021 presso la comunità nahua di San Isidro Buensuceso, situata sul versante meridionale del vulcano La Malinche, nello stato di Tlaxcala, in Messico. L’obiettivo del lavoro è stato quello di indagare l’impatto e la percezione locale della crisi climatica e ambientale nella comunità, con particolare attenzione ai saperi ecologici locali, fondamentali a livello comunitario nella lettura, nella comprensione e nell’adattamento ai mutamenti in atto. A livello teorico il lavoro si basa sulle riflessioni di autori che hanno interrogato il rapporto tra saperi subalterni e saperi ufficiali, con gli obiettivi di far emergere le relazioni di potere che ne hanno guidato il rapporto nel corso della storia e di stabilire un dialogo paritario e transdisciplinare tra le due forme di conoscenza. In particolare, il punto di partenza teorico è rappresentato dalle riflessioni di Ramon Grosfoguel (2013) sull’estrattivismo epistemico e cognitivo, di Vandana Shiva (2007) sulla bioprospezione e la biopirateria, e di Boaventura de Sousa Santos riguardo l’epistemicidio e l’urgenza di dare forma ad una Epistemologia del Sud. Sono infine i lavori appartenenti al filone dell’etnoecologia, disciplina fortemente focalizzata sui temi inerenti il patrimonio bioculturale del Messico e i conflitti socio-ambientali che lo interessano, ad avermi offerto gli spunti decisivi per la ricerca, sia a sul piano teorico che pratico. La crisi ecologica e climatica è stata il punto di partenza della ricerca etnografica, condotta attraverso interviste aperte, semistrutturate e una prolungata osservazione partecipante sul campo. La comunità di San Isidro Buensuceso si situa alle pendici del vulcano La Malinche, nome che si deve alla traduttrice e interprete di Hernan Cortes che ebbe un ruolo centrale negli esiti della conquista. Per i suoi abitanti questa montagna rappresenta un luogo di grande importanza dal punto di vista ecosistemico, economico e culturale. Il mutamento della relazione tra comunità e montagna ha portato ad un forte deterioramento ecologico dei suoi boschi, fortemente inasprito a partire dalla conquista spagnola. Da due decenni a questa parte la minaccia principale per La Malinche sono ritenuti i taladores, i tagliatori di legna illegali: dalle interviste, sia con ex-taladores, sia con gli abitanti della zona è emerso che sono per lo più persone delle comunità stesse, organizzati in gruppi e i cui comportamenti sono ritenuti violenti e pericolosi. Questo ha portato ad inasprire i controlli sui boschi della montagna, attraverso una forte militarizzazione del Parco. In questo intricato e confuso panorama, recenti ricerche (Martínez Arellano, 2017) hanno messo in luce come sia in realtà in direzione della città di Puebla, con la sua grande domanda di legna, acqua e altre risorse naturali, verso cui bisogna volgere lo sguardo per trovare le cause principali del deterioramento ecologico odierno. Il tema della crisi climatica ed ecologica è stato esplorato anche dal punto di vista della percezione locale: in questo caso mi sono concentrato sui saperi ecologici locali degli abitanti della comunità di San Isidro Buensuceso, in particolare quelli relazionati con la crisi climatica ed ecologica in atto, che emergono come forme di conoscenza che procedono per logiche distanti da quelle capitaliste e sono in grado di offrire chiavi di lettura e di resistenza ai mutamenti in atto. Uno dei risultati restituiti dalla ricerca etnografica è la struttura dell’ampio apparato etnometeorologico nahua presente nella comunità, fortemente legato alle attività agricole e alla cosmovisione preispanica. Nel lavoro questo complesso sapere è stato suddiviso in quattro modalità principali: a) le previsioni climatiche a breve termine, con l’attenta osservazione delle nubi, degli astri e del comportamento animale (insetti, mammiferi, uccelli, ecc.); b) le previsioni climatiche a lungo termine, con la lettura delle cabañuelas, ovvero i primi 12 giorni di gennaio a cui corrispondono 12 mesi dell’anno in corso; c) il sapere tecnico-scientifico delle stesse persone della comunità; d) il sapere del tiempero, l’esperto rituale del tempo atmosferico. Nell’ultima sezione ho interrogato il sapere di cura, in particolare quello del curandero più importante della comunità e le modalità di medicina domestica (autoatencion), fortemente basati sull’utilizzo di piante medicinali. Questa urgenza si è consolidata durante le interviste, dalle quali è emerso come la crisi climatica sia entrata nel sapere di cura della comunità, da sempre attento alla dimensione ambientale e climatica.

2024, Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo

In Kanaky-Nuova Caledonia, molti giovani sotto i trent’anni si rivolgono ai poli di formazione professionale per ottenere patenti e certificazioni spendibili su un mercato del lavoro dominato dalle industrie minerarie. Una parte di questo pubblico proviene da un passato giudiziario complicato, segnato da plurime condanne d'incarcerazione. Attraverso un processo di differenziazione interno alle bande di giovani criminalizzati si creano le condizioni dell’inserimento dei loro membri nel mercato del lavoro. Questo riposizionamento avviene dopo una lunga resistenza all’istituzione scolastica e all’imperativo della formazione che si trasforma col tempo in una lotta per una migliore posizione nel settore estrattivo. Questo articolo mira a riarticolare il nesso tra resistenza e riproduzione proposto da Paul Willis nel 1977 al fine di riflettere sui rapporti tra delinquenza, mascolinità, etnicità, istruzione e lavoro negli spazi (post)coloniali, oggi al centro del rifornimento di materie prime per la transizione energetica mondiale.

2024, Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo

2024, The Albanian Limbo: From Bureaucratic Socialism to Neoliberal Capitalism

Albania is still one of the poorest countries in Europe, with a tormented history, characterised by foreign impositions and important internal contradictions and struggles. Its level of development and the respect for social and political... more

2024, Nauki o Finansach

In early 2021, the cryptoasset market capitalization exceeded $1.5 trillion, and there were more than 300 exchanges in the world where over 8,000 tokens could be traded. As part of research related to mature segments of the financial market (e.g. the stock market in the United States), scientists and practitioners have been trying to identify key risk factors for several decades, thanks to which it is possible to explain the equity risk premium for an investment in a given asset class. In recent years, there have been an increasing number of researchers trying to identify these factors for cryptoassets. The aim of this article was to analyse popular cryptoasset indices in order to identify those that can be used as a proxy of the market portfolio in order to estimate this risk factor premium. The research results indicate that the market risk factor is an important element of the market under study, and the indices that best reflect it are an index consisting of all cryptoassets weighted by capitalization and Coin100 which contains only the 100 largest cryptoassets.

2024, Financial Sciences

2024, International Journal of Quantum Chemistry

Simulations of molecules have recently been performed directly on a blockchain virtual computer at atomic resolution. This tutorial review covers the current applications of blockchain technology for molecular modeling in physics, chemistry, and biology, and provides a step-by-step tutorial for computational scientists looking to use blockchain computers to simulate physical and scientific processes in general. Simulations of carbon monoxide have been carried out using molecular dynamics software on the Ethereum blockchain in order to facilitate the tutorial.

2024

Worcester Polytechnic Institute is an American institute of higher learning in Worcester, Massachusetts that requires two main projects prior to graduation. The Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) is typically completed during a student's junior year, where small teams of students along with a faculty advisor conduct research directed at a specific problem or need while working with a project sponsor. Upon the completion of the project, the teams of students deliver findings and recommendations through formal reports and oral presentations to the project sponsor. Four students from WPI from various backgrounds spent seven weeks in Paraguay working on a project with Fundacion Paraguaya and immersing themselves in the Paraguayan culture. With minimum backgrounds in the Spanish language, the four students (two Americans, one Brazilian and one Indian) lived in the Intern House of Fundacion Paraguaya. The objective of the project was to improve the monitoring system in place for tracking income poverty in the Poverty Stoplight Program developed by Fundacion Paraguaya. This was done using several methods, such as learning about the current monitoring system used, attending presentations by different stakeholders in Fundacion Paraguaya, researching information about a robust monitoring system and shadowing the micro-credit officers and asesoras (advisors) of the organization for two weeks. The project ended with a final presentation in Spanish to the managers of Fundacion Paraguaya, after a period of seven weeks. The first two weeks involved us taking Spanish classes for two hours in the morning, followed by presentations from different departments within Fundacion Paraguaya about their daily routine and goals for the year, researching robust monitoring systems via textbooks, online sources and professionals and immersing ourselves in the Paraguayan culture. The next two weeks comprised us shadowing asesoras, or advisors, at the Fundacion Paraguaya offices in San Lorenzo and Luque. The group of four was split into two pairs, each pair visiting an office location for a week, then switching the following week. We then learned and observed the micro-credit process and overall culture of Fundacion Paraguaya. The week of April 13 to April 19 is Semana Santa (Saint's week), where businesses close starting midday Wednesday until Friday to observe Good Friday and the Easter holiday. We used half of that week to ask questions to some of the upper level managers in the headquarters office, also known as the Casa de Matriz. The sixth week was spent at the intern house organizing our thoughts, observations and findings about the current monitoring system, an ideal robust monitoring system. The time was used to complete and revise our deliverables, and prepare our final presentation. Each week comprised of weekly skype meetings with both our WPI advisor, Professor Traver, and our advisor for the project, Dorothy Wolf. Professor Traver and Dorothy Wolf organized our project and together helped develop the agenda/ itineraries for the seven weeks in relation to the project. We were required to work from 8am to 6pm on weekdays, and had the weeknights and weekends free to either do homework or explore our new surroundings. Some of the cultural immersion activities we participated in include dining at various restaurants, attending social events in PAGE 2 Asuncion, taking salsa lessons, exploring sites outside of Asuncion, indulging in Paraguayan food and history, participating in community service, and establishing friendships with people from all over the globe.

2024, La Scuola delle Donne®

Due sono le protagoniste della nostra storia, due paesi diversi, famiglie e formazioni diverse eppure il confronto con la morte le accomunerà: il passaggio della soglia guiderà Dorothy Parker e Rosario Castellanos a scegliere la via dell'ironia, della leggerezza e della giustizia per sopravvivere alle difficoltà della vita e a sé stesse. Dorothy e Rosario toccano direttamente il tema della nostra indipendenza, insegnandoci che lo sguardo, essere presenti a sé stesse e una manciata di leggerezza, sono le molle per poter migliorare e rivoluzionare il nostro punto di vista, quindi la nostra esistenza. Entrambe vivono un'infanzia contaminata da eventi che le portano immediatamente alla perdita dei loro familiari e che dirigerà la loro rotta verso un dolore profondo, che come una crepa nel cuore, sentirà sempre il bisogno di essere guarita per dare alle loro vite un senso, un equilibrio seppur precario.

2024, Anthropological Understandings of Money

The history of money has evolved significantly through time, encompassing a wide range of concepts. Anthropological understandings of money reflect how human societies interact with and are influenced by the economy. Financial networks can reflect the many financial forms and networks that affect these anthropological understandings of money. A financial network is a term that describes any collection of financial institutions and the connections that exist between them, preferably through direct transactions or the capacity to mediate a transaction. These transactions are enabled through the concepts of credit, debt, taxation, and Islamic banking and finance, all of which will be examined in this essay. This essay will look at how different financial forms and networks influence anthropological understandings of money. To progress, anthropological accounts of credit and debt in traditions such as Hinduism and OECD nations will be explored. Credit is described as a customer's capacity to acquire products or services before payment, based on the expectation that payment would be made in the future. Debt is defined as the situation of owing money that must be repaid-with interest within a specified time limit. Second, accounts of Islamic banking and finance will be addressed to refer to financial operations that follow Shariah Islamic law. Finally, ethnographic descriptions of taxes will be explored concerning Foucault's notion of taxation as a necessary contribution to state income.

2024

Research on housing financialization argues that property assets are important stores of value that collateralise global systems of financial accumulation. Yet remarkably little is known about how those assets are constructed, valued and generate returns. This paper draws on the assetization literature to unpack how investment properties are constructed as 'assets', applying an accounting lens to locate their growing importance within the move towards a fair value accounting regime. We argue that property investors benefit from a generous 'distributional apparatus'-that is, a collection of rules, norms, reporting technologies and market-orienting devices that act as both a resource and an incentive to engage in practices of valuation that maximise potential distributions. In the case of property assets, accounting rule IAS40 determines how housing assets should be recognised in an annual statement; the RICS Red Book acts as a market device which articulates with IAS40, providing rules and principles on the techniques of valuation and revaluation; and the ICAEW provides guidance on whether revaluations amount to a 'realised profit' which can be distributed to shareholders legally. Together these three features underpin the assetization process in investment property. We use two case studies to show that this apparatus acts as a flexible resource as companies build different valuation and distribution strategies around the RICS Red Book revaluation process, with different risk implications. Our findings contribute to financialization, assetization and accounting scholarship.

2024, Journal of Computer Science

In this study, a novel blockchain-based platform for renewable energy investment is proposed. The blockchain technology has been shown to be a reliable way to send financial transactions across the world in a decentralized manner, at a fraction of the cost and with a faster transaction time. The proposed platform is capable of handling an equity-sharing investment program for solar PV projects. The platform distributes the electricity generation income by sending it over a blockchain. The Ethereum blockchain is used to create a prototype, which is a smart contract. The prototype is tested with a solar-PV electricity generation data. The result shows that the proposed platform can handle the expected transactions without an error. The overall performance of the proposed platform is tested by comparing its temporal duration and its financial costs with centralized solutions. Therefore, the proposed platform provides all the benefits mentioned at a much cheaper cost.

2024, Sustainable Development

Their ability to absorb substantial capital makes hydropower dams attractive projects for the "wall of money." Although global webs of dynamic financial flows enable megaspatial transformations with huge temporal impacts, their opacity and fragmentation obfuscate possibilities for democratic decision making and accountability. This paper explores the question whether the interest in renewables and the ability of large infrastructure to absorb capital has changed the role of large dams as instruments of political, financial, and territorial power. An analytical framework inspired by Lefebvre's concept of "production of space" is used to examine the structural and context-specific dimensions of current hydropower development. Ultimately, we hope to contribute to an alternative conception of the landscape in which the myopic focus on capital accumulation is replaced with social and environmental justice.

2024, Social Science Research Network

Despite the transparency and independent operations of the central bank, the costly disin ‡ation in the early nineties and the apparent lack of contemporaneous correlation between in ‡ation and unemployment in the subsequent periods brings into question the validity of the Phillips curve hypothesis for the New Zealand economy. Nevertheless, drawing on an empirical exercise built on a narrative history, I argue that the hypothesis remains a valid view of the interaction between the real and nominal sides of the economy if we interpret that history with theories of credibility to account for the dynamics of in ‡ation expectations. Between 1987 and 2015, the survey data of in ‡ation expectations identi…es, through either a new classical or a new Keynesian representation, the changing location of the Phillips curve, illustrating how in ‡ation expectations directly a¤ect both in ‡ation and unemployment, without undermining their theoretical relationship. Findings suggest that a credible regime between 1993 and 1999 precipitated a stable manifold of relatively ‡at Phillips curves. However, probably the loss of credibility in the post-1999 era left the policymakers with a steeper Phillips curve with unstable locations. Use of the nontradable component of the consumer price index (CPI) rather than the CPI as a whole strengthens the policy conclusions based on the Phillips curve hypothesis.

2023, Cultural Anthropology

2023, Antropologia

Le "scoperte" risultanti da ogni ricerca sul terreno, spesso, come suggerisce Fabietti (2012), possono rivelarsi decentrate rispetto alle domande che avevano motivato quella ricerca. Decentrate sia in termini referenziali: ciò di cui alla fine si parla o si scrive; sia in termini riflessivi, metodologico-procedurali: comportano in sé modi alternativi e talvolta assai divergenti di procedere verso le "scoperte" stesse. In questo lavoro ripercorro i primi anni delle mie ricerche fra gli ikoots / huave di San Mateo del Mar (Oaxaca, Messico), a partire dal 1979; anni di intense frequentazioni di nuclei domestici che plasmarono il mio ascolto e le mie prospettive, portandomi a cercare strumentazioni alternative rispetto al bagaglio teorico sulla parentela con il quale ero partita e ad aprirmi all'antropologia semantica prima e all'antropologia linguistica poi. Seguendo il flusso del vissuto andavo scoprendo che stavo misurandomi con una società centrata sul "fare" e non sull'"essere" e non solo perché il verbo "essere" non esiste. Le rappresentazioni dei ruoli di donne e uomini si articolavano non in termini ontologici, ma piuttosto nel senso della "prassi", un "fare" (-rang) secondo genere, ruoli e posizioni. In questo contesto la dimensione della "volontà" emergeva frequentemente nei loro discorsi quotidiani, a totale discapito di altri concetti (espressi per noi dai nostri verbi modali: 'potere' e 'dovere'), quasi inesistenti. Il carico di agentività di ciascuna persona appariva inaspettatamente radicale nei confronti del ruolo parentale, consentendo loro ad esempio, l'"interruzione" volontaria di un legame consanguineo. Le rappresentazioni discorsive dell'agire sociale ponevano al centro soggetti, come donne, anziani/e e bambini/e, non sempre contemplati dalle ricerche dell'epoca, dando dimensioni del "fare" parentale del tutto inaspettate. Ciò si inquadrava pienamente in una rappresentazione anti-ontologica delle relazioni sociali, fondata piuttosto sulla centralità della "prassi" e della "volontà" assente dalla ricerca antropologica mesoamericanista (e non solo) di quegli anni.

2023, DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals)

The research follows, on one hand the evolutionary stages of evangelization theatre, on the other, traces a panorama of the different existing performative styles in pre-Hispanic times, to detect which elements of the paradramatic indigenous rituals and protocols survived in religious theatre set up by Franciscans in the American-hispanic ground. We want to underline how the contents and the forms are the result of miscegenation and syncretism, that were folklorized after the fall of the missionary theatre, and crystallized into a popular dramatic repertoire which exhibits strong survivals of native culture, sometimes only subtly hidden under the Christian and European appearance.

2023, American Anthropologist

2023

Two Percent Target, the Institute has a long tradition of chronicling Canadian monetary policy. We trust that Steve Ambler and Jeremy Kronick's contribution will be a valued resource to experts, students, and any Canadians interested in how their central bank affects their economy for years to come. While the analysis and opinions presented here are the responsibility of its authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Institute's members or Board of Directors, this book exemplifies the C. D. Howe Institute's mission to foster informed discussion on key economic policy topics through sound analysis and careful empirical research.

2023

This class draws on anthropology, history, and finance to understand the role of debt in the making of empires, the creation of dependency, the forging of interdependency, and the shaping of economic life in 2023. In the United States, debt crisis are entangled with legacies of enslavement and internal colonialism. Debt crises in the United States-such as the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing student debt crisis-have led to a popular view that there is something inherently "bad" about debt. Medical debt, student debt, credit card debt, legal debt, federal debt-all seem out of control. Is debt itself the problem? To many the answer seems to be yes. But from an economics or accounting point of view, this makes no sense: debt is just the other side of "credit." Why is credit often taken to be good, and debt bad? How can the discipline of anthropology contribute to understanding the many forms of debt and many kinds of empire? This class takes three approaches to Empires of Debt: Empires of Debt in Anthropology; Debt and US Empire; Other Debts; Other Empires

2023, Confluenze: Rivista di Studi Iberoamericani

Visioni dal barrio. Trasformazioni nel Messico contemporaneo attraverso gli occhi di un quartiere.

2023, Hydro Nepal: Journal of Water, Energy and Environment

2023

The research follows, on one hand the evolutionary stages of evangelization theatre, on the other, traces a panorama of the different existing performative styles in pre-Hispanic times, to detect which elements of the para- dramatic indigenous rituals and protocols survived in religious theatre set up by Franciscans in the American-hispanic ground. We want to underline how the contents and the forms are the result of miscegenation and syncretism, that were folklorized after the fall of the missionary theatre, and crystallized into a popular dramatic repertoire which exhibits strong survivals of native culture, sometimes only subtly hidden under the Christian and European appearance.

2023, SSRN Electronic Journal

2023, Cultural Anthropology

At a time of a “private equity oil rush,” this essay explores how oil industry entrepreneurs with ambitions of setting up their own oil-production companies are encouraged to “dream big”—yet are ultimately disciplined and let down—by private equity finance in the state of Colorado in the United States. Motivated by a desire to “do oil differently,” these start-ups articulate utopian visions that draw on inequalities in extractive economies to promote an ethos of care and inclusion. I argue that while economic imaginations are commonly seen to offer alternatives to and critiques of capitalism, it is important also to attend to articulations of capitalist utopia. As private equity has come to form a secreted infrastructure that underlies much of the world’s financial system and encourages entrepreneurial optimism and euphoria, I explore how the contemporary life of capitalism stimulates attitudes to wealth creation that remain markedly conventional and unadventurous.

2023

This article aims to introduce the reader to the anthropology of finance in its contemporary dimension of financialization. Through the lens of the feminist manifesto "GENS" (Bear et al. 2015), the author proposes a reading of ethnographies that highlights the interconnectedness of individuals' agency, projects of social reproduction, power hierarchies, and processes of money accumulation. Moreover, the article how the financial industry reproduces race, gender, and class inequalities both within societies and on a global scale, becoming increasingly pervasive in development discourse. The article is divided into three parts based on the relationship between individuals and the financial valuation process they engage in. It analyzes the experts who work within financial institutions; the social reproduction processes of the working classes increasingly reliant on credit and debt mechanisms introduced by financial capitalism; and the people excluded from global financial dynamics, whose financial inclusion is considered the most effective tool to escape poverty by governments and international organizations.

2023, L'Uomo, vol. VI, n. 1-2,pp. 29-61

Questo scritto si propone di analizzare il complesso di
funzioni cerimoniali, sociali ed economiche connesse al culto
delle immagini cattoliche che in America Latina va sotto il nome
di mayordomia, attraverso lo studio della realtà etnografica di
Santiago Yancuictlalpan (Stato di Puebla, Messico).
Considerata la copresenza di compagini sociali diverse e
contrapposte all'interno della comunità, la nahua e la mestiza, si
tenta la comparazione fra esercizio mestizo e nahua
dell'istituzione, analizzandone i tratti distintivi nella loro
dimensione simbolica e sociale

2023, MERIDIANA Rivista quadrimestrale dell'Istituto meridionale di storia e scienze sociali Direttori

Has finance been more important to urban growth or has urban growth been crucial for financial expansion? This article seeks to answer this question drawing from multidisciplinary literature that focuses on the urbanization process in the peculiar conjuncture of financialized capitalism. Leaving on the background definition of financialization formulated by economists or political economists, it suggests adopting a relational approach to financialization of the urban space. Setting macro and micro analysis in dialogue, this approach is able to shed light both on structural aspects and social impact of financialization process in variegated historical, political and geographical contexts, as the articles of this themed section widely show.

2023

Verwandschaƒt cit., p. 219. 9 « Nemo fìdelium cum patre aut matre spiritali matrimonium contrahat, id est non cum patrinis aut matrinis ›› (« Nessun fedele contragga matrimonio con il padre o con la madre spirituale, cioè con i padrini o... more

2023, Society for Applied Anthropology / Political Ecology Society

Credit continues to be one of the basic tools in development. This paper address the oversimple and narrow treatment of credit in economics which has tended to focus on a few technical dimensions of credit such as interest rates and risk, leaving aside its many other social, political, and cultural dimensions. It is just these omitted dimensions that we as anthropologist fnd fascinating. Unfortunately, credit has not received the attention it deserves by anthropologist. This paper explores some of the lessons that may be learned from studies in economic history and anthropology about the hidden cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions that are often hidden in credit arrangements.

2023, Public Anthropologist

This piece explores ethnographically how new "subjects" of corruption are formulated through discursive and practical negotiations over the appropriate behaviour of those who would have previously been understood as subalterns. I explore these questions in the context of a reconstruction project in post-conflict, post-earthquake Nepal. Newly rendered as "community members" and "users," in the language of both governmental and non-governmental agencies, I suggest that residents of Nepal's rural areas navigate rapidly evolving state structures, domestic labour markets, and transnational relationships by practicing new forms of agency that can put them at odds with the expectations of the external actors who offer resources and regulate their use.

2023

This paper uses an approach grounded in institutional political economy and critical theory to explain the operations of the microfinance industry in Cameroon. As finance is critical to neoliberal-led development, I argue that it is important to examine the role that culture plays in mediating access to credit provided by microfinance institutions. This is critical, as economic theory does not accurately depict the vital role of culture in facilitating access to credit. I contend that by facilitating access to finance at the local level, traditional institutions serve to legitimate and consolidate the activities of microfinance institutions that benefit from finance-led development. I also argue that culture serves as a channel that enables poor people previously unconnected to the formal financial system to become part of global financial capitalism, which does not necessarily make them better off. The local culture has become one of the methods of surplus appropriation.

2023, American Ethnologist

2023, Society for Applied Anthropology

The dilemma of capitalism is that if consumption does not keep apace of production, unsold commodities glut the market, causing crises of accumulation. This dynamic has constantly pushed capitalists to seek new markets. Affordability, however, has always been part of the problem. Full cash payment limits the size of the market for a product. And without some from of credit, there are too few consumers at the top of the pyramid to sustain many enterprises. But, and here's the rub, even where there are face-to-face relations lending to consumers is fraught with problems. Collection may be a nightmare. The problem simply put was how to create transactions that would make commodities affordable without engaging in face-to-face relations with consumers. This required new institutions, new laws, and new forms of transactions.

2023, Archivio antropologico mediterraneo