Doctoral Dissertation Research: Technologies of Transaction in Moral Economic Framework

This doctoral dissertation project investigates collaboration between industries that typically operate outside the sphere of traditional finance. It focuses on the financial obstacles encountered by these industries, as well as how alliances among non-traditional industries allow these to be overcome. Specifically, using linguistic and cultural anthropological approaches, the research examines what role digital currency plays in facilitating financial market access among marginalized workers, as well as what beliefs and experiences most directly shape moral and economic notions of value within these transactional spaces.

Research findings will be broadly disseminated to professionals, policy makers, and researchers in relevant fields and will include public outreach efforts to support the well-being of marginalized communities. Additionally, the research contributes to the training of a U.S.-based graduate student.

Through a combination of in-person and digital ethnographic fieldwork at corporate offices and within the broader community of financially marginal individuals, as well as semiotic, social network, and other methods of data analysis, the project examines the economic, political and ethical motivations of this collaboration as well as its material and symbolic impacts. The researcher will conduct digital archival research to trace the financial and moral discourses that have shaped the margins of the finance industry and conduct interviews with users of alternate forms of financial transaction.

The research builds on multiple anthropological literatures to provide a fresh perspective on how moral, monetary, and meaning-making practices interact in the creation and discernment of value.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.