tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20579853525706646292024-03-19T01:48:24.796-07:00IMTFI BlogInstitute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion BlogIMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.comBlogger415125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-38254871902688616662023-01-09T08:40:00.005-08:002023-01-09T08:40:55.987-08:00IMTFI Blog is Moving<p>Greetings! Due to the need for technological updates, the IMTFI Blog has made a platform switch to WordPress. Blogposts from 2011-2022 will stay available here.</p><p>All new content as of January 9, 2023 can be found at: <a href="https://sites.uci.edu/imtfiblog/">https://sites.uci.edu/imtfiblog/</a></p><p>Current subscribers have been invited into the new platform, please check your inbox and click the button to confirm new subscription in order to continue receiving email notifications.</p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-46632965433316002222022-08-01T09:21:00.001-07:002023-01-09T00:11:27.525-08:00The Social Meaning of Mobile Money: Navigating Digital Payments, Savings and Credit in the Global South<p><i>by Janaki Srinivasan, PhD, <a href="https://www.iiitb.ac.in/faculty/janaki-srinivasan" target="_blank">IIIT-Bangalore</a> and IMTFI Fellow</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpEESLS9QCBGWG6-Ni9XUShq1NsgnEjJlL_eGeGrHB349xZCkqPwx_xAwcznqN9m9Dxr0J5A7PbN4O4C1IgFhq2X4brhueFoci_SbgAcLcx5cS_boKMuT7l0G0cv54TGHWsBMg3_sEWI0uhSdurONlA__bPDj4NLOWxSyF-f9IdgVXFZkVttY4LuMiUg/s271/Data-Centric%20Living.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="180" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpEESLS9QCBGWG6-Ni9XUShq1NsgnEjJlL_eGeGrHB349xZCkqPwx_xAwcznqN9m9Dxr0J5A7PbN4O4C1IgFhq2X4brhueFoci_SbgAcLcx5cS_boKMuT7l0G0cv54TGHWsBMg3_sEWI0uhSdurONlA__bPDj4NLOWxSyF-f9IdgVXFZkVttY4LuMiUg/s1600/Data-Centric%20Living.jpg" width="180" /></a></div><p>"The Social Meaning of Mobile Money," Chapter 7 of <i>Data-Centric Living: Algorithms, Digitization and Regulation, </i>edited by V. Sridhar; November 30, 2021; Routledge India, 344pp.</p><p><b>ABSTRACT </b></p><p>Financial transactions have been an integral part of people’s everyday transactions the world over. Whether in the form of cash, credit, plastic cards or today, using digital platforms, these transactions continue to both structure and be shaped by the existing social order . Using a “social meaning of money” framing , this chapter draws on examples from around the world to better understand how people give, receive and save money in the Digital Age. In the process, it attempts three shifts in focus: (1) from the inherent value of monetary technologies to how this value is constituted in practice within specific constellations of norms, values, power relations and resource distribution, (2) from the use of digital platforms to the integration of their use with non-digital artefacts in practice, and (3) from the innovativeness of technology design to the innovativeness of its users. The chapter finds that while mobile financial tools and associated data may well be making the world of financial transactions more inclusive in some ways, they simultaneously risk excluding certain categories of people, practices and geographies from the economy. By alerting us to the promise and perils of newly introduced modes of transacting our finances, this chapter will urge its audience to think more realistically about how to better design such tools and the policies regulating them.</p><p>Download full chapter online here: <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003093442-7/social-meaning-mobile-money-janaki-srinivasan">https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003093442-7/social-meaning-mobile-money-janaki-srinivasan</a></p><p>This chapter is part of the collection: <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Data-centric-Living-Algorithms-Digitization-and-Regulation/Sridhar/p/book/9780367554170" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Data-Centric Living: Algorithms, Digitization and Regulation</a><i>, </i>edited by V. Sridhar and is available online. The book explores how data about our everyday online behaviour are collected and how they are processed in various ways by algorithms powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). The book investigates the socioeconomic effects of these technologies, and the evolving regulatory landscape that is aiming to nurture the positive effects of these technology evolutions while at the same time curbing possible negative practices. The volume scrutinizes growing concerns on how algorithmic decisions can sometimes be biased and discriminative; how autonomous systems can possibly disrupt and impact the labour markets, resulting in job losses in several traditional sectors while creating unprecedented opportunities in others; the rapid evolution of social media that can be addictive at times resulting in associated mental health issues; and the way digital Identities are evolving around the world and their impact on provisioning of government services. The book also provides an in-depth understanding of regulations around the world to protect privacy of data subjects in the online world; a glimpse of how data is used as a digital public good in combating Covid pandemic; and how ethical standards in autonomous systems are evolving in the digital world.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><br />A timely intervention in this fast-evolving field, this book is useful for scholars and researchers of digital humanities, business and management, internet studies, data sciences, political studies, urban sociology, law, media and cultural studies, sociology, cultural anthropology, and science and technology studies. It is also of immense interest to the general readers seeking insights on daily digital lives.</div><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-47930348598814572832022-07-13T15:00:00.000-07:002022-07-13T15:00:28.056-07:00Telling Financial Stories through Photovoice<p style="text-align: center;"><b>“Trust is a difficult thing to earn and build, but our pilot program taught us that the social process of sharing photos and stories is a powerful place to start.”</b></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>—The UCI photovoice research team </b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZbfGLvfrozrwpOvRgfRPvmCSVk9eDzF1JnZa6Cl4ujWkXevCbSeinNFYg2LStURycrOHumfowU_v2WN4TrggvCuJTWABCSyOD3GpbGW2G2NVL16A8D7Hu9GN6m8uikwrjJzx-JV_4lq62cYF3jdkGnRTJEe27vYiNRlSuXGIc94di2_MNUpR4GY672w/s800/Photo%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZbfGLvfrozrwpOvRgfRPvmCSVk9eDzF1JnZa6Cl4ujWkXevCbSeinNFYg2LStURycrOHumfowU_v2WN4TrggvCuJTWABCSyOD3GpbGW2G2NVL16A8D7Hu9GN6m8uikwrjJzx-JV_4lq62cYF3jdkGnRTJEe27vYiNRlSuXGIc94di2_MNUpR4GY672w/w400-h300/Photo%202.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p><i>Community Credit is a collaborative research project at UC Irvine that seeks to connect minoritized and financially underserved communities with credit unions for the purpose of building trust and developing more equitable financial products that address the specific needs of the community. The project is funded by the National Science Foundation Convergence Accelerator program. The UCI photovoice research team included Melissa Wrapp, UCI anthropology Ph.D. ’21 and postdoctoral project manager; Ellen Garnett Kladky, anthropology graduate student; Bryan Truitt, visual studies graduate student; and Jenny Fan, Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion manager. Photovoice is one method being used within this larger project, which also includes: listening sessions, ethnographic interviews, surveying, financial landscaping, decision modeling, deep data marketing analysis, and more. PhotovoiceWorldwide has been a vital partner to Community Credit, offering consulting, training, and facilitation throughout 2021-22. The following report, by Ellen Garnett Kladky, Ph.D. candidate, University of California, Irvine, details the team’s efforts. Original source: <a href="https://www.photovoiceworldwide.com/telling-financial-stories-through-photovoice/" target="_blank">PhotovoiceWorldwide</a>.</i></p><p>“Financial problems are often thought to be secret and shameful. Whether someone is facing big challenges such as bankruptcy or foreclosure, or is simply worrying about day-to-day concerns like paying bills, rising gas prices, or affording gifts for a child’s upcoming birthday, people often keep financial issues to themselves. As a result, many suffer alone. </p><p>This year, UCI Community Credit researchers piloted a photovoice project that aimed to incorporate community perspectives in an effort to build financial alternatives that create inclusion, increase trust, and fight financial disinformation. UCI embarked on this project seeking to better understand what people in minoritized communities needed from the financial institutions that serve them and how they assess the trustworthiness of institutions. But, in a larger sense, our team hoped that the photovoice project would serve as a building block for community involvement, a way to empower participants to craft narratives about their financial strengths and weaknesses, articulate their financial needs, and re-imagine the financial future for themselves and their community.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1EP3k3HkWj5NWCVNJuZZAJwOhtGAnhG-2wLN9ORmKEKG9-tcxMVIv0e2H47UHMl3C0NWFktm_xaORwZiO8EBCif_CuL-VO5WlQMSzhhPCjSADOSrryHfjb2EbCOMN3BsVqnU3C4fbXTo4zEeFfUk6WzXPA4EKK2OAagbIkHytHVxDdNKgFpKMbY0ERw/s960/Photo%201.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1EP3k3HkWj5NWCVNJuZZAJwOhtGAnhG-2wLN9ORmKEKG9-tcxMVIv0e2H47UHMl3C0NWFktm_xaORwZiO8EBCif_CuL-VO5WlQMSzhhPCjSADOSrryHfjb2EbCOMN3BsVqnU3C4fbXTo4zEeFfUk6WzXPA4EKK2OAagbIkHytHVxDdNKgFpKMbY0ERw/w400-h225/Photo%201.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;">Pictured: Photos on the theme of uncertainty and resilience<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The photovoice pilot consisted of eight participant-researchers recruited by local community-based organizations (CBOs) that work with financially underserved communities in Southern California. Participants took photos in response to a variety of questions (some of which were generated by the group) covering topics such as financial strengths, trust, coping with financial adversity, and creating financial stability. In our meetings, we discussed each other’s photos, wrote captions, and identified themes, which included balance, sacrifice and creativity, and support networks. Meetings culminated in a public share-out session for participants’ friends and family, members of the research team, and CBOs. </span></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Half of the participants were primarily Khmer-speaking, while the other half communicated in English. To make conversation possible, we relied on two Khmer-English interpreters. We also shifted from plenary group discussions to language-specific breakout conversations throughout our sessions. The process of interpretation can be time-consuming and imperfect, and at times we worried that not being able to speak directly might make it difficult for participants to fully engage with each other. However, to our delight, participants found that this diversity made the experience all the more meaningful. As one put it, ‘I’m Latina—I’m not Cambodian. But during this experience we shared our personal lives and learned how we are all similar in a way, no matter what color we are, no matter what race, no matter where you live.’ </span></p><p class="Normal1"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRqvAhkni4PvZsqWjbPmZve-uItcA6Uohj5rQ0_x0zA9h45xIGNB9RNhXO7nB-Jr_HDfyZMcdCPVTKdSQITpskjPH-haw7a4WiooM45oLeWxZWyS6r0i4KX8iiEhbILa_JwE8ljhB1Ovjw-HkI2XfLCHzl2uJzfelxbquBC4uUNJsmEpZT9Hu56iLKCA/s800/Photo%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRqvAhkni4PvZsqWjbPmZve-uItcA6Uohj5rQ0_x0zA9h45xIGNB9RNhXO7nB-Jr_HDfyZMcdCPVTKdSQITpskjPH-haw7a4WiooM45oLeWxZWyS6r0i4KX8iiEhbILa_JwE8ljhB1Ovjw-HkI2XfLCHzl2uJzfelxbquBC4uUNJsmEpZT9Hu56iLKCA/w400-h300/Photo%202.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pictured: "No safety, no freedom, not happy. <br />Being in a home has limitations, the homeless look free."</td></tr></tbody></table></span></i></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">The process of discussing finances was often difficult. More than once, participants became emotional when talking about their photos. Some felt trapped, others faced eviction, others worried for their children. But sharing struggles and strengths was also empowering. Participants frequently noted that they were used to keeping these topics to themselves, and they found it reassuring to learn that others faced many of the same challenges. As one explained, ‘Being in this space, I am happy to know that I am not alone financially struggling; we are in this together.’ Additionally, the process of taking photos in response to prompts, writing captions, and determining themes gave participants confidence in speaking up about financial topics, asking questions, and turning to others for help. </span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf9MtcbkYp_6OaIgbWUlAVPNJOt8fI0Z_-Hn1wCmgW-h_t-x90gFyzIsIqDGgUMcPFN4S8kIDiTnA7EEfYtms1U1U4ONsj-DFCFhPbhy7ckDPHvCb1Tn8p5zHAhLFG2E3wSZwdGek2PzckYei6hv4J7BT8ZKadTMAJPDP3dCnbXbraJUp5ehJy7klzqg/s4000/Photo%203.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf9MtcbkYp_6OaIgbWUlAVPNJOt8fI0Z_-Hn1wCmgW-h_t-x90gFyzIsIqDGgUMcPFN4S8kIDiTnA7EEfYtms1U1U4ONsj-DFCFhPbhy7ckDPHvCb1Tn8p5zHAhLFG2E3wSZwdGek2PzckYei6hv4J7BT8ZKadTMAJPDP3dCnbXbraJUp5ehJy7klzqg/w300-h400/Photo%203.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><p class="Normal1"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pictured: "My children are my sources of hope and resiliency. Saving is
not for me, but for my children. In my home country, raising a pig was a way to
ensure a future source of income. But here, the pig is savings. I teach my
children to save every penny, so it will add up and help us in the future."</span></i></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This pilot program was insightful for our research team and our credit union partners as we work to develop methodologies for building trust within financial services. First and foremost, it brought into focus the fact that financial decision making and trust building don’t happen in a vacuum—they are completely entangled with other aspects of life. During our photovoice share-out meeting, one of the researchers on our team reflected, ‘This was a welcome reminder that while we sometimes like to separate out finance as its own domain, really it’s not separable from our relationships with our family, our religious lives, our cultural identities, and any number of other things.’</span></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Many interventions aim to promote financial inclusion by focusing only on the domain of the financial, for example by offering new products or teaching financial literacy. But our photovoice pilot program revealed that to understand someone’s financial needs, and certainly to build trust in an institution, it is crucial to consider seemingly ‘non-financial’ aspects of their lives. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><h4 style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"T</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">o understand someone’s financial needs, and certainly to build trust in an institution, it is crucial to consider seemingly 'non-financial'</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b> aspects of their lives."</b></span></h4><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Ultimately, we plan to use photovoice as a part of the Community Credit toolkit, a set of resources to help credit unions and financially underserved communities form long-term, collaborative relationships. As a part of the toolkit, photovoice will be the first step in member-driven product design. As one of our credit union partners observed, ‘Credit unions often want to be more inclusive, but they don’t know where to start, and the perspective of their members, or the people they are trying to include, is often missing.’</span></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Photovoice has begun the process of bringing those perspectives to the table. Enabling community members to tell open-ended stories and build confidence in discussions of financial topics will bring to light financial needs (and strengths) that might not have been visible otherwise. But the role of photovoice in the Community Credit process is not simply one of information gathering or community empowerment: it will also begin to build trust between members of financially underserved communities and credit unions through listening and connecting. Trust is a difficult thing to earn and build, but our pilot program taught us that the social process of sharing photos and stories is a powerful place to start.” </span></p><p class="Normal1"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">To see more photos from this project, check out #ProjectMonday features on Instagram:</span></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CfCVUp2ofXG/" target="_blank">Can we speak about money</a></li><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CfUdYPLNatQ/" target="_blank">Hearing the community</a></li></ul><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">To learn more about the Community Credit project, visit <a href="https://sites.uci.edu/communitycredit/">https://sites.uci.edu/communitycredit/</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-53556544908905255032022-07-05T11:33:00.000-07:002022-07-05T11:33:35.705-07:00Why the crypto crash is fueling calls for regulation<p>IMTFI Director Bill Maurer in GRID, June 27, 2022</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfBa3frV-8JUigY7FLny_BR3OtovjKKrmyrMWkgGfVxLEupZhqFxKKxOteM8GQgenkpFO7dLGFLVBJ3IsoiRiRsYWvIH6rEJC4-8Eh80tBSDIG5KeWYDfQ3lWpAnIrq6IxlqUj-EpLrBaCex2AklgeS3i0orafSYo0zIfqjtSj8ugMXo8ap_c4Ft26TQ/s880/billmaurer2016_880.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="880" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfBa3frV-8JUigY7FLny_BR3OtovjKKrmyrMWkgGfVxLEupZhqFxKKxOteM8GQgenkpFO7dLGFLVBJ3IsoiRiRsYWvIH6rEJC4-8Eh80tBSDIG5KeWYDfQ3lWpAnIrq6IxlqUj-EpLrBaCex2AklgeS3i0orafSYo0zIfqjtSj8ugMXo8ap_c4Ft26TQ/s320/billmaurer2016_880.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>“It’s going to lead to more regulation, especially because you have this awful mix of whatever is going to happen with this very uncertain economy, coupled with all of the marketing of crypto that’s happening right now to vulnerable and minority communities, all the celebrity endorsements,” said Bill Maurer, director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at the University of California, Irvine. “The thing is, if regulation is going to happen, it better happen fast.” … “One of the foundational mythologies of crypto is that you’re going to have this private money and finance that is unregulated and yet still secure, because of the technological workaround,” Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and author of “The Color of Money” and “How the Other Half Banks.”<p></p><p>For the full story, "Why the crypto crash is fueling calls for regulation: Existing bills and the human toll is creating a perfect storm" by Benjamin Powers, please visit <a href="https://www.grid.news/story/technology/2022/06/27/why-the-crypto-crash-is-fueling-calls-for-regulation/">https://www.grid.news/story/technology/2022/06/27/why-the-crypto-crash-is-fueling-calls-for-regulation/</a>.</p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-89984081038109754252022-06-27T14:51:00.002-07:002022-06-27T14:55:30.839-07:00A Tale of Three Cedis, Mobile Money, and Fintech? User Experiences in Ghana’s Evolving Moneyscape<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><i>By Vivian Dzokoto, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University and IMTFI Fellow in the <a href="https://miasa.hypotheses.org/429" target="_blank">Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA)</a> - Blog</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyDT48y52ofZN5RP8h86eLPSlw-DtD2soLYVN22a2zekJzlmxPgVtimS6eIsUbJCtII7XRx1LdQErA3wFtR9n-uPO5Zj-mDdZY-_nl0CmXZ9fpr5REd5AK9VRxPPANWWm_UmQilEMlepkhyvZnttAKyoY_5cWHYZ2oE-SvWhV5Twxo1OAfE7sx-NaR6A/s500/cedi%20currency-g89b5c4cb6_1280-500x332.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="500" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyDT48y52ofZN5RP8h86eLPSlw-DtD2soLYVN22a2zekJzlmxPgVtimS6eIsUbJCtII7XRx1LdQErA3wFtR9n-uPO5Zj-mDdZY-_nl0CmXZ9fpr5REd5AK9VRxPPANWWm_UmQilEMlepkhyvZnttAKyoY_5cWHYZ2oE-SvWhV5Twxo1OAfE7sx-NaR6A/s320/cedi%20currency-g89b5c4cb6_1280-500x332.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A decade ago, I published “<a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487010000498" target="_blank">A Tale of Two Cedis</a>”, a psychological perspective of user experiences of adjustment to a central bank-led disruption to payments in Ghana. In that and <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10603-010-9144-3" target="_blank">other papers</a>, I explored how Ghanaians made sense of the old currency<sup><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">1</span></sup> (what became known as the Old Ghana Cedi), and its replacement, the <a href="https://www1.oanda.com/currency/iso-currency-codes/GHS" target="_blank">New Ghana Cedi</a>. The latter was a banknote and coin series more portable than its predecessor due to the elimination of 4 zeroes.<p></p><p>Thereafter, I published other papers, based largely on interviews with everyday consumers, <a href="https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219649218500284" target="_blank">examining how people made sense</a> (or didn’t) of Mobile Money. I researched the public awareness of and reasons for the then slow uptake of Mobile Money in Ghana. (Uptake has increased <a href="https://businesschief.eu/technology/how-ghana-using-mobile-money-go-cashless" target="_blank">dramatically</a> since then).</p><p>My research in Ghana’s moneyscape had numerous takeaways. Here are two examples. First, the old currency remains an important part of sense-making for a seemingly large subset of Ghanaians. Currently, 10+ years post-redenomination, some Ghanaians routinely convert the cost of goods and services to the old currency to get a sense of just how pricey something is – to determine the “real value”. In technical terms, such users default to the phased-out scale rather than the rescaled calibration of the fiat currency to subjectively determine worth. Second, from the user perspective, the onboarding of mobile money was partly hampered by a focus on the tangibility of money. Simply put, at the time, people preferred money that they could touch and feel – and handle, hide, wave, toss, present, and on occasion, flaunt. Apart from initial distrust of Mobile Money in its early days, lack of a perceived distinction between Mobile Money and Ezwich (a biometric card-based payment option and financial inclusion strategy introduced by the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Limited (GHIPSS)), low levels of awareness and understanding of this phone-based payment tool, many of my respondents at the time were of the view that money wasn’t quite a money devoid of a physical form.</p><p>The face of payments in Ghana has changed dramatically since my “Tale of Two Cedis” was published. Yet distinct patterns prevail in Ghana’s payment ecosystem. I discuss a few of these below.</p><p><b>What has changed?</b></p><p>Today, the payment ecosystem in Ghana, while not flawless, is decidedly much more complex. While not cashless, it is certainly cash-lite. A digitally literate, bank account holder has the option of paying for goods and services via mobile phone using Mobile Money through a Mobile Network Operator. This is done via e-value in the local currency previously loaded onto their Mobile Money Wallet by a push transaction from their online banking account<span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: xx-small; vertical-align: super;">2</span>, processed by a third party financial technology company aka fintech (invisible to the consumer) linking the banking system to the mobile money platform on the rails of GHIPPS products. Alternatively, the shopper could pay by cash, card (assuming the vendor has a point of sale machine), a third-party payment app, or via QR code. Ghana is the first African country to launch a universal QR code enabling instant merchant payments from mobile money wallets (GSMA, 2021). A frequently heard question today is “ Don’t you have momo? “. This is the case particularly when a vendor is unable to make the change, a perennial local cash-related problem in some sectors of the market economy. Churches, a HUGE presence in this very religious country, particularly embraced mobile money payments during the COVID 19 lockdown period. By doing so, churches have expanded beyond their significant engagement with the formal banking sector to mirror the nation’s cash lite, mobile money dominated payment preference shift.</p><p><br /></p><p>To read the full post please visit: <a href="https://miasa.hypotheses.org/429">https://miasa.hypotheses.org/429</a></p><p>Featured Image: By PDPics, Pixabay-Licence, <a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/currency-note-paper-money-ghana-166846/.">https://pixabay.com/photos/currency-note-paper-money-ghana-166846/.</a></p><p>Footnotes</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>The term old “currency” sounds like an oxymoron. </li><li>Note: There are other ways of loading money onto a mobile money wallet, such as a push payment from someone else’s bank account or mobile money account, or by depositing cash with a Mobile Money agent.</li></ol><div><br /></div><p></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-38153497657897046502021-10-12T11:00:00.002-07:002021-10-12T11:00:34.405-07:0010/13 "What’s a Central Bank Digital Currency and Why Do They Matter (Even If They Never Exist)?" a CIESAS-IMTFI talk with Bill Maurer<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Join us! Tomorrow 10/13, 9amPT/11CT/12pmET</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">"What’s a Central Bank Digital Currency and Why Do They Matter (Even If They Never Exist)?"</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zTZwJko8wHk/YWXH_Xk1VvI/AAAAAAAABi8/8civHpMOh5c7xVZB9mNv6UsDvyjSfsW-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s397/CBDC%2Bimage4event2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="336" data-original-width="397" height="339" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zTZwJko8wHk/YWXH_Xk1VvI/AAAAAAAABi8/8civHpMOh5c7xVZB9mNv6UsDvyjSfsW-gCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h339/CBDC%2Bimage4event2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">A virtual talk with <b>Bill Maurer,</b> <i>UCI</i> moderated by <b>Magdalena Villareal,</b> <i>CIESAS</i></div><div style="text-align: center;">Wednesday, October 13, 9-10amPT/11am-12pmCT/12-1pmET</div><div style="text-align: center;">Register for Zoom webinar here: <a href="http://bit.ly/CIESAS_CBDC_maurer">bit.ly/CIESAS_CBDC_maurer</a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">Co-sponsored by</div><div style="text-align: center;">The Center for Advanced Research and Postgraduate Studies in Social Anthropology </div><div style="text-align: center;">(CIESAS Occidente) & IMTFI</div><p></p><p>CBDCs became a topic of debate after the rise of bitcoin, yet proceed from very different assumptions about the nature of money and the role of the state. They also spotlight the public interest in the ability to pay for things—something so basic we rarely even consider it. This talk considers CBDCs—which, as of now, don’t even really exist, outside of a few pilots—in light of that public interest, and asks whether a truly democratic digital money can take shape in the context of pervasive digital surveillance and broader challenges to democracy.</p><br />For Q&A and Discussion Professor Maurer and Professor Villareal will be joined by:<br />Nima Yolmo, Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology, <i>UC Irvine</i><br />Andrew Crawford, Doctoral Researcher at <i>Universität Hamburg</i><br /><br />Live Spanish translation will be available.<br /><br /><br /><b>Bill Maurer</b> is Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology and Law, UCI and the director of the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion. He is the author of How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money, among many other publications<br /><br /><b>Magdalena Villarreal</b> is senior researcher and professor at the Mexican Center for Advanced Research and Postgraduate Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS Occidente) and member of the National Research System and the National Academy of Sciences.<div><br /></div></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-54780984017144468742021-10-04T08:59:00.000-07:002021-10-04T08:59:13.245-07:00It’s all about cash in the end...for now.<p><i>by Andrew Crawford, Doctoral Researcher (GIGA, Universität Hamburg) and IMTFI Fellow</i></p><p>News about a political upheaval often includes a story about frantic citizens desperately trying to get cash. Recent cases in point are events in Afghanistan and Myanmar. In Afghanistan, the departure of US forces and subsequent <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/25/afghanistan-economy-kabul/" target="_blank">Taliban takeover led to a banking crisis</a> with long lines for the limited number of functioning ATMs. Traditional informal money transfer agents, known as hawaladars, faced <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/02/business/economy/afghanistan-taliban-financial-crisis.html" target="_blank">similar shortages</a> with excess demand for cash that they could not satisfy. Behind the scenes, the Taliban pushed central bank and finance ministry officials to get to work on solutions, a difficult task considering the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/25/afghanistan-economy-kabul/" target="_blank">brain drain</a> caused by the hundreds of thousands that have already fled the country. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_IEWLxf1sI/YUvBMyXezqI/AAAAAAAABho/biZ4ffmI6O8BPCFQ1OCDfiUeIEogZNFuwCLcBGAsYHQ/s451/Umbrella_image.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="254" data-original-width="451" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Q_IEWLxf1sI/YUvBMyXezqI/AAAAAAAABho/biZ4ffmI6O8BPCFQ1OCDfiUeIEogZNFuwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h225/Umbrella_image.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">People line up outside a bank to withdraw cash in Yangon, 5/15/2021 (Photo: Reuters)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Meanwhile, Myanmar faces <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/18/myanmar-coup-aapp-1000-killed-military" target="_blank">similar skills shortages</a> as state employees refuse to assist the military junta that deposed their democratically elected government in February and has since killed more than 1000 civilians. Government limits on branch and ATM withdrawals were implemented and in late August the government<a href="https://www.centralbanking.com/regulation/banking/7803006/myanmar-central-bank-caps-cash-withdrawals" target="_blank"> closed numerous bank branches</a>, under the pretence of COVID-19 safety. To enter open branches customers had to line up for tokens that later emerged for sale on Facebook. <a href="https://cashessentials.org/myanmar-is-running-out-of-cash/" target="_blank">Informal bank account markets</a> also evolved online where people could sell their bank account access data in exchange for physical cash at commission rates of 7-15%. Even retailers sitting on cash revenue began <a href="https://restofworld.org/2021/myanmars-military-coup-has-pushed-its-fledgling-digital-economy-to-the-brink-of-collapse/" target="_blank">offering money exchange services</a> rather than try to bank their company takings.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vnIdLrqhvOc/YUyPfiwL72I/AAAAAAAABhw/hubmdmWpOtMfJ21TbYMuGKlnmUwMjs4wgCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/magnifying%2Bglass.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="335" data-original-width="600" height="224" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vnIdLrqhvOc/YUyPfiwL72I/AAAAAAAABhw/hubmdmWpOtMfJ21TbYMuGKlnmUwMjs4wgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h224/magnifying%2Bglass.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Taliban inherits a central bank with depleted USD and local currency reserves <br />(Photo: Elmer Laahne/johan10/Adobe Stock)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Considering the scramble for cash you may be surprised to learn that both Myanmar and <a href="http://janchipchase.com/2011/02/mobile-money-afghanistan-2/" target="_blank">Afghanistan</a> had, until recently, digital payment systems. Their provision of mobile money led financial inclusion proponents to suggest that both countries could <a href="https://www.accion.org/fintech-in-myanmar-leapfrogging-to-mobile-money" target="_blank">‘leap-frog’ traditional banking infrastructure</a>. But the unrest immediately ended this dream and demonstrated the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/01/myanmar-military-internet-shutdown-bloodbath/" target="_blank">fragility of fintech</a> when government institutions fail. Mobile money agents continued to operate but needed to increase fees to 10 - 12% to compensate for the difficulty of obtaining cash for withdrawals. Myanmar mobile money companies, such as Wave Money, were left desperately trying to provide cash to their agents to stop them charging egregious fees to their 1.3 million clients.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDIEfmeOTjQ/YVdu6QyM7JI/AAAAAAAABi0/vp8Ke6vh11cQ76EFhp6aUznGUoWao7VyQCLcBGAsYHQ/s729/blog%2Bquote7.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="138" data-original-width="729" height="94" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EDIEfmeOTjQ/YVdu6QyM7JI/AAAAAAAABi0/vp8Ke6vh11cQ76EFhp6aUznGUoWao7VyQCLcBGAsYHQ/w496-h94/blog%2Bquote7.JPG" width="496" /></a></div><p>Why not print more cash? The Myanmar junta tried to until the German company supplying their ink and materials for printing, Giesecke & Devrient, <a href="https://www.gi-de.com/en/group/press/press-releases/detail/press-detail/giesecke-devrient-suspends-deliveries-to-state-security-printer-in-myanmar" target="_blank">suspended their deliveries</a> citing it as “a reaction to the ongoing violent clashes between the military and the civilian population”. This further compounded the sense of panic and desperation for cash and left the junta<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/2ebfa7eb-9d38-440c-9bb3-5c48d87d0af4" target="_blank"> pleading with other foreign banknote companies</a>, so far to no end.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VkYJ2GbIIDc/YUyPfl3fuzI/AAAAAAAABh0/9_3fZ9wDqJUVWCvC3loSCV9olu2N2uRYwCPcBGAYYCw/s1379/famer%2Bselfie.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="920" data-original-width="1379" height="266" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VkYJ2GbIIDc/YUyPfl3fuzI/AAAAAAAABh0/9_3fZ9wDqJUVWCvC3loSCV9olu2N2uRYwCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h266/famer%2Bselfie.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Myanmar has smartphone penetration of over 80%, a rate comparable to many European countries (Photo: Sasin/Adobe Stock)</td></tr></tbody></table><p>So, what happens when people give up on cash? Well cryptocurrency has always been viewed by its proponents as the <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/afghan-bank-run-no-cash-taliban-takeover-bitcoin-fixes" target="_blank">game changer for such crisis situations</a>. Cuba, for instance, has recently seen the growth and legalisation of crypto currency to facilitate remittances, overcome US sanctions, and prevent inflation. But the recent <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/27/cubas-central-bank-now-recognizes-cryptocurrencies-like-bitcoin.html" target="_blank">legalisation of cryptocurrency</a> in Cuba may not mainstream its use due to unreliable internet access and geo-blocking by crypto exchanges. </p><p>The recent adoption by El Salvador of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58473260" target="_blank">bitcoin as legal tender</a> may provide one way by which cash shortages may later be avoided. If many Salvadorans keep their funds in bitcoin, they could continue to trade and will not lose their life savings in the case of political upheaval. Whether this happens may depend on how much Salvadorans are willing to put into the volatile cryptocurrency. Additionally, if the Salvadoran government felt threatened, they could still hit the internet kill switch preventing users from trading bitcoin. The security of the government backed Chivo cryptowallet also <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/el-salvador-adopts-bitcoin-amid-191953045.html" target="_blank">remains untested</a>. </p><p>Overcoming the internet kill switch is tough and would require satellite internet technology like that offered by Elon Musk’s Starlink (although Starlink is currently not available in countries such as Cuba, Myanmar or Afghanistan). Does this mean the combination of satellite internet, solar generated electricity, and cryptocurrency (along with the knowledge of citizens on how to use all of them) will free people from relying on cash? Well, the missing ingredient that no technology can provide is trust. With such complex technology it may be difficult to have citizens willing to depend on cryptocurrency to protect their life savings. Another barrier may be an innate behavioural instinct to grab something physical and dependable during a crisis (like the hoarding of toilet paper in many countries during COVID-19 lockdowns). Until citizens in an institutional vacuum are willing to trust complex, intangible, hi-tech solutions to both transact and protect their wealth, it will remain all about cash in the end.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-88133703373580193962021-08-25T15:54:00.001-07:002021-08-25T15:54:51.775-07:00World’s Oldest Known Coin Mint Found in China<p>The 2,600-year-old site produced highly standardized “spade money,” possibly on government orders</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qVp9Qsb8VC8/YSbJF-GRGsI/AAAAAAAABhg/RCmUKqno_swzxtX7NMSu-yx8y4fTnIpBACLcBGAsYHQ/s800/spade_coin_reconstruction.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qVp9Qsb8VC8/YSbJF-GRGsI/AAAAAAAABhg/RCmUKqno_swzxtX7NMSu-yx8y4fTnIpBACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h300/spade_coin_reconstruction.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Radiocarbon dating suggests the workshop began minting operations <br />between 640 and 550 BCE (H. Zhao et al. / Antiquity, 2021)</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>Bill Maurer in <i>Smithsonian Magazine,</i> Aug. 9, 2021</p><p>Archaeologists in China have found what they say is the world’s oldest known coin manufacturing site. … Bill Maurer, an anthropologist [professor of anthropology & director of the Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion] at the University of California Irvine who was not involved in the new research, tells <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/worlds-oldest-coin-factory-discovered-in-china" target="_blank">National Geographic</a>’s Jillian Kramer that the discovery of the coins together with the molds used to make them is highly unusual. Ancient coins are often discovered in hoards far removed from the sites where they were minted, making it difficult to date them.</p><p>For the full story by Livia Gershon, please visit <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-oldest-known-coin-mint-found-china-180978394/">https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-oldest-known-coin-mint-found-china-180978394/</a>. </p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-42962309509534101532021-07-29T13:11:00.072-07:002021-07-30T09:39:14.149-07:00‘No cash, no ritual’: the intersections between cash shortages and ritual enactment in north-western Zimbabwe<p><i>By guest blogger Joshua Matanzima, La Trobe University</i></p><p><b>Introduction</b></p><p>This article examines the impact of the ‘cash crisis’ bedevilling Zimbabwe since mid-2016 on the enactment of the <i>Masabe</i> ceremony within the BaTonga community, (Sinakatenge Chiefdom, Eastern Binga, North-west Zimbabwe). The article argues that the cash crisis has negatively affected <i>Masabe</i> ritual processes. The paper argues that traditional ceremonies have in contemporary times adopted use of ‘cash’ to facilitate their conduct. Hence, the liquidity crisis resulted in decreased cash in circulation has thus witnessed ceremonies being postponed, delayed or even avoided. In the quest to further understand the negative consequences of cash crisis on ritual engagement, the study analyses BaTonga traditional culture and religious practices. It highlights the importance of religion and ritual in fulfilling individual and societal needs and discusses how disruptions in ritual engagement can affect the psychological needs of individuals or the integration and cohesion of the society/group. The study utilizes cases from BaTonga villages in Sinakatenge Chiefdom. Oral testimonies were ethnographically collected from BaTonga villagers pertaining to the challenges being faced in conducting the <i>Masabe</i> ceremonial practices.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XERI_UvJ0ng/YQL2DdBIF1I/AAAAAAAABgs/HlDto4WO9EwPNRQcm_aSbM3AgB1-ADQuQCLcBGAsYHQ/s945/Josh1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="945" height="279" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XERI_UvJ0ng/YQL2DdBIF1I/AAAAAAAABgs/HlDto4WO9EwPNRQcm_aSbM3AgB1-ADQuQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h279/Josh1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Figure 1. Researcher and local informants: women holding their smoking pipes. </span></td></tr></tbody></table><p><b>Field Notes</b></p><p>In 2017, I conducted ethnographic research among the BaTonga speaking people of Sinakatenge Chiefdom, north-western Zimbabwe. Sinakatenge is part of Binga Rural District. It lies along the margins of the nation-state at the Zimbabwe-Zambia border. The research examined the <i>Masabe</i> (alien) spirits ritual process. The <i>Masabe </i>ritual process is the means by which an alien spirit possessing a victim and causing illness is made to manifest itself and then depart the body of the victim, restoring the possessed person to health. <i>Masabe </i>possession as an ‘organized cult of affliction which addresses itself to the individual instead of the community’. <i>Masabe</i> can take over and speak through human vehicles and causes sickness to its victim. <i>Masabe</i> have desires which are made manifest through their victims and are pacified through a dance performance in which the victim enacts these desires. The research involved participant observations and semi-structured interviewing. I attended a total of 5 <i>Masabe</i> ritual ceremonies and interviewed 24 elders, both men and women, regarding the <i>Masabe</i> ritual process. The centrality of ‘money’ in the entire process was emphasized by the elders interviewed and formed part of my personal observations. </p><p>At a time when this research was conducted Zimbabwe faced serious economic crises characterized by high unemployment, high inflation, food shortages and cash crises. Many <i>Masabe</i> ritual ceremonies were delayed, procrastinated, and even avoided due to the costs involved and challenges encountered in purchasing the material required for the ritual to be successfully enacted. The material required for the <i>Masabe</i> ritual ceremony includes a black cloth, beads and black goat, as well as sugar, mealie meal, sorghum, and yeast for beer brewing. In the absence of these items the <i>Masabe </i>ritual ceremony cannot be enacted. Consequently, the affected families often delay, procrastinate, and, at worst, avoid conducting these ceremonies. </p><p>Following the early to mid-2000s liquidity crunch, in 2009, the Zimbabwean economy was dollarized. Dollarization meant resorting to the use of the US dollar as a result of local currency devaluation. Dollarization helped reduce inflation rates and also stabilise the economy. However, from 2013 cash shortages re-emerged and by April 2016, much of the US dollars were reported to be externalized at an alarming rate, thereby causing the cash crisis. In a bid to address this cash crisis, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced ‘Bond Notes’ of 2 USD and 5 USD denominations, and the 1 USD ‘Bond coin’ which were said to be equivalent in value to the real US$2, US$5 and US$1 respectively. These new notes and coins were introduced alongside the increased emphasis on the use of plastic money and Ecocash/OneWallet (mobile phone-based money services, or mobile money) for transactions. Indeed, plastic money and Ecocash/OneWallet proved somewhat effective for those living in urban areas. But it did not have the same impact for those living in marginalised or remote communities. </p><p>Local transactions in Sinakatenge were mainly based on barter trade at the time. Sadly, such materials as cloth, beads and yeast were unavailable in local stores where barter was tolerated. People had to purchase these from urban areas, where either cash or mobile money was required. Sugar was available in local stores, but its price of 3 USD per 2kgs, was steep for the local people, who could not afford the sugar needed for the ceremony. Many, if not all, people in Sinakatenge had no bank cards, were cashless, and had no Ecocash/OneWallet. The unavailability of mobile network coverage in the area discouraged people from owning mobile phones. Thus, the villagers found it difficult for them to purchase these materials needed for the <i>Masabe</i> ceremony. Before the liquidity challenge, purchasing of these items locally and in Gokwe was not a major challenge. The US dollar introduced during the Government of National Unity era had in a way solved inflation and currency devaluation problems.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>The <i>Masabe</i> ritual process and costs</b></p><p>At first, the person possessed by <i>Masabe</i> normally is afflicted with ‘illness’ or ‘sickness’. The ‘sick’ person sought clinical medical attention in local clinics where consultation and medication were free of charge. It is the norm that every sick person must seek clinical medical attention before visiting <i>bun’anga </i>(traditional healer). However, some people were referred to hospitals in Gokwe or Binga, (which are the nearest town centres), especially when the ‘sickness’ becomes more serious. This, indeed, is done at some significant costs. If the kinsmen of the ‘sick’ person have bank cards or mobile money access, they might purchase and pay for medication using such platforms. But, this is usually expensive to them due to transaction charges. </p><p>Furthermore, if the illness persists, despite modern medication uptake, then the ‘sick’ person is taken to traditional healers. Traditional healers also require payment, which also now is in the form of cash whether the <i>Masabe</i> is diagnosed or not. The ‘sickness’ is thus considered to be the ‘arrival’ of the <i>Masabe </i>which in this case is only diagnosed by traditional means than modern systems. Once the <i>Masabe </i>spirit discloses its identity through the traditional healer it awaits a performance to be held for it so that it manifests itself.</p><p>The second step is, after the ‘sickness’ has been found to be <i>Masabe</i> related, when beer is brewed. Beer brewing for <i>Masabe</i> ceremony is done by women from the possessed person’s matrilineage. This is so because the society is a matrilineal. The day at which sorghum is soaked in water, the possessed person is supposed to commence sleeping in a <i>chidumba </i>(a house made of poles and grass) until the process of beer brewing is over. The construction of the <i>chidumba </i>requires labour and meeting the costs of gathering the needed construction material, such as poles, grass and stones. To hire the labour for construction and gathering building material needs money. In many cases, these labourers demand cash rather than goods such as grain, soap, salt and so on. So, the kinsmen of the possessed usually wait until they obtain cash to pay for the material and constructors, thereby prolonging the duration of the illness of the victim. Beer for<i> mizimu </i>(ancestors) and the possessed person is brewed in a small pot separate from bigger containers (in which that of attendees is brewed). This is so because the beer for <i>mizimu </i>does not have yeast added into it, whereas that of the invited guests needs yeast. The explanations for putting and not putting yeast on the two different containers were not quite apparent. Sugar is also added in the beer.</p><p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJjI4WoTlXo/YQL2De6rvRI/AAAAAAAABgw/BHRuDpIaWFg4ZSQN2kGdDsb7LHQ76ATUwCPcBGAYYCw/s1454/Josh2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1454" data-original-width="1255" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YJjI4WoTlXo/YQL2De6rvRI/AAAAAAAABgw/BHRuDpIaWFg4ZSQN2kGdDsb7LHQ76ATUwCPcBGAYYCw/w345-h400/Josh2.jpg" width="345" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Figure 2. An old woman beer brewing.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>Purchasing these items from local stores its expensive, thus, villagers opt to purchase the aforementioned items in Gokwe where the prices are generally low. The cost of 2kgs sugar, for example, in Gokwe at the time of the study was US$1.90 and in their local shops was US$3.00. With the prevailing cash shortages purchasing sugar in Gokwe was a major challenge as it also involved transport costs to and from Gokwe. Villagers opted to exchange grain for sugar in local stores where they incurred heavy losses. In this case, barter trade is disadvantageous to the consumer as it is obvious that the measure of goods he/she obtains in return is usually inequivalent to that which he/she would have exchanged. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tc1VKKMoccw/YQL2DdJ4-BI/AAAAAAAABhI/ufdDXbOG6H4DAh3rAwYFhC_omwvJ1XZQgCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Josh3.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tc1VKKMoccw/YQL2DdJ4-BI/AAAAAAAABhI/ufdDXbOG6H4DAh3rAwYFhC_omwvJ1XZQgCPcBGAYYCw/w300-h400/Josh3.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Figure 3. Men constructing c<i>hidhumba</i>.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p>When the possessed person sleeps in the <i>chidumba</i>, he/she is expected to ‘sleep’ together with a ‘black’ goat. Every morning the person and the goat are let out, the goat must not forage far from the <i>chidumba</i>. If the goat goes missing that implies that the person is not possessed. When the beer is ready for drinking, local people are invited to attend the <i>Masabe </i>ceremony. The goat is significant during the <i>Masabe</i> ceremony as it is part of the ritual. The purchasing of a goat is thus not necessarily regarded as a major challenge since most families own goats. The possessed person may own goats from which one may be used in the ritual. Those with no goats are bound to purchase one, and acquiring a goat due to cash shortages can be a challenge. The fact that the goat must be black forced those without black goats to either buy or exchange with others for a black one. </p><p>The third and the last stage is the enactment of the ritual ceremony. The <i>Masabe </i>ritual ceremony is enacted during the night. It usually involves drum beating, dancing and traditional beer (<i>Bugande</i>) drinking especially by invited guests. The performance of the ceremony brings together all possessed by that particular form of <i>Masabe </i>to support the new victim as she/he expresses the nature of the possessing force. During the ceremony, the goat is cut on its neck and its blood (<i>musiye</i>) is drained and put into a bowl made of wood. The full goat meat is given to a close friend of the family (<i>sahwira</i>). The possessed is then given the <i>musiye</i> to drink it. It is alleged he/she must not vomit. If he/she vomits it simply means the person is not possessed by <i>Masabe.</i> A senior member of the family appeases to the alien spirits on behalf of the possessed person, at the same time drum (<i>butimbe</i>) beating and singing commences until the <i>Masabe </i>possessing the sick manifests itself. The manifestation of the spirits shows the kind of <i>Masabe</i> the person is possessed with. The possessed must act as the spirit behaves. For example, if one is possessed by a baboon spirit, he or she must behave or act like a baboon during that night. He/she must climb trees and roof tops etc. as baboons do. Thus, although <i>Masabe</i> spirits, like all other Tonga spirits, are considered as formless and bodiless before they afflict a person, they change their identity in the course of the ritual process from an immaterial being into a spirit of “something” which can take a great variety of embodiments. After the <i>Masabe</i> ceremony, the ‘sick’ person will then automatically get healed from her/his illness.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--360gSztoN8/YQL2DiBx2pI/AAAAAAAABhA/a9FNT6wmNJoK06bLzbwhRTusYU6rvgAVQCPcBGAYYCw/s1600/Josh4.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--360gSztoN8/YQL2DiBx2pI/AAAAAAAABhA/a9FNT6wmNJoK06bLzbwhRTusYU6rvgAVQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Josh4.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">Figure 4. The <i>chidhumba</i> (a temporary shelter for a possessed person).</span></td></tr></tbody></table> <div>Case example: In Siachimupa Village, Mukuli’s (who had her <i>Masabe </i>ceremony enacted on the 5th of September 2017) illness, for instance, took about eight months. This period involved people having to consult medical practitioners and local prophets pertaining the cause of disease and its suitable medication. At which, no cause of the disease was detected. The final solution was to visit traditional healers who discovered that she was possessed by a dancing <i>Masabe</i> spirit and for her to be healed a <i>Masabe </i>ceremony was supposed to be held. Traditional healers had discovered this four months before 5 September 2017 when the ceremony was eventually conducted. The 4 months delay was because there were no funds to conduct the ceremony. Here we see the ways by which macro-economic hardships can negatively influence ritual processes. At this time, the Zimbabwean economic downturn coupled with cash crisis made it difficult for her kinsmen to acquire funds to purchase a black cloth, beads, black goat, and ingredients for beer brewing on time. Hence her ‘sickness’ was prolonged. Observing her skin, it had developed blistered. She had significantly lost weight, her legs were swollen and she could not even walk on her own.<p><br /></p><p><b>Conclusion </b></p><p>Cash crisis in Zimbabwe has not only impacted on the economy and politics of the country, but it has also impacted on ritual enactment. In modern day rituals enactment require materials and money is needed to purchase these material items. In the case of the <i>Masabe </i>ritual- ceremonies discussed above, the purchase of black goats, black cloths, beer ingredients became difficult due to the cash crisis. Purchasing these using mobile and plastic money in the nearest towns of Gokwe and Binga was even more expensive due transaction charges. Due to these challenges <i>Masabe</i> ceremonies were often delayed, procrastinated and avoided. The delay or temporal avoidance of these ceremonies impacted on the possessed individual as well as the entire community. Delays prolonged the sickness of an individual which further impacted on the psychologically. If a person by a ‘water’ spirit, they have the power to predict and intercede for rains; so if their ceremonies are delayed or avoided it means that the community as a whole is affected as it benefits from the person’s rain spiritual forecasts and rainmaking intercessions. </p><p><br /></p><p>Link to research article in <i>African Identities,</i> "<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14725843.2020.1811637" target="_blank">Religious rituals and socio-economic change: the impact of the Zimbabwe ‘cash crisis’ on the BaTonga <i>Masabe</i> (alien spirits) ceremony</a>."</p><p>Photo credit: All photos by author.</p><p><br /></p></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-65208954761047012862021-07-12T11:00:00.001-07:002021-07-12T11:01:01.516-07:00Opportunities and Risks of Conversational AI for Credit Unions: Empathy and Intimacy in Automated Financial Customer Service<p><i>by Scott Mainwaring, UCI and Melissa Wrapp, UCI, Filene's Center for Emerging Technology</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B8p5TLxqaqo/YMehCOVcKlI/AAAAAAAABfs/qcSjrEF4RMcYwjWJcSHDesMVYU5fENxqwCPcBGAYYCw/s953/1%2BFilene%2Bbot.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="196" data-original-width="953" height="83" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-B8p5TLxqaqo/YMehCOVcKlI/AAAAAAAABfs/qcSjrEF4RMcYwjWJcSHDesMVYU5fENxqwCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h83/1%2BFilene%2Bbot.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p>As the use of digital channels continues to grow for credit unions, conversational artificial intelligence (AI) technologies provide an opportunity for improved service delivery and the potential for new service offerings such as financial advice.</p><p>EXECUTIVE SUMMARY</p><p>Conversational AI technologies create new ways for credit unions to serve their members, from providing alternatives to interacting with human agents to creating new channels for more tailored financial services. They provide opportunities to build upon the trust and appreciation members place in credit unions as more human-centered, nonpredatory, and community based. But conversational AI technologies risk invading members’ privacy and being frustrating and opaque.</p><p>WHAT IS THE RESEARCH ABOUT?</p><p>This exploratory study looks at existing consumer relationships with conversational AI and digital assistants, on one hand; and with credit unions, banks, and other businesses, on the other, to begin to sketch the dimensions of, and provide examples of, points within a “design space” of possible financial digital assistants. While operational hurdles remain high for credit unions to deploy these new technologies, the opportunity will continue to grow in coming years. </p><p>Through ethnographic research with consumers, this report anticipates how credit union members might come to value, or reject, digital assistants. For this exploratory study, we focused on one main question: What are the implications of digital assistant technologies for how members and credit unions could relate to one another in the next five years?</p><p>Interviews covered three broad topics: experiences using banks and credit unions; experiences using digital assistant technologies; and reflections on the idea of a financial digital assistant and issues of privacy, trust, and potential bias. This report summarizes findings on these themes and provides insight into how credit unions could take advantage of digital assistants to improve service delivery and differentiate offerings by incorporating elements from their mission and value proposition into their digital assistants. The way forward is to develop particular product proposals and related data transparency policies that can provide members with a new understanding of what they could achieve by relating with their credit unions through “talking computers.”</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kAm5m1x6gxg/YMehCMo6nuI/AAAAAAAABf8/VtS41VBEsOUFaUP063EOL9Pme_Uup9GwACPcBGAYYCw/s377/3%2BFilene%2Bbot.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="367" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kAm5m1x6gxg/YMehCMo6nuI/AAAAAAAABf8/VtS41VBEsOUFaUP063EOL9Pme_Uup9GwACPcBGAYYCw/w312-h320/3%2BFilene%2Bbot.JPG" width="312" /></a></div><br />WHAT ARE THE CREDIT UNION IMPLICATIONS? <p></p><p>Credit unions have an opportunity to deploy digital assistants in ways that improve service delivery and member experience and provide new types of service offerings. In thinking about what types of digital assistants would provide the best fit for your credit union and member needs, keep the following research findings in mind: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>People like the promise of bots as part of a modern, organized, and simplified life.</li><li>The realities of existing bots fall short of expectations and can limit imagination.</li><li>People are resigned to the constant advance of technology without transparency or the ability to meaningfully opt out.</li><li>Relations with credit unions are valued for their human element and trustworthiness, even if this means older, clunkier tech.</li><li>The design space is complex, including diverse combinations of technologies, member needs, and business opportunities worth considering.</li><li>The idea of talking with/through bots is becoming mundane, but credit unions could pleasantly surprise members with unique service features.</li><li>Credit unions could tailor these technologies to show their strengths and to educate members not just about finances but also about data. </li></ul><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kK82kCaFD7A/YMeje5vb0CI/AAAAAAAABgM/r9rTOyMzdtIQ4BO4kLDxMg7w6kwlEuR3wCPcBGAYYCw/s257/1%2Bfilened2%2Bquote.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="257" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kK82kCaFD7A/YMeje5vb0CI/AAAAAAAABgM/r9rTOyMzdtIQ4BO4kLDxMg7w6kwlEuR3wCPcBGAYYCw/s0/1%2Bfilened2%2Bquote.JPG" /></a></div>In order to create a competitive advantage, credit union digital assistants would have to not only be useful and usable but also embody and express the core values of the credit union system. By building upon these core values of empathy and respect, credit unions could focus their development of digital assistant technologies in a way that creates differentiation, even with fewer resources than are available to larger financial services providers. </div><p></p><p>We use findings from our research to generate design ideas that are meant to illustrate pathways worth exploring, developing, and evaluating: </p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Build a helpful, always-accessible agent. This kind of digital assistant could serve as the voice of the specific credit union and provide basic support but also demonstrate the “members not customers” ethos of the credit union value proposition.</li><li>Provide an assistant to help members maintain, augment, and monitor their personal financial support systems.</li><li>Provide robot counsel. This financial digital assistant could serve as a “second pair of eyes” as members conduct transactions with any financial services provider, intervening if necessary but always being available for reassurance or advice.</li><li>Connect members to each other. This assistant would embody the credit union as a member cooperative, helping connect members to each other.</li></ul><div>Access complete report, summary slides, and design principles <a href="https://filene.org/learn-something/reports/opportunities-and-risks-of-conversational-ai-for-credit-unions-empathy-and-intimacy-in-automated-financial-customer-service" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><p></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-70853404235385331022021-06-17T07:30:00.000-07:002021-06-17T07:30:02.770-07:00Trust and Social Capital in the Old City of Hyderabad: A Study of Self-Help Groups of Women, India <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CtlBR2-6H0Q/YMewcquCYOI/AAAAAAAABgU/VCYm9lMN-IYv-EUAmJ8TA2qPOb4DRmjrwCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/oana_21_1.cover.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1320" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CtlBR2-6H0Q/YMewcquCYOI/AAAAAAAABgU/VCYm9lMN-IYv-EUAmJ8TA2qPOb4DRmjrwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/oana_21_1.cover.png" /></a></div><i>by Rosina Nasir, Jawaharlal Nehru University</i><p></p><p>"Trust and Social Capital in the Old City of Hyderabad: A Study of Self-Help Groups of Women, India,"<i> The Oriental Anthropologist: A Bi-annual International Journal of the Science of Man, </i>Vol 21, Issue 1, 2021.</p><p><b>ABSTRACT</b></p><p>Why do people trust each other? Do people form groups through mutual trust or self-interest? How does the theory of rational choice and accompanying individualism affect the concept of social capital? Are social cohesiveness in groups and financial success related? Such questions generate interest in conditions promoting association and group emergence, such as trust, reliability, reciprocity, and shared values, which are inherent factors for cohesion. Self-help groups (SHGs) in an urban context are used to comprehend the aforementioned questions. The proposed study is based on the following hypothesis: the formation of groups is not based on trust but on material- and non-material- need-based individual rational choices that force them to cooperate with each other. It is found that a sense of insecurity among migrant women, an emotional need, led the formation of the imagined communities and has paved the way to construct trust. Thus, trust is found to be secondary in construction and sustainability of social capital. Castes, regions, and religions are strong factors; however, they are found to be less effective for the migrants than native SHG members. Therefore, among migrants, trust channelized itself vertically around a sense of fear.</p><div style="text-align: left;">Access the full article at the following sites:<br /><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0972558X211004752">https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0972558X211004752</a><br /><a href="https://jnu.academia.edu/rosinanasir">https://jnu.academia.edu/rosinanasir</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-65180664854859513202021-06-16T10:42:00.000-07:002021-06-16T10:42:33.400-07:00Beginning July 1, 2021 IMTFI Blog email will be delivered from MailChimp<p>Administrative note: Google has announced it will be shutting off its Feedburner application for email subscriptions beginning July 2021. </p><p>The IMTFI Blog will be sending new posts through MailChimp beginning July 1st, 2021. Current subscribers will be receiving an email from “IMTFI Blog” from a MailChimp email address – please be sure to add this address to your contacts to avoid messages being diverted to junk mail.</p><p>Don't worry! The IMTFI Blog you know and love will still be here, we are just changing how you will receive email notifications.</p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-36830282962694536942021-06-07T08:50:00.000-07:002021-06-07T08:50:55.501-07:00Apo-cash-alypse Now!<p><i>by Andrew Crawford, Doctoral Researcher (GIGA, Universität Hamburg) and IMTFI Fellow</i></p>It’s embarrassing to admit as a finance academic but I’m bad with money. Not bad like I’d lose it all on a blackjack table, or have no money to buy lunch, but bad with payments. I have bank accounts in different countries, multiple Paypal accounts, a cryptocurrency hardware wallet and various ATM cards that lurk around my bedroom. I have only a vague awareness of how much money is in each and mostly go with the flow when I pay for things. Needless to say, I am being shafted by a bunch of payment providers in terms of fees, but I neglect to resolve the issue. Usually, apart from wasting money, this constant state of organised chaos never causes problems. But sometimes things go wrong, and my fragile payment ecosystem spirals out of control. This happened during my recent trip to Cambodia. <div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TEgNaJMebjw/YLkFvMsHVKI/AAAAAAAABec/4FsOnqhYCRokzeRBARAmUVAlPAnNz7_7gCPcBGAYYCw/s573/1-2.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="245" data-original-width="573" height="171" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TEgNaJMebjw/YLkFvMsHVKI/AAAAAAAABec/4FsOnqhYCRokzeRBARAmUVAlPAnNz7_7gCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h171/1-2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div><p></p><p>I’m in Cambodia for 4 months working on a research project to measure the effect of COVID-19 on the microfinance sector. Two months in, I realised that it was time to pay my semester fees at the German university where I am doing my PhD. Thanks to the inexpensive nature of German universities this only amounts to 360 euro. I logged into my German online banking to do the bank transfer (the only means of payment accepted). The bank requires two-step authorisation so I brought with me an old Samsung phone with my German simcard set to roaming. I submitted the bank transfer and stared at my old phone, but then nothing. There was cell signal and the phone seemed to work fine. I asked online banking to resend the code then to my delight an SMS came through. I entered the code and it was rejected. Oh, maybe I made a typo. I entered it again. Still wrong. How could I type this wrong twice? I very thoroughly entered it one more time. Wrong. Then my phone beeped again. A second message had come through with a new code. The first message was the first code so it was no longer valid after I asked for a second code! I quickly went to enter the second code but my German account was now blocked due to three wrong codes. Crap. To reactivate the account I would need to take ID to my local branch in Hamburg. Sigh. As an alternative I transferred money from my Australian account (that I’ve had since I was 12 years old). This turned out to be 10% more expensive but at least the semester fees would be paid! </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wCW9zdxldU8/YLk5Gy9agbI/AAAAAAAABfE/xEIZg9oIe8cgM3E3Vyt-CN5OpssRzE1uQCLcBGAsYHQ/s570/2-3.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="237" data-original-width="570" height="166" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wCW9zdxldU8/YLk5Gy9agbI/AAAAAAAABfE/xEIZg9oIe8cgM3E3Vyt-CN5OpssRzE1uQCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h166/2-3.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><p></p>The next day the Cambodian government suddenly announced that due to the spike in COVID cases a hard lockdown and curfew would operate from 8pm that day. It was sudden so I rushed to supermarket. Chaos. Like most countries panic buying was in full force so I decided I would go to my local convenience store instead.<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[1]</span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;"> </span>Before I left, I took a video of all the panic buying because ‘hey it feels dramatic and I need to video it’. At this point you need to know that I keep all my ATM cards in a ‘card sock’ in the back of my phone. This is because I’ve been pickpocketed before and thought why do I need a wallet? I’m always conscious of my phone and never lose phones. If I never lose phones and my cards are attached, I will never lose my cards. Smart. While I was recording the panic buying I dropped my phone. Not so smart. It crashed onto the pavement and the screen cracked. I was so annoyed with myself I picked up the phone and quickly left while looking at the damage. I arrived home at 7.50pm and went to watch a movie, specifically Hunger Games, since the three-finger salute used in the Myanmar protests had reminded me of the film. I went to rent it from Amazon using my Australian ATM card and realised it was gone from my phone’s ‘card sock’. Damn. It must have fallen out when I dropped the phone. There was only 10 minutes left until curfew so I couldn’t leave, lest I be beaten with sticks by the Cambodian police which is their <a href="https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50842778/pp-governor-police-use-of-whips-to-enforce-lockdown-is-like-parents-disciplining-their-children" target="_blank">punishment for breaking curfew</a>. Since my German account was also blocked all I had left was PayPal. Of course, Jeff Bezos doesn’t like PayPal so to rent the movie I bought an Amazon gift card from an online gift card website with PayPal. They charged $23 for a $20 gift card which was another hit to my hip pocket.<p>I cancelled my Australian ATM card and had a new one ordered which would go to my mother’s house in Australia and she would express post it to me in Cambodia. But for now, I had no ATM card. What would I do? You need cash in Cambodia!<span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[2]</span></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;"> </span>Apple Pay is here but it’s not so common yet. Thankfully, I still had a Cambodian bank account that I’ve had for years due to being paid consultant fees in Cambodia. I knew there were a few hundred dollars left. But I didn’t have the ATM card for this account (I assume it’s lurking in my room in Germany) but I did have the good ole passbook. All the local branches were closed during lockdown so I ventured to the head office to withdraw the money. This meant crossing 4 roadblocks and trying to explain to police my predicament. After finally making it to the head office I had my hands disinfected, temperature checked and wore my face mask to head inside the deserted bank and withdraw my money at the friendly teller. Relief. I had cash again. I was safe.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rRsqTw8jFuk/YLkIDqrr3OI/AAAAAAAABeo/YTnQZ53sSugM1YjiuoPrFJFq2fWgCs12QCPcBGAYYCw/s589/4-5.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="589" height="195" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rRsqTw8jFuk/YLkIDqrr3OI/AAAAAAAABeo/YTnQZ53sSugM1YjiuoPrFJFq2fWgCs12QCPcBGAYYCw/w400-h195/4-5.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />My brief experience not having cash made me concerned about some others in Phnom Penh that could no longer work. Specifically, I was worried about my friend and regular Tuk Tuk driver Ara who was completely dependent on his Tuk Tuk income. I called him and offered him some money but he lived in a part of the city that was too difficult to visit. Thankfully, Cambodia has an extensive mobile money network, named Wing, so I went to the Wing office on my street, opened an account, deposited some cash then transferred him some money that he very much appreciated. I didn’t realise at the time but using Wing would be my saviour in the end. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9mnnUaFIhI0/YLkIDuMlgyI/AAAAAAAABes/OhbKBBRp-EYQvFVOP6dMSHBEha2QlbYoACPcBGAYYCw/s556/6-7.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="556" height="188" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9mnnUaFIhI0/YLkIDuMlgyI/AAAAAAAABes/OhbKBBRp-EYQvFVOP6dMSHBEha2QlbYoACPcBGAYYCw/w400-h188/6-7.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />A few days later I had a Zoom presentation of <a href="https://loyloy.org/" target="_blank">Loy Loy: The Financial Literacy Board Game</a> that I co- created at IMTFI. The presentation was to the Beall Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and I was nervous. We expected at least 60 people to attend, possibly, some very important folks. Plus, it was midnight in Cambodia time and so I was worried about staying alert. I sat at the laptop and joined the zoom call. Internet can be patchy in Cambodia and as more and more people joined the meeting I could see my home connection become more and more unstable. I had planned for this and my phone was ready to hotspot with its faster cell network connection. I switched to the hotspot and felt safe just asthe meeting was to start. Then I received a message, “your data for the month is about to be consumed”. CRAP. In Cambodia you usually buy cellphone credit from shops through the little scratch cards where you scratch off the number and enter the code. But it was midnight, shops were closed, and police with sticks were patrolling the streets. What could I do? I opened the Cellcard app and saw a small Wing logo. Ah perhaps I could connect the accounts. I hurriedly went through all the pins, SMS confirmations and fingerprint scans to connect the two, topped up and renewed the data plan, just as they were calling my name to present. Phew!<p></p><p>So, what have I learned from this whole experience? Well, firstly, be patient with two-step authorisations when you’re overseas, don’t film panic buyers because that’s mean, ‘card socks’ are not foolproof, mobile money accounts are useful during a pandemic, and it’s even handier to have lots of cash when all else fails. I mean with cash I bet I could have paid the policeman to not beat me with a stick and instead lend me his phone for a hotspot.</p><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: DaunPenh; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">[1] </span>Panic buying in Cambodia mainly involves eggs, rice and canned fish. Toilet paper is not essential thanks to ubiquitous <a href="https://www.thebumgun.com/faq/" target="_blank">bidet bum guns</a>.</div><div><br /></div><span face=""Calibri",sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: DaunPenh; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><div><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">[2] </span>Cambodia runs on both US dollars and the local currency – the Riel. This is due to the central bank being destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in 1975, with all currency then eliminated and a lack of faith in the reintroduced local currency ever since.</div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br />IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-68464023256631197212021-05-05T09:10:00.001-07:002021-05-05T09:10:33.606-07:005/18 (Tues) 9-10amPT: Book Talk – Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution<div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mJVT3kAILHw/YJFwtIwu4YI/AAAAAAAABdE/Lc2wVy-_spMYAIa9KncfNFK3FkN_DaKvACLcBGAsYHQ/s600/pid_31200_cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mJVT3kAILHw/YJFwtIwu4YI/AAAAAAAABdE/Lc2wVy-_spMYAIa9KncfNFK3FkN_DaKvACLcBGAsYHQ/w213-h320/pid_31200_cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">IMTFI, the Global Africa/Global Blackness Research Cluster in UCI's Department of Anthropology & Institute for Humanities in Africa (HUMA) present the following book talk:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution</i></b> by Sibel Kusimba</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />May 18th, 2021<br />Tuesday, 9-10amPT/12-1pmET/6-7pmSAST<br /><br /><b>Introduced by</b><br />Bill Maurer, UC Irvine, IMTFI Director</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>Panelists</b><br />Sibel Kusimba, <i>University of South Florida</i><br />Olufunmilayo (Funmi) B. Arewa, <i>Temple University Beasley School of Law</i><br />Nina Bandelj, <i>UC Irvine</i><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Webinar registration</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lvsq2MvXStCuVfONYxlzYQ">https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_lvsq2MvXStCuVfONYxlzYQ</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>JOIN US</b> for a discussion with Sibel Kusimba to talk about her new book, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31200" target="_blank"><i>Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution, </i>Stanford University Press</a><i>.</i></div><p style="text-align: left;"> Available online: <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=31200&i=Chapter%201.html" target="_blank">Chapter 1</a> and <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=31200&i=Contents.htm" target="_blank">Table of Contents</a></p><div style="text-align: left;"><b>About <i>Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution<br /></i></b>Technology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In <i>Reimagining Money</i>, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people—an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.<br /><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>About the author<br /></b>Sibel Kusimba has conducted over twenty years of ethnographic research and archaeological fieldwork in Kenya. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and is the author of African Foragers (2003). You can read her bio <a href="https://sibelkusimba.com/bio/" target="_blank">here</a>.</div><p>For questions email imtfi@uci.edu.</p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-31418898757350216772021-04-22T11:41:00.001-07:002021-04-22T11:41:17.257-07:00Reimagining the ATM: From Cash-out to Curbside Banking<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><i>by Bill Maurer, UC Irvine and Kate Larson, Kate Larson Writes, LLC with Filene's Center of Emerging Technology</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">With so many options for ATM service delivery, how can credit union leaders make wise decisions to meet their members’ needs? Set against the backdrop of rapidly changing consumer behavior and expectations during COVID-19, this report explores the past, present, and future of the unpretentious automatic teller machine—and how its evolution impacts credit union strategy today.</span></div><p></p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KTd1w9nS-ek/YICqVSQ_RMI/AAAAAAAABcs/Cczm5cbW1FILD7mmY9Bn3e8hqIfIjm-BACLcBGAsYHQ/s479/Filene%2BATM.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="479" height="361" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KTd1w9nS-ek/YICqVSQ_RMI/AAAAAAAABcs/Cczm5cbW1FILD7mmY9Bn3e8hqIfIjm-BACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h361/Filene%2BATM.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image Credit: Filene</td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p><p>EXECUTIVE SUMMARY</p><p>As our financial lives increasingly take up residence online, the ATM may be one of the last physical touchpoints between credit unions and their members. This creates a key opportunity for credit unions to delight members, provide convenience, and create a consistent brand experience across channels. But ATMs can also be an institutional pain point. As physical machines in dispersed locations, they require ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and replacement. Because ATMs touch nearly every part of a credit union’s operations, it can be difficult to view the full impact of an aging fleet, a new strategy, or a potential partnership. Faced with this mix of obstacle and opportunity, how can credit union leaders make the best decisions for their organizations?</p><p><br /></p><p>WHAT IS THE RESEARCH ABOUT</p><p>In the wake of the social and economic changes wrought by COVID-19, ATMs have become an essential way for credit unions to provide members access to cash, deposits, and assistance. Tracing the history of the ATM from early twentieth-century agricultural shows to our pandemic-constrained present reveals a technology that is both deep-rooted and innovative. </p><p></p><p>While ATMs may not seem particularly groundbreaking, they have extended the reach of most financial institutions far beyond their branches—and they may provide a blueprint for how credit unions can rethink those branches entirely. We spoke to leaders from credit unions and supporting organizations about their ATM experiences, challenges, successes, and strategies and drew from those insights to offer recommendations and a roadmap for success.</p><p><br /></p><p>WHAT ARE THE CREDIT UNION IMPLICATIONS?</p><p>ATMs are one piece of a member’s full experience with the credit union and should be viewed in that context. Serving as a billboard, a marketing opportunity, and (hopefully) a positive interaction between member and institution, an ATM transaction can leave the member feeling satisfied, or frustrated by a machine that is laggy, limited, or out of service. Credit unions have a variety of options for offering ATM services to members, from owning and servicing their own machines, to partnering with a third- party provider, to joining a shared network, and some organizations may choose several of these. Because any approach will have benefits and drawbacks, each organization must define what success will look like before pursuing a new ATM strategy.</p><p>Finally, credit unions should beware of chasing after shiny technology and instead seek to understand their members’ unique needs and preferences in order to design a compatible and accessible ATM experience. But there is plenty of emerging technology to get excited about: contactless payments may render the plastic ATM card extraneous, and open-source software could simplify future upgrades. </p><p>Making decisions about ATMs may never be easy, but given the variety of available choices, credit union leaders can and should find opportunities to generate value for their members.</p><p><br /></p><p>Link to download <a href="https://filene.org/learn-something/reports/reimagining-the-atm-from-cash-out-to-curbside-banking" target="_blank">report and summary slides</a>.</p><p>Link to <a href="https://filene-web.s3.amazonaws.com/atminfo.html" target="_blank">Infographic: Strategic Contexts for ATMS </a>by <i>Melissa K. Wrapp, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, UC Irvine</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FHjGmwE1dSo/YIC_rD2Cb5I/AAAAAAAABc0/EVyo92pgKH4cw0anmLHFH0HmHefLi4eFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s215/Filene.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="108" data-original-width="215" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FHjGmwE1dSo/YIC_rD2Cb5I/AAAAAAAABc0/EVyo92pgKH4cw0anmLHFH0HmHefLi4eFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/Filene.png" /></a></div><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-44067583669399912072021-04-15T10:42:00.003-07:002021-04-15T11:16:38.700-07:00HUMA & IMTFI Book Launch (4/19) Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development <div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></h4><h4 style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Join us! <span style="font-weight: normal;">This Monday (4/19) 9amPT/12pmET/6pmSAST<br />HUMA-IMTFI book talk of the forthcoming <i>Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development</i> by Funmi Arewa, published with Cambridge University Press</span></h4><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-whby1H5f72A/YHh48BOMq1I/AAAAAAAABcE/J1aZD27giU4JE4Ev1xzhPB-E3v3sXxnrwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1469/Twitter%2Bjpg.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="1469" height="224" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-whby1H5f72A/YHh48BOMq1I/AAAAAAAABcE/J1aZD27giU4JE4Ev1xzhPB-E3v3sXxnrwCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h224/Twitter%2Bjpg.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i><b><a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/disrupting-africa/7879C9AAACD5977C84C310E546C1340A" target="_blank">Disrupting Africa: Technology, Law, and Development</a></b></i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">"Elites, Ornamentation, and Future Visions" with Olufunmilayo B. Arewa </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Monday 19 April 9amPT/12pmET/6pmSAST</div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Register:<a href=" https://uct-za.zoom.us/j/97775121915" target="_blank"> https://uct-za.zoom.us/j/97775121915</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Introductory Remarks</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Divine Fuh, HUMA Director</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><b>Panelists</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Olufunmilayo B. Arewa, <i>Temple University Beasley School of Law</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Bill Maurer, <i>UC Irvine, IMTFI Director</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Rogers Orock, <i>University of Witwatersrand</i></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><b>About the book</b></div><div>In the digital era, many African countries sit at the crossroads of a potential future that will be shaped by digital-era technologies with existing laws and institutions constructed under conditions of colonial and post-colonial authoritarian rule. In Disrupting Africa, Olufunmilayo B. Arewa examines this intersection and shows how it encompasses existing and new zones of contestation based on ethnicity, religion, region, age, and other sources of division. Arewa highlights specific collisions between the old and the new, including in the 2020 #EndSARS protests in Nigeria, which involved young people engaging with varied digital era technologies who provoked a violent response from rulers threatened by the prospect of political change. Using materials from extensive archival research, Arewa demonstrates how lawmaking and legal processes during and after colonialism continue to frame contexts in which digital technologies are created, implemented, regulated, and used in Africa today.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>About the author</b></div><div><a href="https://www.law.temple.edu/contact/olufunmilayo-arewa/" target="_blank">Olufunmilayo (“Funmi”) Arewa</a> is the Shusterman Professor of Business and Transactional Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. She received an M.A. and Ph.D. (Anthropology) from the University of California, Berkeley, an A.M. (Applied Economics) from the University of Michigan, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and an A.B. from Harvard College. Her research focuses on technology, music, film, business, and Africana studies. </div><div><br /></div><div>For enquiries and optional readings contact: huma@uct.ac.za or imtfi@uci.edu.</div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-21761466972959234342021-03-31T07:45:00.014-07:002021-03-31T16:51:58.872-07:00The Politics of Fiscal Sentiments in Pakistan<p>From the series: <a href="https://culanth.org/fieldsights/series/majoritarian-politics-in-south-asia" target="_blank">Majoritarian Politics in South Asia</a>, Society for Cultural Anthropology</p><p><i>By <a href="https://habib.edu.pk/AHSS/dr-noman-baig/" target="_blank">Noman Baig</a>, Habib University</i></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HonfEZpmB_k/YGJflO-SM_I/AAAAAAAABbM/WyjdCtU0-Ussd229rHpnG-oq8ss5447KwCLcBGAsYHQ/s980/MajoritarianPoliticsThumbnail.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="655" data-original-width="980" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HonfEZpmB_k/YGJflO-SM_I/AAAAAAAABbM/WyjdCtU0-Ussd229rHpnG-oq8ss5447KwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/MajoritarianPoliticsThumbnail.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Mythri Jegathesan.</td></tr></tbody></table><p>In March 2015, Ayyan Ali, a Pakistani supermodel, was arrested at the Islamabad International Airport for attempting to carry half a million dollars in cash onto a flight to Dubai. Ayyan’s arrest quickly became a national sensation once rumors and reports that she was laundering money for prominent politicians and businessmen began to circulate. Public interest and outrage only intensified when the customs officer who had confiscated the money was murdered soon after Ayyan’s arrest. The involvement of a glamorous model, foreign currency, political corruption, Dubai (a dreamland of sorts for the majority of Pakistanis), and now murder ensured that the case dominated the news cycle in Pakistan for months on end.</p><p>Ayyan’s glamorous lifestyle—the parties she attended, the men she dated, the clothes she wore, the brands she endorsed—had been the subject of much discussion in Pakistan even before her arrest. The fact that she was caught carrying so much money thus seemed entirely reasonable (if still scandalous) given the elite social circles of which she was part. This was, many ordinary commentators at the time mused, exactly the kind of salacious affair in which the rich would be involved. The misogynistic media coverage of the case, which focused on Ayyan’s body, clothing, tattoos, and makeup, only strengthened ordinary people’s conviction that Pakistani elites were dissolute. Ayyan’s case became emblematic of what many in Pakistan believed was an <i>ayyash</i>—debauched—society. The Urdu term <i>ayyashi</i> describes a transgressive excess, a hedonism that is thought to defile the very soul. For many ordinary people in Pakistan, Ayyan’s <i>ayyash</i> lifestyle and her eventual arrest mirrored the malaise in which the country itself was mired. Ayyan’s arrest had only revealed the already fraying moral-ethical boundaries of the nation.</p><p>The scandal raked up by Ayyan’s arrest played an important role in setting the stage for Imran Khan’s victory in the 2018 national election. In speeches leading up to the election, Khan cited Ayyan’s case as an example of the deep political and moral corruption that needed to be rooted out in order to build a “naya” or new Pakistan. He laid particular emphasis on Ayyan’s alleged links with former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom he variously called “a mafia don” and “the grandfather of corruption.” Indeed, when Ayyan was eventually granted bail, Khan claimed that the judicial decision was the outcome of a “deal” between political rivals Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari. Corruption, he seemed to suggest, was the one thing that could smooth over even the most long-standing antagonisms.</p><p>It was precisely this shared bond of corruption that Khan vowed to break if elected prime minister. As a start, Khan promised, the PTI (his political party) would bring back the two hundred billion dollars of national wealth that corrupt politicians had supposedly siphoned off and stashed in illegal bank accounts in Switzerland and Panama (see note 1). This promise resonated deeply with many ordinary Pakistanis who viewed corruption as a theft of their dreams and aspirations. What was being stolen by politicians was not just money, but Pakistan’s future, its very possibility of becoming a prosperous nation. By the same token, what Khan promised to restore was not just Pakistan’s fiscal balance, but also its diminished purity and strength.</p><p>Read the full blogpost here: <a href="https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-politics-of-fiscal-sentiments-in-pakistan">https://culanth.org/fieldsights/the-politics-of-fiscal-sentiments-in-pakistan</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Notes</p><p>1. This massive figure is based on <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1123736" target="_blank">debunked news reports</a>.</p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-88698469506242644432021-03-02T10:11:00.000-08:002021-03-02T10:11:39.890-08:00 Top Five Digital Financial Service Features That Impact Women’s Access and Use<h3 style="text-align: left;"><b>Research in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire provides guidance for DFS providers and regulators</b></h3><p><i>By Helene Smertnik, Senior Researcher at Caribou Digital and Savita Bailur, Research Director at Caribou Digital </i></p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RWGAQoH3IZU/YBTAuxio7DI/AAAAAAAABaQ/DTazOX9FqckgnHQIyCZlri1G3POnGL_0wCLcBGAsYHQ/s681/FGD_caribou_digital.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="A focus group discussion discussing women’s experiences with DFS, Yopougon, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo credit: Caribou Digital" border="0" data-original-height="467" data-original-width="681" height="274" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RWGAQoH3IZU/YBTAuxio7DI/AAAAAAAABaQ/DTazOX9FqckgnHQIyCZlri1G3POnGL_0wCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h274/FGD_caribou_digital.jpg" title="A focus group discussion discussing women’s experiences with DFS, Yopougon, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo credit: Caribou Digital" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;">A focus group discussion discussing women’s experiences with DFS<br />Yopougon, Côte d’Ivoire. Photo credit: Caribou Digital</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>This blog links to a longer paper we published on <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3773132" target="_blank">SSRN</a> on the impact of DFS features on women in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire based on primary research with “end users”. For more information, please see the <a href="https://www.leveloneproject.org/project_guide/payment-system-design-and-the-financial-inclusion-gender-gap/" target="_blank">paper</a> and please feel free to contact us at <a href="mailto:helene@cariboudigital.net">helene@cariboudigital.net</a> or <a href="mailto:savita@cariboudigital.net">savita@cariboudigital.net</a> at any point.</p><p>In 2019 (pre-COVID-19), with the support of the Gates Foundation, Caribou Digital and the DFS Lab embarked on a research project to identify which digital financial service (DFS) features impacted women’s access and use the most, compared to men in Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire. Mid-way through our research, we shared <a href="https://medium.com/caribou-digital/which-dfs-features-matter-more-to-women-than-men-3a21765b2236" target="_blank">our initial findings</a>, and with our research now complete, we’re able to take a closer look at these features. There were five that stood out the most:</p><p></p><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Ubiquitous agent networks.</li><li>Real-time SMS notifications and seamless interoperability.</li><li>Transparent fees.</li><li>Help users avoid the need to revoke payments.</li><li>Less stringent ID requirements as part of a tiered KYC approach.</li></ol><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></h4><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b>Ubiquitous DFS networks </b></h4><p>Uniting tech and touch is critical for women. Women were quite vocal about the importance of a ubiquitous agent network (with no gender preference for agents) in order for them to have trust and confidence in DFS. In fact, a few women mentioned that they were dissuaded completely from using a financial service if it did not have any shops or agents, as was the case with the loan app Tala, which only provided a customer service number to call.</p><p>Older and less digitally savvy women relied the most on agents, indicating a generational divide which is sometimes even greater than the gender divide. Though older women said they sometimes ask their children for help, they were also cautious about disclosing how much money they had to their family. As a result, they would often go to agents for help.</p><p><i>Recommendation: </i>DFS providers’ investment in physical agent networks is therefore critical to ensure the uptake of their services by women.</p><p><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Real-time SMS notifications and seamless interoperability </h4><p>As part of our research, we observed men and women conducting mobile money transactions at shops. A key difference in their behaviors was that women tended to wait in the shop until they received the SMS notifications confirming their transactions, while men would simply drop off the money and continue on their way, expecting the SMS to come later. Because women require the official confirmation before moving on, real-time SMS notifications are key for their continued use of mobile money. If they have to wait too long, they will eventually go back to using cash to avoid wasting time. </p><p>The issue of timely SMS notifications comes up especially when using interoperable services, highlighting the need for more seamless interoperability. For example, Equity Bank and M-Pesa are interoperable, meaning they connect to each other and transfers can be made between their accounts. However, the transfers sometimes take time to process, and the confirmation messages do not arrive or are late, leading women to go back to manual cash transfers. </p><p><i>Recommendation: </i>Ensuring SMS notifications are received in near real time is critical for DFS providers to best serve women.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br />Transparency in fees and cost structures </h4><p>“The units disappear without anyone knowing why. This colleague is telling us it is because of subscriptions done without our agreement but until now I had no clue,” said one of our interviewees, Elodie. Such hidden and nontransparent fees discourage women from using DFS, as we found that women were more sensitive to fees than men and also less likely to find workarounds to avoid them. For example, in both Kenya and Côte d’Ivoire, younger men knew that they could reduce transaction fees by conducting smaller transactions multiple times rather than one higher cost transaction, while most women were not aware of this strategy. </p><p>Because of these fees, there was a strong sense among low-income women that money didn’t “grow” when left on their phone. Consequently, they did not associate mobile money with the possibility of savings, preferring savings groups or keeping money in cash at home, despite potential security issues. </p><p><i>Recommendation:</i> To ensure women use DFS, it is key for providers to have ethical cost structure designs as well as transparent communications about possible fees.</p><p><br /></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Help users avoid the need to revoke transactions </h4><p>Most digital financial service providers offer an option for revoking a payment after it has gone through. However, this process is complex, and the use of this option has the potential to hinder women’s usage of DFS more than men’s. In neither Côte d’Ivoire nor Kenya were there clear instructions from the DFS providers for how to go about revoking a payment, and if the money had already been withdrawn it became impossible. </p><p>In a focus group discussion with women merchants in the outskirts of Nairobi, we also heard about how revoking features could lead to fraud, as some of the women had been cheated by customers who paid but then reversed their payments. The women were considering reverting back to cash due to these experiences. </p><p><i>Recommendation:</i> Given the complexity and cost of revoking payments and the lack of standards in place, it is important for providers to help users avoid the need to revoke payments by guaranteeing clear and sufficient cancelling features in place before the user hits send. For example, confirmation messages should appear which explicitly state the phone number and amount being sent, and should give enough time to review all the information without the phone shutting down. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><br />ID requirements and the need for a tiered KYC approach</h4><p>In theory, women said they appreciated the importance of requiring an ID for security measures, both for agents and customers. However, in practice they privileged going to agents who didn’t ask for their ID. Since many women do not have an ID, they often rely on their husbands’ ID, or simply do not use digital financial services if an ID is required. </p><p>In response to this reality, in Côte d’Ivoire, some agents intentionally do not ask for ID in order to gain a competitive advantage over agents that required it. In Kenya, agents would not always ask for ID when they already knew the customer. We also saw scenarios where agents would only require ID for transactions over a certain amount. </p><p><i>Recommendation:</i> While these agents are improvising to respond to the needs of their customers, ID requirements should be adjusted and standardized to meet women’s needs. A tiered KYC (know your customer) approach would encourage women’s usage by allowing them to make small mobile money transactions without providing identification. </p><p><br /></p><p>*****</p><p>The women’s experiences shared above highlight how important it is for DFS providers and policy makers to consider women’s needs and wants in order to make sure they are financially included. The risk of women’s financial exclusion is even greater in the context of COVID-19, as payments are increasingly digital and access to DFS is crucial. These five features can help ensure that digital tools make women more - not less - financially included. </p><p>*****</p><p>Watch our webinar, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SbIBJO_7cJs&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=CaribouDigital" target="_blank">What Digital Financial Services features might matter more to women than men and why?</a></p><p><i>This research was conducted with AFROES in Kenya, led by Gathoni Mwai and Sylvia Oloo and Empow’Her, led by Chloe Roncajolo and Serge Kouadio in Côte d’Ivoire. A special thanks to them.</i></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.comIrvine, CA 92697, USA33.6404952 -117.84429625.12884903866588 -153.0005462 62.152141361334117 -82.6880462tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-58818805641223673472021-01-07T06:32:00.001-08:002021-01-07T06:33:35.789-08:00New Book: Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution by Sibel Kusimba<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jgyYrC--A08/X_X_QbY74DI/AAAAAAAABZ0/eXrM-rjW42sdltKxkda8A7OWGgnM9Je6wCLcBGAsYHQ/s600/pid_31200_Reminagining%2BMoney.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Reminagining Money Book" border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jgyYrC--A08/X_X_QbY74DI/AAAAAAAABZ0/eXrM-rjW42sdltKxkda8A7OWGgnM9Je6wCLcBGAsYHQ/w212-h320/pid_31200_Reminagining%2BMoney.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div><i><a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=31200" target="_blank">Reimagining Money: Kenya in the Digital Finance Revolution</a></i>, Stanford University Press by Sibel Kusimba</div><div><br /></div><div>JANUARY 2021</div><div>240 PAGES</div><div>FROM $28.00</div><div><br /></div><div>Hardcover ISBN: 9781503613515</div><div>Paperback ISBN: 9781503614413</div><div>Ebook ISBN: 9781503614420</div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>Abstract</b></div><div>Technology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people—an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>About the author</b></div><div><a href="https://sibelkusimba.com/" target="_blank">Sibel Kusimba</a> has conducted over twenty years of ethnographic research and archaeological fieldwork in Kenya. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and is the author of African Foragers (2003).</div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b>Excerpts and more</b></div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Sample <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=31200&i=Chapter%201.html" target="_blank">Chapter 1: "A Central Banker Talks Money"</a></li><li>Book <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=31200&i=Contents.htm" target="_blank">Contents</a></li><li>Purchase book at <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/precart/?id=31200&promo= " target="_blank">Stanford University Press</a> - USE CODE Winter21 for 40% off until Jan 25, 2021</li><li>View Kusimba's recent publications and projects <a href="https://sibelkusimba.com/publications/" target="_blank">here</a>.</li></ul><div><br /></div></div></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-8028062883998764572020-11-17T07:30:00.000-08:002020-11-17T07:30:11.582-08:00Mobile Money and the (Un)Making of Social Relations in Chivi, Zimbabwe<p>Article in the <i>Journal of Southern African Studies</i> by Simbarashe Gukurume, Great Zimbabwe University & Innocent T. Mahiya, University of KwaZulu Natal </p><p></p><p><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eyWREKb3xmk/X7NfaZPGYMI/AAAAAAAABYs/gCKMTGNn3IIalfCzUcLzevclDgCkMJXhgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/TeleCash%2Band%2BEcoCash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1232" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eyWREKb3xmk/X7NfaZPGYMI/AAAAAAAABYs/gCKMTGNn3IIalfCzUcLzevclDgCkMJXhgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h240/TeleCash%2Band%2BEcoCash.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mobile money agents booths at Chivi Growth Point;<br />Photo Credit: Simbarashe Gukurume </td></tr></tbody></table><b><br />Abstract</b><p></p><p>The rapid expansion of mobile money technologies in Zimbabwe has substantially altered the monetary ecology and the payment landscape. This article examines the ways in which the adoption, usage and meanings attached to mobile money (re)configure social relationships in the rural community of Chivi. We demonstrate the ways in which mobile money technologies mediate the politics of everyday social relations and shape local social relations in profound ways. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the complex ways through which mobile money makes and unmakes social relations between transacting parties and between the agents themselves. Our main finding is that the impact of mobile money on social relations in the community is predominantly ambivalent. We observed that mobile money triggers contestation, hostility and conflict while simultaneously fostering social solidarity and convivial relationships. The main sources of contention in mobile money transactions in Chivi involved space, currency conversion exchange rates, identification and charges. These are, however, unintended consequences of mobile money usage in Chivi.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WWrGPr-DFkE/X7NgP6XSOeI/AAAAAAAABY0/AVVHbqCaXoIEBH6NX-tr42tf38k5eYSOQCLcBGAsYHQ/s500/CJSS-cropped.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="500" height="103" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WWrGPr-DFkE/X7NgP6XSOeI/AAAAAAAABY0/AVVHbqCaXoIEBH6NX-tr42tf38k5eYSOQCLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h103/CJSS-cropped.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><p>Access Journal of South African Studies: <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2020.1823682">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03057070.2020.1823682</a></p><p></p><p>To obtain digital copies of the full paper, email Simbarashe Gukurume, sgukurume1@gmail.com.</p><p>Read about the original IMTFI-funded research: <a href="http://www.imtfi.uci.edu/research/2015/mahiya_gukurume_2015.php#">http://www.imtfi.uci.edu/research/2015/mahiya_gukurume_2015.php#</a></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-83653906001235771972020-10-12T07:45:00.004-07:002020-10-12T07:53:25.475-07:00Oct. 22 Zoom Event - Financial Legacies: Slavery and the History of Banking <p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1376" data-original-width="1920" height="287" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-diEDcy-0iq8/X4Ow7Ju_jJI/AAAAAAAABX0/eomCyPl9FJcTBfyqKRCA0JUMaaioTMKCACLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h287/Preferred-LA-Redlining-Map-1939.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A redlining map of Los Angeles in 1939.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div><div style="text-align: center;">UCI Humanities Center presents <a href="https://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitiescenter/programs/1619.php" target="_blank">The 1619 Project in 2020</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitiescenter/calendar/events.php?recid=8619&dept_code_val=999-7&event_cat=current&file_name=events" target="_blank">Financial Legacies: Slavery and the History of Banking</a></i></div><div style="text-align: center;">October 22, 2020 | 5:00 PM-6:30 PM PT</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b> Register: <a href="http://socs.ci/1619financiallegacies">http://socs.ci/1619financiallegacies</a></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Moderator:</div><div> • <a href="https://aas.princeton.edu/people/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor" target="_blank">Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</a> (Princeton)</div><div><br /></div><div>Speakers: </div><div> • <a href="https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/wmmaurer/" target="_blank">Bill Maurer</a> (Social Sciences, <a href="https://www.imtfi.uci.edu/about.php" target="_blank">IMTFI Director</a>)</div><div> • <a href="https://history.ucla.edu/faculty/peter-james-hudson" target="_blank">Peter Hudson</a> (UCLA)</div><div> • <a href="https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/baradaran/" target="_blank">Mehrsa Baradaran</a> (UCI Law)</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This event is 60 minutes and will include a Q&A session. For those who are interested, please stay for a bonus 30 minute facilitated discussion.</div><div><br /></div><div>Discussion Facilitators:</div><div> • <a href="https://merage.uci.edu/research-faculty/faculty-directory/Tonya-Bradford.html" target="_blank">Tonya Bradford</a> (Business)</div><div> • <a href="https://mrinalinitankha.com/" target="_blank">Mrinalini Tankha </a>(Portland State University)</div><div><br /></div><div>Suggested Podcast/Readings:</div><div>• Matthew Desmond, “If you want to understand the brutally of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation,” The 1619 Project And Photo essay by Dannielle Bowman; text by Anne C. Bailey</div><div>• Mehrsa Baradaran, “Mortgaging the Future,” p. 32; “Good as Gold,” p. 35; and “Fabric of Modernity,” p. 36</div><div>• Tiya Miles, “How Slavery Made Wall Street,” p. 40</div><div>• Trymaine Lee, “A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America,” The 1619 Project</div><div>• <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html" target="_blank">1619 Podcast </a>2: The Economy that Slavery Built</div><div><br /></div><div>To read the 1619 Project, see: (<a href="http://www.pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf">www.pulitzercenter.org/sites/default/files/full_issue_of_the_1619_project.pdf</a>)</div><div>To access the podcasts, see: (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html</a>)</div><div>Access The 1619 Project Curriculum through the Pulitzer Center: (<a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/1619-project-curriculum">https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/1619-project-curriculum</a>)</div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>***</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>The 1619 Project in 2020</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>#UCI1619Project</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>The 1619 Project, published by the New York Times, retells the history of the U.S. by foregrounding the arrival 401 years ago of enslaved Africans to Virginia. Through a series of essays, photos, and podcasts, the 1619 Project charts the impact of slavery on the country’s founding principles, economy, health care system, racial segregation of neighborhoods and schools, popular music and visual representations. Conversations around the 1619 project have served as a flashpoint for intensive ideological debates about its content and impact. It has been both widely lauded and subjected to critiques from academics, journalists, pundits and policymakers who challenge its accuracy and its interpretation of history. Conservative politicians even seek to defund schools that teach the project. What is the power of the 1619 Project to reframe our understanding of U.S. history and our contemporary society? How might we go beyond the 1619 Project to develop an even fuller understanding of the centrality of slavery and race in the U.S. and in the broader Atlantic world? Join us for month plus exploration of The 1619 Project, which culminates in the visit of Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the project.</div><div><br /></div><div>The 1619 Project series is presented by UCI Humanities Center and is co-sponsored by: <i>UCI Illuminations: The Chancellor’s Arts & Culture Initiative, UCI Black Thriving Initiative, School of Humanities, Claire Trevor School of the Arts, School of Education, School of Law, School of Social Ecology, School of Social Sciences, UCI Libraries, Academic English, Composition Program, Center for Latin American Studies, Center on Law, Equality, and Race, Center for Medical Humanities, International Center for Writing and Translation, Literary Journalism and Center for Storytelling, Office of Inclusive Excellence, Student Affairs, Staff Assembly, AAPI Womxn in Leadership and Academic and Professional Women of UCI.</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><p></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-49976138113169212402020-10-06T09:23:00.000-07:002020-10-06T09:23:22.425-07:00Do women need their own financial services? <p><i>by Erin B. Taylor and Anette Broløs</i></p><p>Historically, few financial tools have been developed with women in mind or marketed to them directly[i]. Today, however, new financial services are appearing on the market that respond to practical everyday economic needs including design and marketing. Currency converters, financial management apps, investment apps, and alternative credit sources, are now being developed specifically for women, or primarily marketed to them. A plethora of websites, blogs and podcasts for women offer advice, information, and educational courses on finance. Many of these are community-based initiatives and aim to create a dialogue with women. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-anWyeyoD-qQ/X3e1-RNe3YI/AAAAAAAABXU/oFQwEOeTz1gdKrfvVM5_yaNcO-he3m89gCLcBGAsYHQ/s564/FemaleFinance.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="564" height="345" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-anWyeyoD-qQ/X3e1-RNe3YI/AAAAAAAABXU/oFQwEOeTz1gdKrfvVM5_yaNcO-he3m89gCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h345/FemaleFinance.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>But do women really need their own financial services? What can these new fintech products offer women that gender-neutral products can’t? We explore these questions in two new publications. One is a book chapter called “Financial technology and the gender gap: Designing & delivering services for women” (in<a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-Consumption-and-Paradox/Malefyt-McCabe/p/book/9780367186128" target="_blank"> Malefyt and McCabe 2020</a>), and an industry report called <i><a href="https://www.imtfi.uci.edu/files/docs/2020/Female%20Finance_DEF3_150dpi.pdf" target="_blank">Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked (EWPN/Keen Innovation 2020)</a></i>. </p><p>The financial gender gap exists for many reasons, including income inequality, women taking time off for child-rearing or caring for a family member, fewer investment opportunities for women, and the tendency for women to manage daily budgets while men tend to take care of long-term financial management[ii]. Lower (or different) financial literacy, lack of confidence in financial knowledge, and differences in investment behavior can limit women’s ability to achieve financial security[iii]. And in some areas of the world poverty, limited access to technology and legal restrictions hinder women’s access to financial tools and confidence in using them[iv]. </p><p>However, to our surprise, we discovered that there is neither an overview of existing financial solutions offered to women, nor an overview of research on women’s engagement with their finances. Through our work as co-organizers of research activities within the European Women Payments Network (EWPN), we also noticed that industry professionals are not very aware of what the market in fintech for women looks like. Few professionals could name any fintech products designed specifically for women. </p><p>So we set out to discover what this market consists of, how extensive it is, what kind of women it serves (as well as where they’re located), and – most importantly – how fintech products claim to serve women. Along with the EWPN and Keen Innovation, we identified as many fintech products for women as we could. This is a very new field: most of the companies we found were founded during the last 5-10 years). The resulting report not only maps out these products, but also begins to analyse how they serve women in five areas: payments and credit, financial management, insurance, investment, and capital for entrepreneurs.</p><p></p><blockquote><p><b>Common features in services for women </b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Storytelling in a language that speaks to women's life contexts </li><li>Accessible solutions that are digital and mobile </li><li>Learning opportunities (blogs, support, "academies") </li><li>Social features (mentors, events, networking, communities) </li></ul></blockquote><p></p><p>Through our analyses of the concrete product and service offering, we realized that women tend to engage with finances differently to men. They value financial services that understand their life situation (young professionals, young families with housing and children on their minds, single parents or women establishing their own company to allow more flexibility in their daily lives). They prefer services that are readily available, uncomplicated to use, and provide a fast overview of economic transactions and decisions. Women are increasingly investing money, and their investment decisions are often based on a broader range of criteria than investment advisers usually take into account. They look to understand how their wealth can best be invested to ensure fulfilling their wishes over time, and tend to focus on social issues such as sustainability, local development and inclusion. </p><div><div><br /></div><div>Indeed, this social aspect of finance is critical to understanding how women can differ from men. Women appreciate being able to work and learn with experts and like-minded people. We suspect that is a reason why Voleo, a new investment club app that allows users to interact, has 40% female customers while not even being directed particularly at women. Similarly, Nav.it, a money management app, tries to harness women’s preference for social proof to encourage women to engage more with their finances. The app’s founder, Erin Papworth, claims that women lack the “financial vocabulary” to talk about money in ways that are relevant to their lives and goals. The financial system is still geared towards men and tends to exclude women, who, Erin says in a <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-erin-papworth-dropped-everything-to-nav-it/id1456874286?i=1000432961764" target="_blank">Nav.it podcast</a>, are not confident discussing things like investing and compound interest. Thus the goal of the app is not only to help individuals manage their finances, but change the ways women engage with finances and build a system “that has the feminine experience integrated into the overall system”. Women’s socioeconomic situation is rapidly changing, she says, and women now have the “power of the purse” to effect broader change.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, do women need their own financial services? The answer is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. The financial gender gap is persistent across cultures and income groups. While financial services designed for women are unlikely to increase women’s incomes and close the gap, they can provide some very useful tools to help women manage their finances better and a way that suits their preferred modes of engagement. Women need their own financial services because existing solutions do not cater to their economic needs and expectations. And delivery is just as important as design: a financial tool may be theoretically perfect for women to use, but if it isn’t delivered in a way that speaks to women’s needs it will likely fail to reach its target market. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, we should warn that women are a very diverse group and experience both the financial gender gap and financial services themselves in diverse ways. Women’s financial practices therefore cannot be studied without taking into account the surrounding cultural, economic, legal and educational factors that make up the context of women’s lives. Moreover, what counts as “women’s lives” is in a constant state of change. For example, women’s investments are rising much faster that men’s. Women increasingly start their own companies or raise crowdfunded capital for their projects. Family patterns and job circumstances are also changing fast. When designing financial services for women we cannot treat women as a static, homogeneous group. We need nuanced research to feed into the intelligent design and delivery of financial services. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is plenty more to be done. We plan to develop new empirical research on women’s engagement with finances, covering issues such as how women engage with finances on the move, what services and products they use to grow their wealth, and how the digitization of ‘financial inclusion’ services such as microfinance impacts women. We particularly encourage companies and researchers to engage with women in practice by providing well-designed research that can contribute to the design of financial services that fit with women’s preferences, values and contexts. </div><div><br /></div><div>We also plan to update the overview of financial services for women to follow progress and changes in the market over time. A more complete analysis of financial services from different perspectives, focusing on factors such as economics, digital development, education, history, religion, consumer behavior, and more would be useful to build a more nuanced picture of women’s needs and the differences between women. </div><div><br /></div><div>And, most importantly, we need to be having broader conversations about these issues. Join us at the EWPN Research Network LinkedIn group to share your own ideas with industry professionals and academics who are working on these issues. You can also share your favorite books, articles, and white papers on the subject, or suggestions for companies we should look into and to include in our overview of the market. Above all, let us know if you agree with us or not. The more diverse and dynamic the conversation, the better placed we will be to understand why, and under what circumstances, diverse women may need their own financial services. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>The book chapter: </b>Taylor, E.B. and A. Broløs. 2020. Financial technology and the gender gap: Designing & delivering services for women. In <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-Consumption-and-Paradox/Malefyt-McCabe/p/book/9780367186128" target="_blank"><i>Women, Consumption and Paradox: Towards A More Humanistic Approach to Consumption</i></a>, pp.103-128. Edited by Timothy de Waal Malefyt and Maryann McCabe. Routledge.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The industry report: </b>Broløs, A. and Taylor, E.B. 2020. <i><a href="https://www.imtfi.uci.edu/files/docs/2020/Female%20Finance_DEF3_150dpi.pdf" target="_blank">Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked. EWPN and Keen Innovation.</a></i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b>Endnotes</b></div></div><div><div>i<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Burton, Dawn. 1995. Women and financial services: Some directions for future research. International Journal of Bank Marketing 13(8): 21-28; Roderick, Leonie. 2017. Financial services brands ‘ignoring’ women in advertising. Marketing Week, 17 October, https://www.marketingweek.com/financial-brands-ignoring-women-ads/</div><div><span face="Arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ii</span></span><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>E&Y. 2017: Banking on Gender Differences: Similarities and Differences in Financial Services Preferences of Women and Men in a Digital World; Hira, Tahira K. 2008. Gender differences in investment behaviour. In Handbook of Consumer Finance Research. Jing Jian Xiao, ed. 253-270. New York: Springer; Liébana-Cabanillas, Francisco José, Juan Sánchez-Fernández, and Francisco Muñoz-Leiva. 2014. Role of gender on acceptance of mobile payment. Industrial Management & Data Systems 114(2): 220-240; Morsy, Hanan, and Hoda Youssef. 2017. Access to Finance–Mind the Gender Gap. EBRD Working Paper No. 202.</div><div> iii<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Almenberg, Johan and Anna Dreber. 2015. Gender, stock market participation and financial literacy. Economics Letters 137 (2015): 140-142; Bannier, Christina E. and Milena Schwarz. 2018. Gender-and education-related effects of financial literacy and confidence on financial wealth. Journal of Economic Psychology 67: 66-86; Driva, Anastasia, Melanie Lührmann, and Joachim Winter. 2016. Gender differences and stereotypes in financial literacy: Off to an early start. Economics Letters 146: 143-146.</div><div> iv<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Morsy, Hanan, and Hoda Youssef. 2017. Access to Finance–Mind the Gender Gap. EBRD Working Paper No. 202; Servon, Lisa. 2017. <i>The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives.</i> Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.</div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-2539577794600057742020-09-30T10:31:00.000-07:002020-09-30T10:31:08.189-07:00Book Launch | Musaraj and Mëhilli Discuss Ponzi Schemes and Postsocialist Transformations, Oct. 1<p>The <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/cas/law-center" target="_blank">Center for Law, Justice & Culture</a> hosts a book launch for <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/cas/musaraj" target="_blank">Dr. Smoki Musaraj</a>’s new book, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tales-Albarado-Accumulation-Postsocialist-Albania/dp/150175033X" target="_blank">Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania</a> (Cornell UP, 2020) this Thursday, Oct. 1, at 1 p.m. PT / 4 p.m. ET.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CZPn3emB5PM/X3S5qnpfQgI/AAAAAAAABWg/63dpT3R_ikog-JUbZL7j9O6whneumERDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s480/Smoki-Musaraj.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="281" data-original-width="480" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CZPn3emB5PM/X3S5qnpfQgI/AAAAAAAABWg/63dpT3R_ikog-JUbZL7j9O6whneumERDQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Smoki-Musaraj.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>Musaraj will be joined by <a href="http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/history/faculty/elidor-mehilli" target="_blank">Dr. Elidor Mëhilli</a> to talk about the book’s ethnographic approach to the widespread participation in a dozen pyramid schemes that were all the rage in early 1990s Albania. The book situates the emergence of these schemes within the broader context of postsocialist transformations, neoliberal reform, and massive migration.</p><p>Musaraj is Associate Professor of <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/cas/sociology-anthropology/" target="_blank">Anthropology</a> and Director of the Center for Law, Justice & Culture at Ohio University. Mëhilli is Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, CUNY and author of <i>From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World</i> (Cornell 2017).</p><p>This event is co-sponsored with the Sociology & Anthropology Colloquium series.</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Join the conversation on <a href="https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3a896e207a2fe14e01a78f34740f451528%40thread.tacv2/1600711087576?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22f3308007-477c-4a70-8889-34611817c55a%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%22adc492ef-899b-4635-9e56-f91f89cc361b%22%7d" target="_blank">Microsoft Teams</a>.</li></ul><p></p><p>Learn more about <a href="https://www.ohio-forum.com/2020/09/musarajs-new-book-examines-pyramid-schemes-in-post-socialist-albania/" target="_blank">Tales from Albarado</a>.</p><p>View event posting here: <a href="https://www.ohio-forum.com/2020/09/book-launch-tales-from-albarado-by-smoki-musaraj/">https://www.ohio-forum.com/2020/09/book-launch-tales-from-albarado-by-smoki-musaraj/</a></p><p style="text-align: center;">---</p><p style="text-align: center;">~Read Smoki Musaraj's IMTFI blogpost, "<a href="http://blog.imtfi.uci.edu/2020/09/money-and-speculation-in-times-of-crisis.html" target="_blank">Money and Speculation in Times of Crisis</a>" where she shares about her time with IMTFI as a postdoctoral scholar~</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-41924060078574865662020-09-23T10:24:00.002-07:002020-09-23T10:25:29.833-07:00The CARES Act and Credit Reporting: What Credit Unions Need to Know<p><i>by Bill Maurer and Melissa Wrapp, <a href="https://filene.org/learn-something/center-for-emerging-technology" target="_blank">Center of Excellence for Emerging Technology</a>, <a href="https://filene.org/" target="_blank">Filene Research Institute</a> - </i>creating research, innovation and connections for credit unions</p><p>The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act was enacted on March 27, 2020, to provide emergency relief to consumers and businesses suffering from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. The CARES Act contains a section (Sec. 4021) specifically addressing the credit reporting consequences of the pandemic. Even with direct stimulus payments, increased unemployment benefits, and the Paycheck Protection Program, consumers are facing dire financial circumstances. The expiration of relief payments and enhanced unemployment protection on July 31 has only made their situation more precarious.</p><p>Section 4021 does not go nearly far enough. It places the entire burden on consumers. It does not include all forms of debt, including debt collection accounts (which includes 99% of medical debt on credit reports). It does not standardize credit reporting practices. And more.</p><p>Still, there are ways your credit union can help your members.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://filene.widen.net/s/hgoairbr03" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="117" data-original-width="449" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wceuvnrdqEU/X2t9aHkj0YI/AAAAAAAABVY/W4CfT1nNY1QNJgteipYWGy995zo3Y0EawCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/CARES%2Bflyer%2Bimage.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></a></div><p><b>PROBLEM: Protections are not automatic.</b></p><p>Consumers are required to contact creditors to ask for an accommodation. They are also required to do so for all their accounts. Most don’t even know where to begin.</p><p>What your credit union can do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Proactively contact your members to let them know how to ask for an accommodation from their creditors.</li><li>Remind them of the top five most likely creditors they should contact. You can either look for trends in your area or go for the most likely creditors that any member would have. Provide them a checklist: Mortgage; car loan; student loan; credit cards.</li><li>Provide phone numbers or websites to the national credit reporting agencies (NCRAs) so they can obtain their free credit reports.</li><li>Preserve the dignity of your members and don’t overrun your call centers! Instead, consider automatic loan deferments or online/mobile solutions for loan deferment requests.</li></ul><p></p><p><b>PROBLEM: Only deals with active accounts.</b></p><p>The CARES Act only deals with active credit accounts, not debt collection accounts like medical debt or debt owed to collection agencies employed by former landlords.</p><p>What your credit union can do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Target small-dollar lending products to utility delinquencies, medical debt, or other debt collection accounts.</li><li>Help members identify court records of evictions and petition the court to have them expunged or sealed. The easiest way is to look at the Public Records section of their credit reports. They can also look up records on line via the <a href="https://www.ncsc.org/topics/access-and-fairness/privacy-public-access-to-court-records/state-links3" target="_blank">National Center on State Courts</a> website or partner with a third-party provider like <a href="http://MyRentalHistoryReport.Com" target="_blank">MyRentalHistoryReport.Com</a> (which charges a $29.95 fee). Or, identify and partner with a <a href="https://www.ncsc.org/topics/legal-services/legal-aid-pro-bono/state-links" target="_blank">local nonprofit legal aid foundation</a>.</li><li>Provide a dated letter of reference to members with eviction records indicating they are a member in good standing of your credit union that they can share with potential landlords when filling out a rental application.</li></ul><p></p><p><b>PROBLEM: Consistency using the AW code.</b></p><p>Furnishers are not consistently using the AW code (“natural disaster”) in providing data about COVID-related delinquencies.</p><p>What your credit union can do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Demand from NCRAs that furnishers of credit data use the AW code or CP (“short term forbearance”) in any data they provide to NCRAs.</li><li>Lobby Congress for consistent application of Metro 2 ® codes related to natural disasters, including pandemics. Make this an immediate and high priority for our trade groups.</li></ul><p></p><p><b>PROBLEM: Student loans.</b></p><p>75% of forbearances are for student loans.</p><p>What your credit union can do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Reach out to student borrowers and others with student loans to discuss their options. Identify them through your student loan providers/servicers; or, look for student loan payments in ACH files.</li><li>Ask your student loan providers/services to advertise the benefits provided in the CARES Act for student borrowers.</li></ul><p></p><p><b>PROBLEM: Poor understanding of credit reports.</b></p><p>Consumers poorly understand their credit reports. The 3 NCRAs are currently providing weekly free reports during the pandemic.</p><p>What your credit union can do:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Make your members aware of the NCRAs free reports.</li><li>Provide educational materials for members on their credit reports, how to read them, the importance of their credit score, and how to improve their credit score. Direct them to the websites of the NCRAs or the <a href="https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-is-a-credit-score-en-315/" target="_blank">CFPB</a>, which has a handy primer on credit scores.</li></ul><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-16jDS9-hdSA/X2uDlTn4dtI/AAAAAAAABWI/etSh4J_kayEzs6qLyGiaJuDJE8dXVFOiACLcBGAsYHQ/s340/filene-logo.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="170" data-original-width="340" height="100" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-16jDS9-hdSA/X2uDlTn4dtI/AAAAAAAABWI/etSh4J_kayEzs6qLyGiaJuDJE8dXVFOiACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h100/filene-logo.png" width="200" /></a></div><div><br /></div>For full original post, additional resources, and detailed specifications from the CARES Act, go to:</div><div><a href="https://filene.org/blog/the-cares-act-and-credit-reporting-what-credit-unions-need-to-know">https://filene.org/blog/the-cares-act-and-credit-reporting-what-credit-unions-need-to-know</a></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Important Note</b></div><div>At the time the guide was prepared (August 2020), the second major stimulus and relief act has passed the House of Representatives, but negotiations are stalled between the House, Senate, and Trump administration. The House bill, called the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act (HEROES) Act, replaces section 4021 of the CARES Act and provides a couple of important additional protections. Most significantly, it bans reporting medical debt related to COVID-19 treatment. This is a step in the right direction, but many individuals will suffer medical debts unrelated to COVID-19 treatment that they will still struggle to repay given the economic fallout from the crisis. It also forbids the use of alternative credit scoring models that “would identify a significant percentage of consumers as being less creditworthy when compared to the previous credit scoring models.”</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><p></p>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2057985352570664629.post-3953521774426073772020-09-14T14:00:00.001-07:002020-09-14T14:00:03.395-07:00 Money and Speculation in Times of Crisis<p><i>by <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/cas/musaraj" target="_blank">Smoki Musaraj</a>. Ohio University</i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_P4nwaT1DW4/X1gCIL9jyJI/AAAAAAAABU0/rXexbAR203ohfx8Bb3RhePcSA8qFr1gSQCLcBGAsYHQ/s392/Tales_Albania_cover.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="257" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_P4nwaT1DW4/X1gCIL9jyJI/AAAAAAAABU0/rXexbAR203ohfx8Bb3RhePcSA8qFr1gSQCLcBGAsYHQ/w210-h320/Tales_Albania_cover.JPG" width="210" /></a></div>During the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy earlier this year, I frequently checked the Facebook feed of many friends and family living there. Growing up in Albania like me, many of them had migrated to Italy in the 1990s. I checked to make sure they were OK. Other friends situated in other parts of the world did the same. Facebook feeds became a space for comparing the degrees of quarantine in different countries and for providing mutual support in times of collective isolation. During these checks, I often ran into conversations by Albanian diaspora that compared the experience of the COVID-19 quarantines to that of the infamous year 1997 (or, in colloquial Albanian, <i>nëntdhteshtata,</i> the ninety-seven). This was a year of political anarchy, of a state of emergency, closed borders, of curfews and protests caused not by a virus but by the collapse of a dozen pyramid schemes. For many of my friends who had come of age in late-1990s Albania, the COVID times brought back the memory of social isolation and economic insecurity they experienced when the schemes collapsed.<p></p><p>My book, <i><a href="https://cornellup.degruyter.com/view/title/571794?result=93&rskey=j7pUSW&tab_body=overview" target="_blank">Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania</a> </i>(Cornell 2020), takes an ethnographic approach to the rise and fall of the dozen of pyramid firms (firma piramidale). The firms emerged alongside the free-market reforms and post-communist financial institutions that followed the demise of the communist regime. When the pyramid firms folded in 1997, the country unraveled into anarchy and a near civil war. Looking into newspaper archives and interviews with former investors, <i>Tales from Albarado</i> seeks to gain a better understanding of how people from various paths of life came to invest in the financial schemes and, in turn, how such schemes intertwined with everyday transactions, dreams, and aspirations. Through this ethnography of the Ponzi schemes in Albania, the book explores more broadly the materialities, socialities, and temporalities of financial speculation.</p><p>I served as postdoctoral fellow at IMTFI during 2012-2014. During these years, I revised the manuscript of <i>Tales from Albarado</i> while working alongside IMTFI fellows from different parts of the world who were also exploring questions about money and technology in the global South. My work with IMTFI and a wonderful group of fellows influenced my thinking about the various top-down and bottom-up financial repertoires mobilized by the pyramid firms in Albania. I began to think about the pyramid firms alongside many other financial enterprises that serve the unbanked and perform many of the financial functions that we associate with the formal banking sector. Given the history of a strict ban on private property during the communist period, many Albanians lacked assets and savings and they were quickly excluded from formal institutions during the 1990s, a time of free-market reforms and widespread privatization. Many of them turned to the pyramid firms as a means of saving, borrowing, and investing. I therefore situate the pyramid firms at the interstices of formal and informal economic institutions and repertoires that emerged alongside post-communist reforms. I argue that these institutions persist to this day.</p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u3KN95VqvUw/X1gCa27hkaI/AAAAAAAABU8/I_bGR_e83247wrgar07KEwu5j_JGebynQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Piramida%2BSketch.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1436" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u3KN95VqvUw/X1gCa27hkaI/AAAAAAAABU8/I_bGR_e83247wrgar07KEwu5j_JGebynQCLcBGAsYHQ/w224-h320/Piramida%2BSketch.png" width="224" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Pyramid" by Like Rehova, Revista Klan, 2.11.1997, Vol 1 (1): 2. <br />Courtesy of the New York Public Library. </td></tr></tbody></table><br />Scholarly discussions of financial bubbles often focus on the abstraction and anonymity of capital as the fuel of speculation. In <i>Tales from Albarado, </i>by contrast, I emphasize the materialities and socialities of speculation. I do so by looking at the circulation and conversions of various things—stack of cash, privatization vouchers, remittances, housing—through the pyramid firms. These materialities, I argue, are entangled with specific economic and social histories and cultural norms. This approach resonates with the work of so many IMTFI fellows who research the old and new financial technologies and repertoires used by people living at the margins of global capital (<a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MaurerMoney" target="_blank">Maurer, Musaraj, and Small 2018</a>). Like many IMTFI projects, <i>Tales from Albarado</i> explores how financial activities are deeply intertwined with social ties. <p></p><p>Thus, a key finding in <i>Tales from Albarado</i> pertains to the role of a widespread bottom-up economic repertoire: remittances. Remittances were sent to Albanian residents via transnational kinship networks. They were mostly in cash and in multiple currencies as this was a time before the euro. Drachmas, liras, marks, dollars featured prominently in recollections of former investors who often expressed pleasure in dealing in multiple currencies and in carrying stacks and sacs of cash to and from the firms. Cash enabled bundling deposits from multiple investors; multiple currencies enabled cultural cachet and opportunities for arbitrage; social ties of kin, friends, and brokers (sekserë) enabled the expansion of investments to the firms. Accounts by former investors point to the highly personalized transactions that enabled financial speculation. Further, they provide a picture of a bottom-up repertoire—an informal cash economy in multiple currencies mediated by social ties—that constitute an enduring strategy of accumulation in a context of ongoing economic uncertainty. </p><p>In addition to seeking other means of making wealth, I explore how participation in the pyramid firms entailed a negotiation of the temporalities of life and finance. The book looks into the buying, selling, and desiring of homes in conjunction with participating at the pyramid firms. A number of investors sold their recently privatized apartments (formerly state-owned) in order to invest at the firms. At the same time, most investors I interviewed, when asked what they planned to do with their returns, expressed their desire to buy a new home. The new homes were often imagined as an accelerated path towards a capitalist and European modernity. Those who had lost their homes to the schemes lamented their “lagging behind” this imagined trajectory. Housing, thus, became a site for materializing such temporal aspirations and for witnessing their failure. </p><p>By examining the materialities, socialities, and temporalities of the speculative schemes, <i>Tales from Albarado</i> identifies economic practices and institutions as well as desires and aspirations that have endured throughout the three decades of neoliberal transformations in Albania. Strategies of value conversion, a propensity for accessing multiple regimes of value, intertwining finance and social ties, desires for an accelerated European modernity—these are all well-established social and financial institutions that make up the economic and social life in Albania. They are also practices and institutions that mirror the experiences of myriads of people whose lives are shaped by similar forms of geopolitical marginality and economic instability. These intertwined economies and socialities in contemporary Albania thus speak more broadly to the making of neoliberal economies at the margins.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>References</b></p><p>Maurer, Bill, Musaraj, Smoki and Small, Ivan V. eds., 2018. <a href="https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/MaurerMoney" target="_blank"><i>Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion, and Design</i></a>. Berghahn Books.</p><p><br /></p><p><i>Smoki Musaraj is associate professor of anthropology and director of the <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/cas/law-center" target="_blank">Center for Law, Justice, and Culture</a> at Ohio University. </i></p><div><br /></div>IMTFIhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06012960189034696186noreply@blogger.com0