Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Shifting Measures: The Transformation of Money Regimes in Contemporary Romania

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This dissertation research project, by a graduate student in anthropology, analyzes the change from socialism to capitalism in contemporary Romania as the transformation of a money regime. Through twelve months of ethnographic research in Bucharest at two organizations of investors and during court trials in which they take part, this project explores the contentions generated by the collapse of two controversial mutual funds. Research methods include observation and analysis of weekly meetings of the investor associations, surveys to establish demographic chracteristics of the investors, analysis of court and archival records, and extended ethnography of court sessions. The project will address questions such as: What is money in postsocialism and how does it differ from socialist money? What are the local understandings of money and values? What can the changing relationships between money and values indicate about the broader socio-political transformations in Eastern Europe? Analyzing the concomitant reorganization of money, morality and social relations, this project goes beyond economic theory by examining the role of money in catalyzing the process of social change and the articulation of a new social order in postsocialist Romania. In this sense, it draws on and contributes to several subfields in social science and public policy: the anthropology of money, processual approaches to law and litigation, the sociology of financial markets, and the articulations between capitalist and post-socialist economies. While the result of this research will be an ethnography of money in postsocialist Romania, its larger contribution will be an analytical framework that can be relevant for understanding the financial markets and economic change in other formerly socialist countries.