Doctoral Dissertation Research: Financial Nationalism, Banking Systems, and Citizenship: The Case of Catalan

加州大学戴维斯分校的博士生豪尔赫·努涅斯将在艾伦·克利马博士的指导下，研究文化、民族主义和银行体系改革之间的关系。这项研究将在西班牙的工业加泰罗尼亚地区进行，这是合适的，因为在2010年，为了解决2008年全球金融危机带来的流动性问题，加泰罗尼亚政府推出了一项以债券形式直接向公民出售的公共债务计划。该项目被命名为“Seny”，在加泰罗尼亚语中的意思是理智和良好的判断力，似乎是为了解决加泰罗尼亚公民长期以来为加泰罗尼亚独立而进行的政治斗争。尽管大众媒体、社会运动和政党提出了各种批评，但政府的战略是一个成功的金融运作，创造了两倍于最初报价的超额需求。本研究的目的是研究是什么让加泰罗尼亚公民在这种风险投资上下注，以及这个案例可能提供的关于全球经济中民族主义和债务改革的更普遍的教训。豪尔赫·努涅斯将在巴塞罗那、塔拉戈纳、赫罗纳以及法属加泰罗尼亚地区进行实地考察。他将采用民族志方法的组合，包括深入访谈，焦点小组和参与者观察，以收集关键行为者，如公务员，金融专家和公民投资者之间的经验数据。 该项目将有助于理解欧元区主权债务危机后出现的金融民族主义形式。通过调查金融系统，揭示在加泰罗尼亚的民族主义问题，本研究希望产生新的概念工具，看看公民身份，民族主义和银行系统的文化表达。这项研究还将增加有关区域货币统一时代金融一体化进程的经验信息。资助这项研究支持研究生的教育。

University of California-Davis doctoral student Jorge Nunez, supervised by Dr. Alan Klima, will undertake research on the relationship between culture, nationalism, and banking system reform. The research will be conducted in the industrial Catalonia region of Spain, which is appropriate because in 2010, with the aim of solving liquidity problems derived from the 2008 global financial crises, the Generalitat of Catalonia launched a public debt package sold directly to citizens in the form of bonds. The project was named "Seny," which means sanity and good judgment in Catalan and appeared to address Catalan citizens active in a long-standing political struggle for Catalonia independence. Despite various critiques coming from mass media, social movements and political parties, the Generalitat's strategy was a successful financial operation creating an over-demand twice the size of the initial offer. The objective of this research is to study what made Catalan citizens wager on this risky investment and what more general lessons this case might offer about nationalism and debt reform in the global economy.Jorge Nunez will conduct fieldwork in Barcelona, Tarragona, and Girona as well as the French Catalan region. He will employ a combination of ethnographic methods including in-depth interviews, focus groups and participant observation in order to gather empirical data amongst key actors, such as public servants, financial experts, and citizen investors. This project will contribute to the understanding of emerging forms of financial nationalism in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis in the Euro zone. By investigating the financial system to shed light into the issue of nationalism in Catalonia, this study hopes to produce new conceptual tools to look at the cultural articulations of citizenship, nationalism and the banking system. This research will also add empirical information about processes of financial integration in an era of regional monetary unification. Funding this research supports the education of a graduate student.