Doctoral Dissertation Research: Moral and Ethical Understandings of Risk, Investment and Financial Loss Following Financial Crises

金融泡沫以其对社区的持续社会经济影响而闻名。为了防止泡沫破裂，并尽量减少泡沫破裂造成的损害，社会科学家试图了解促使假设不寻常风险的道德和伦理因素，以及偿还债务的倾向。这个项目，培训研究生如何进行严格的，以科学为基础的实地考察，询问那些受金融危机影响的人如何在他们的经济复苏努力中对风险，投资和财务损失进行道德和伦理意识。这项研究将产生对评估和解决金融危机至关重要的数据。安德鲁·哈克斯比在密歇根大学安阿伯分校的托马斯·伯克博士的监督下，将探讨金融泡沫的崩溃如何影响人们对道德、荣誉和家庭和社区内亲属关系的理解。 该研究试图通过探索2007年至2011年尼泊尔加德满都的房地产泡沫破裂来理解这种关系，当时该市的许多家庭为了参与蓬勃发展的真实的房地产市场而承担了巨额债务。这项研究在加德满都进行，这是一个适当的社会实验室，因为它在过去十年中经历了快速的城市发展，促进了家庭的各种信贷选择。家庭通常对其所有成员的债务负责，但债权人并不总是同意他们认为谁是特定家庭的一部分，甚至是什么构成了面临违约的家庭的负责任行为。因此，违约家庭必须在对家庭的矛盾理解和对负责任行为的看法之间导航。然而，这些差异可能是一个布恩，也可能是一个负担。通过在债权人之间转移债务，在亲属之间转移资产，家庭有可能改善其财务状况，即使只是暂时的。因此，该项目研究了这些家庭如何能够操纵自己的方式实现财务稳定，假设一个家庭成功做到这一点的能力取决于他们是否能够向债权人展示自己的荣誉。这项研究将依靠民族志方法（参与观察精心挑选的线人，半结构化的采访，和金融日记）和社会空间映射的地方信贷市场和家庭财务决策结构。通过这种方式，这个项目不仅探讨了加德满都的债务和家庭，还探讨了房地产泡沫如何改变文化特定的价值观。研究结果将进一步探讨人类学的债务和道德，以及了解的理由通知家庭财务决策。

Financial bubbles are known for the sustained socioeconomic impacts that they can have on communities. In an attempt to prevent them as well as minimize the damage that the bursting of such bubbles cause, social scientists have attempted to understand the moral and ethical factors that motivate the assumption of unusual risks, as well as propensities for the repayment of debt. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, empirically-grounded scientific fieldwork, asks how those impacted by financial crises make moral and ethical sense of risk, investment, and financial loss in their economic recovery efforts. The research will produce data important in the evaluation and resolution of financial crises. Andrew Haxby, under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Fricke of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, will explore how the collapse of financial bubbles influence understandings of morality, honor and kinship within their homes and communities. The research seeks to understand this relationship by exploring a housing bubble collapse in Kathmandu, Nepal from 2007 to 2011, when numerous families in the city assumed large debts in order to participate in the booming real estate market. The research takes place in Kathmandu, which is an appropriate social laboratory because it has undergone rapid urban development in the last decade, prompting various credit options for households. Families are commonly held responsible for the debts of all their members, yet creditors do not always agree on who they consider to be part of a given family, or even what constitutes responsible behavior for households facing default. Consequently, families in default must navigate between contradictory understandings of households and perceptions of responsible behavior. Yet these differences can be a boon as well as a burden. By moving their debt between creditors, and their assets between kin, families make it possible to improve their financial position, even if only temporarily. Thus, the project examines how these families are able to maneuver their way towards financial stability, hypothesizing that a family's ability to do this successfully hinges on whether or not they are able to present themselves as honorable to their creditors. The research will rely on ethnographic methods (participant observation of carefully selected informants, semi-structured interviews, and financial diaries) and socio-spatial mappings of local credit markets and household financial decision-making structures. In this way, not only does this project explore debt and families in Kathmandu, it also explores how a housing bubble changes culturally specific values. The research findings will further discussions on the anthropology of debt and ethics as well as understanding the rationales informing household financial decision-making.