Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Data Economy and the Practice of Everyday Life

移动货币是一个快速增长的全球现象，每天处理13亿美元，注册用户近10亿，全球同比爆炸性增长20%。在这个系统中，信贷通过在线平台提供--通常不受监管--并通过移动货币进行分配。在交易所严重依赖密切社会关系的经济体中，这种非个人化和社会隐形的数字信贷来源代表着与社会秩序基础的彻底决裂。我们应该如何理解数字金融循环与家庭经济的这个结合点？在密集的社会协商经济关系网络中，个人如何采用、避免或使用数字信用？反过来，引入技术官僚的债务和信贷关系如何重塑现有的社会和经济关系？这种技术扩张通常以民主化的全球经济准入为框架，并得到了研究的支持，这些研究考察了金融技术干预对收入等标准经济指标的影响。尽管这类研究具有经验价值，但它们忽略了平凡的技术干预如何可能产生更广泛的社会和政治后果的问题。这个项目考察了新的数字基础设施：1)提供了重新安排市场上现有的交换和谈判关系的机会；2)支持或限制了市场上的估值过程，从而创造了价值。这种以过程为导向的方法不仅揭示了当前的事态发展，也揭示了以技术为中介的经济未来可能是什么样子。按照20世纪道路基础设施仍在塑造集体生活的方式，今天如何铺设数字金融基础设施可能会产生深远的影响。该项目提供了一个研究这种未来的早期机会，从而为寻求帮助社会适应这一重要技术变革的政策制定者提供指导。这个项目研究了在蓬勃发展的家庭和个人金融数字市场中改变个人信用和债务关系的案例。该项目采用了一种混合的方法，依次使用具有全国代表性的调查数据、定性访谈和民族志观察：1)建立关于数字经济现状的统计结果，2)检查文化叙事如何框架数字金融的部署和采用，3)提供关于数字金融基础设施如何在日常生活中重新排序交换的过程性描述。该项目与当地研究机构合作，首先从1800名具有全国代表性的智能手机用户样本中收集社会和经济行为的自我报告数据，以及移动货币交易日志等数字痕迹数据。该项目使用回归分析和计算聚类分析来确定数字金融使用模式的关键变化轴。然后，该项目对新经济的开发者和用户进行了多达100次半结构化采访，以考察不同的文化叙事和做法如何影响数字金融的设计和融入日常生活。最后，该项目在关键的城市和城市周边地点进行人种学观察，以收集人们生活的证据。该项目的发现将有助于在不断变化的全球经济背景下，关于金融市场运作和技术变革对交换关系的影响的社会学理论。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Mobile money is a fast growing global phenomenon with $1.3 billion processed daily, nearly 1 billion registered users, and explosive 20% year-on-year global growth. In this system, credit is offered through online platforms—often unregulated— and distributed via mobile money. In economies where exchange leans heavily on close social ties, such impersonal and socially invisible sources of digital credit represent a radical break with the bases of social order. How should we understand this juncture of digital financial circuits with household economies? How do individuals come to adopt, avoid, or use digital credit amidst a dense network of socially negotiated economic relations? And, in turn, how does the introduction of technocratic relations of debt and credit reshape existing social and economic relations? This technological expansion is often framed in terms of democratized access to the global economy, and is supported by research that examines the effect of financial-technology interventions on standard economic measures such as income. While empirically valuable, such research neglects questions of how mundane technological interventions may have broader social and political consequences. This project examines how new digital infrastructures: 1) present occasions to re-arrange existing relations of exchange and negotiation in the market; and 2) enable or constrain processes of valuation, and therefore value creation, in the market. This process-oriented approach sheds light not only on current developments but also on what a technologically-mediated economic future may look like. In the way that 20th century road infrastructure still shapes collective life, how digital financial infrastructures are laid down today is likely to have far-reaching consequences. This project presents an early opportunity to examine such futures, thus providing guidance for policy-makers looking to help societies adapt to this important technological change. This project studies the case of changing relations of personal credit and debt amidst a booming digital market for household and personal finance. The project adopts a mixed methods approach using nationally representative survey data, qualitative interviews, and ethnographic observation in sequence to: 1) establish statistical findings about the current state of the digital economy, 2) examine how cultural narratives frame the deployment and adoption of digital finance, and 3) offer a processual account of how digital finance infrastructure re-orders exchange in everyday life. In partnership with local research organizations, the project first collects both self-reported data on social and economic behavior as well as digital trace data such as mobile money transaction logs from a nationally representative sample of 1,800 smartphone users. The project uses regression analysis and computational cluster analysis to identify key axes of variation along which the use of digital finance is patterned. The project then conducts up to 100 semi-structured interviews with developers and users of the new economy to examine how different cultural narratives and practices shape how digital finance is both designed and integrated into everyday life. Finally, the project conducts ethnographic observations in key urban and peri-urban sites to gather the evidence of people’s lives. Findings from the project will contribute to sociological theories regarding the operation of financial markets and the effects of technological change on exchange relationships within the context of a changing global economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.