Doctoral Dissertation Research: Technologies of Transaction in Moral Economic Framework

这个博士论文项目调查了通常在传统金融领域之外运营的行业之间的合作。它侧重于这些行业遇到的财务障碍，以及非传统行业之间的联盟如何使这些障碍得以克服。具体地说，这项研究利用语言和文化人类学的方法，考察了数字货币在促进被边缘化的工人进入金融市场方面发挥的作用，以及哪些信仰和经历最直接地塑造了这些交易空间内的道德和经济价值观念。研究成果将广泛传播给相关领域的专业人员、政策制定者和研究人员，并将包括支持边缘化社区福祉的公共宣传努力。此外，这项研究还有助于培养一名在美国的研究生。通过在公司办公室和更广泛的经济边缘个人社区内进行面对面和数字人种学实地调查，以及符号学、社会网络和其他数据分析方法的结合，该项目审查了这种合作的经济、政治和伦理动机及其物质和象征影响。这位研究人员将进行数字档案研究，追踪影响金融行业利润率的金融和道德话语，并对其他金融交易形式的用户进行采访。这项研究建立在多部人类学文献的基础上，为道德、货币和意义创造实践如何在创造和识别价值方面相互作用提供了一个新的视角。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation project investigates collaboration between industries that typically operate outside the sphere of traditional finance. It focuses on the financial obstacles encountered by these industries, as well as how alliances among non-traditional industries allow these to be overcome. Specifically, using linguistic and cultural anthropological approaches, the research examines what role digital currency plays in facilitating financial market access among marginalized workers, as well as what beliefs and experiences most directly shape moral and economic notions of value within these transactional spaces. Research findings will be broadly disseminated to professionals, policy makers, and researchers in relevant fields and will include public outreach efforts to support the well-being of marginalized communities. Additionally, the research contributes to the training of a U.S.-based graduate student. Through a combination of in-person and digital ethnographic fieldwork at corporate offices and within the broader community of financially marginal individuals, as well as semiotic, social network, and other methods of data analysis, the project examines the economic, political and ethical motivations of this collaboration as well as its material and symbolic impacts. The researcher will conduct digital archival research to trace the financial and moral discourses that have shaped the margins of the finance industry and conduct interviews with users of alternate forms of financial transaction. The research builds on multiple anthropological literatures to provide a fresh perspective on how moral, monetary, and meaning-making practices interact in the creation and discernment of value.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.