Week 12: New Money Forms (Mobile Money and Social Relations)

The focus of both sets of readings this week is mobile money as it is used in various parts of the world (Kenya, Afghanistan, India etc). Here I two questions that I'd like us to focus on in class discussions and in the blog posts: (a) How is mobile money similar and/or different to other forms of payment (cash, electronic banking, credit cards)? (b) How is mobile money used and intertwined with social networks and relations?

Week 10: Ghosts in the Shell Game talk

Share your reflections/ thoughts on Max Woodworth's lecture on informal finance and real estate speculation in China.

Week 11: Diverse economies

What kinds of economic activities are categorized under "diverse economies" and/or "collaborative consumption"? Do do these economic activities entail different arrangement of social relations?

Ananya Roy, TEDx Talk, (Un)knowing Poverty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKASroLDF0M

Week 9: Poverty Capital

In preparation for the panel discussion, what are some of the challenges that microfinance initiatives present in the arena of international development? How is microfinance supposed to help and where does it fall short of its promisses?

Week 8 Prompt: The Queue, State Socialism and Economies of Redistribution

Now that you've all played the board game "Queue," what are some of the specific institutional advantages, constraints, or simply other forms of economic life that this economic system of redistributions generates? What is valuable in this system? How are social relations entangled/embedded in this system of exchange?

Modern Day Debtors' Prisons

This ACLU report documents the rise of modern-day debtors prisons in the US. One of the featured states is Ohio. https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf#page=6