Workshop: Exploring Cre-debt: Ethnographic Perspectives, New Economic Theory and Contemporary Cashlessness

The workshop, hosted at the Department of Anthropology, provided a cross-institutional platform for advancing empirical approaches on the global financial turn towards cashless economies. Anthropologists, along with economists and geographers, presented research exploring the impact of digital financial technologies and the reduced use of cash, on daily lives, livelihoods, and everyday moralities. The workshop presentations engaged with various socio-economic challenges and opportunities brought about by new monies and formal credit; as coins, notes, and informal financial transactions, are being replaced with mobile payments, credit and debit cards, digital money transfers, virtual currencies, and biometric technologies. The workshop was funded by a large grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark and a workshop series grant from the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS).

The workshop was held in connection with a new research project: ‘After money, what is debt?: Indebted urban poor households in emerging cashless economies’ led by Associate Professor Atreyee Sen, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. The project investigates multiple links between urban poverty, debt, and cashlessness, focusing on the implications of emerging cashless regimes in modernizing cities on cash-reliant poor households in India, Denmark/Romania, and Brazil.