Overview

Technology is rapidly changing the way we think about money. Digital payment has been slow to take off in the United States but is displacing cash in countries as diverse as China, Kenya, and Sweden. In Reimagining Money, Sibel Kusimba describes the rise of M-Pesa, and offers a rich portrait of how this technology changes the economic and social landscape, allowing users to create webs of relationships as they exchange, pool, borrow, lend, and share digital money in user-built networks. These networks, Kusimba argues, will shape the future of financial technologies and their impact on poverty, inclusion, and empowerment. She describes how urban and transnational migrants maintain a presence in rural areas through money gifts; how families use crowdfunding software to assemble donations for emergency medical care; and how new financial groups invest in real estate and fund weddings. The author presents fascinating accounts that challenge accepted wisdom by examining the notion of money as wealth-in-people-an idea long-cultivated in sub-Saharan Africa and now brought to bear on the digital age with homegrown financial technologies such as digital money transfer, digital microloans, and crowdfunding. The book concludes by proposing a new theory of money that can be applied to designing better financial technologies in the future.

Full Product Details

9781503613515

Table of Contents

Reviews

A remarkable, deeply researched book. Kusimba gifts readers with a vivid account of the world of money and technology, beautifully revealing how the everyday use, and sometimes non-use, of M-Pesa weaves monetary exchanges inside webs of relationships. -- Nina Bandelj, University of California * Irvine * Kusimba provides a rich, thought-provoking narrative that vividly captures the lived experiences and contexts of the Kenyan people. Reimagining Money has huge potential in guiding studies in other fields, especially community development. This is truly a masterpiece. -- Milcah Mulu-Mutuku * Egerton University * Mobile money articulates Kenyans to multiple forms and forces of value in global and local economies. In this provocative, nuanced ethnography, Sibel Kusimba asks the question: can money be designed for the 'wealth-in-people' that sustains lives and livelihoods in an ever-more precarious world? -- William Maurer * University of California, Irvine *

Author Information

Sibel Kusimba has conducted over twenty years of ethnographic research and archaeological fieldwork in Kenya. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida and is the author of African Foragers (2003).

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