Public Lecture, University of Pretoria, Tuesday 19th August, 5pm
Supriya Singh
The global South shapes the future of money
Many of the exciting changes affecting how we experience money now originate in the Global South: for example, new methods for harnessing people’s savings; widening credit and insurance; and lowering the cost of financial technologies, means of payment and money transfers. Drawing on anthropological and sociological research on money and banking across cultures, Supriya Singh argues that the meanings we attach to money will increasingly be shaped by family practices in the Global South. If personal money has so far been contained within narrow family units, these are now being widened to include extended and transnational families. The idea of money as an impersonal quantity opposed in principle to giving, sharing and caring is becoming blurred. Money has always been both personal and impersonal, but it will be more obvious in future. All of this will be enhanced by money becoming more virtual and being transmitted though complex technologies. The challenge will be to ensure that money empowers women and men to choose their own lives on a more equal basis than at present.
Supriya Singh is Professor, Sociology of Communications at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. Her latest book is Globalization and Money: A Global South Perspective (2013, Rowman & Littlefield)
This lecture (with a reception afterwards) launches a Human Economy Program workshop, ‘Money in the making of world society’, convened by Professor Keith Hart, 20-21 August 2014.