Banking on the Market: Mobile Phones and Social Goods Provision in Haiti

Taylor, Erin B.; Horst, Heather A.

doi:10.1353/anq.2018.0026

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…His comments, moreover, betray no awareness, ironic or otherwise, of the way in which a foreign-owned telecommunications company was representing itself as an agent of national development, extending to the people financial services that the state on its own was incapable of providing. In PNG, the state-in the form of the Central Bank-instead creates a regulatory environment in which telecommunications companies, partnered with banks and supported by grants and aid from the Asian Development Bank, European Union, World Bank group and so forth, do 'social good' convincing people to improve their lives by entering the formal financial sector (see Taylor and Horst 2018).…”

Section: The Quest For Financial Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

Foster

2024

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Section: The Quest For Financial Inclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

Foster

2024

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Section: Storing Money In a Saving Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Taylor and Horst’s (2018b) study of the adoption of mobile money in Haiti adds an extra layer of complexity to understanding the relationship between mobile money, private enterprise and the state. The authors document how public trust in foreign-owned telecommunications companies operating in the region was so high that people ‘associate them with properties of religious and governance institutions’ (Taylor and Horst, 2018b: 563). They argue that although mobile network operators were ostensibly responsible for provisioning the ‘social good’ of mobile money, their rollout in fact involved extensive and ongoing interactions between the state, companies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).…”

Section: Storing Money In a Saving Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘What would happen if you can’t see your money?’: Visibility and the emergent infrastructures of digital money storage in China

McDonald

Guo

2021

New Media & Society

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This article adopts an infrastructural perspective to analyse Chinese migrant factory workers’ conceptions of and approaches towards storing money on digital payment platforms. Scholars studying infrastructural systems have emphasised that such systems generally only become visible upon breakdown. However, this article finds that during the emergence of new infrastructures for monetary storage, existing infrastructures – along with the money stored within them – also become rendered conspicuous to users. In such moments, migrant factory workers are forced to assess the differences between existing and new infrastructural systems and make careful decisions over how to store their money. We claim it is necessary to acknowledge the shifting visibility of infrastructures during occasions of systemic transformation. Doing so can help to better understand how users navigate such infrastructures in attempts to solve problems of storage, while in the process re-evaluating their relationships with a variety of entities and institutions.

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“…Rather than assume the displacement of the state by the market, public interests by private ones, I seek to demonstrate how the provisioning and uptake of mobile phones in PNG obviate the binary distinctions upon which such an assumption rests (Collier et al ; Park and Donovan ; Taylor and Horst ). I ask, then: How do citizens and consumers, states and companies (both private and state‐owned) define the terms of their obligations to each other?…”

Section: Infrastructure and The Moral Economy Of Mobile Phonesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

Foster

2020

Oceania

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Recent work in anthropology proposes that the ethnographic study of infrastructure offers a productive way to think about how states and corporations, citizens and consumers, all define their relations and obligations to each other. This article considers the politics of media infrastructure in Papua New Guinea (PNG) by tracing the moral economy of mobile phones. It focuses on (1) how mobile phone users have taken to social media to express dissatisfaction with the dominant mobile network operator, Digicel, a privately owned foreign company; and (2) how the PNG state has attempted to regulate the use of mobile phones and social media through cybercrime legislation and registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM cards). Consideration of these two issues – matters of concern that gather publics around them – enables an assessment of the promise of improved telecommunications and social media, in particular, to make government in PNG more accountable and transparent.

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Banking on the Market: Mobile Phones and Social Goods Provision in Haiti

Cited by 4 publications

References 49 publications

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

‘What would happen if you can’t see your money?’: Visibility and the emergent infrastructures of digital money storage in China

The Politics of Media Infrastructure: Mobile Phones and Emergent Forms of Public Communication in Papua New Guinea

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