The theories behind the thinking

Anette Broløs, Erin B. Taylor, Jillet Sarah Sam and Shriram Venkatraman

Chapter 2 in Digital Human Finance, 2026, pp 21-40 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter presents a comprehensive human-centred, networked analytical framework for understanding DFS, challenging technological determinism in financial innovation discourse. Drawing on classical theoretical foundations from Simmel, Mauss and Bourdieu alongside contemporary scholarship by Zelizer, Hart, Graeber and Maurer, we demonstrate that value and trust in DFS are produced relationally rather than technologically. The chapter examines how DFS intersect with gendered care economies, reproduce and redress inequalities, and traverse mobile-internet infrastructures linking local practices to global capital flows. Employing Tsing's concept of friction, we explore how global DFS platforms encounter diverse local cultural practices and regulatory constraints. Through an illustrative analysis of the fictional Kawumba Village, we advance a networked approach positioning humans as central organizing nodes. This framework transcends binary distinctions between global/local, social/technical and formal/informal financial systems, emphasizing the relational co-creation of DFS through human agency, technological affordances and institutional mediations.

Keywords: Friction; Gendered Care Economies; Institutional Mediations; Social Networks; Relational Work (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035344925
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