Introduction: infrastructure, technology, digitalization

Douglas R. Holmes

A chapter in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 250-252 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The six entries in this section are focused on infrastructure, technology and digitalization in the Netherlands, the U.S, Sweden, Brazil, and international political relations. The entries reveal what economic anthropology has to offer to our understanding of new infrastructures and technologies. The Port of Rotterdam, one of the most important seaports in the world, is the nexus of global trade and cutting edge technological developments that shape the inequalities in the city. U.S. private equity is shown to be a form of finance that establishes new forms of value and drives innovation but also is a destructive force in a wide range of social and public domains. Experiments with digital money and cryptocurrencies scrutinize assumptions about how money relies on both market and state, and if money can be a public good and that expresses human values. The film set as a ‘mobile village’ shows how artistic achievements are animated by a technologically sophisticated financial world and raises fundamental questions about the production of commodities and art. Urban design and infrastructure, with a focus on housing and real estate capitalism, question the infrastructures and financial instruments that reinforce economic and racial inequalities but also become contested through a discourse of Rights to the City. Scrutinizing payment systems as decisive technologies take us to the heart of international and national political power. Access to payment systems and settlement technologies play an important part in sanction regimes and the ability of the state to control the national economy. These entries show important new directions in economic anthropology's approach to the uncertainties of future technologies.

Keywords: State; Finance; Creativity; Design; Uncertain futures; Public; Private (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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