Informal Currencies as a Response to Economic Crisis

Cuny Graduate School University Center, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Monetary unions are created to foster political, social, and economic integration among a group of member states by facilitating the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital. The research supported by this award asks, What happens when one of the monetary union's member nations faces economic crisis and its citizens respond in part by establishing monetary systems of their own? Are they just demonstrating human resiliency and adaptability? Or are they also challenging the very idea of having a formal shared market and associated currency that do not correspond to the nation with which people identify? There is now a global movement towards greater economic integration, so these are important questions for all of us. City University of New York doctoral student, Helen Panagiotopoulos, with the supervision of Dr. Ida Susser, will address these questions through 15 months of ethnographic research in Greece. Greece is an appropriate site for the research because in 2009, faced with debts it could not pay, the Greek government instituted austerity measures as a condition of obtaining outside financial assistance. The austerity measures were followed by economic depression, large increases in unemployment, and a widepsread shortage of money. In this context, people established a variety of currency alternatives to acquire the goods and services they needed to survive, without euros, the currency of their monetary union, the Eurozone. These alternative currencies include Local Exchange Trading Schemes, such as barter, time banking, and mutual credit clearing, and crypto currencies such as Bitcoin and Free Coin. The researcher will carry out research in three sites, each of which is associated with a different alternative currency system. She will collect data through extended case analysis, interviews, participant observation, archival research, text analysis and analysis of online databases. Findings from this research will improve social scientific theory of the relationship between currencies, national sovereignty, and citizen allegiance. They will also be of interest to policy makers who need to understand how currencies shape social and political life and how people understand money and value.