A street market in Port-au-Prince. Photo taken by Erin Taylor.Crisis is often linked to reductions in circulation of one sort or another. Economic crisis, such as the GFC, involves the slowing down of circulation of monetary value. Political crises, such as the recent shutdown of the US congress, see procedures of governance and statehood come to a halt. And human crises often prompt changes in circulation, such as displacement due to a natural disaster, or long stays in refugee camps.In times of crisis, then, things that compel circulation are especially useful. Bailouts, negotiations, passports, and buses are all mobilizing agents that can help get things moving along desirable paths.Mobile phones and cash are two particularly powerful mobilizing agents. Not only do they move themselves, they help other things overcome crucial barriers to circulation. Mobile phones permit instant communication and coordination of the movement of people, commodities, and cash. Cash simplifies the process of transferring ownership of goods by making everything quantifiable and fungible. Both the mobile phone and cash store and transfer value, increasing control and mitigating risk for the people who hold them.Read the rest of this story on the IMTFI Blog.Author informationErin TaylorPost Doctoral Research Fellow, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, University of Lisbon at Research Fellow, Digital Ethnography Research CentreErin originally studied fine art, but she defected to anthropology when she realised that she was far better at deploying a pen for writing than for drawing. She is a cultural anthropologist who is currently living in Lisbon, Portugal, where she has a full-time research position at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais (ICS).TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedInOriginal article: Cash in crisis: Mobilizing agents in post-earthquake Haiti©2014 Erin B. Taylor. All Rights Reserved.
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