Anthropology of Fintech and climate insurance

After conducting extensive fieldwork in Paraguay pre-COVID, this year I wrapped up my ARC DECRA fellowship and published some of the early findings of the project.

After many years of collaborating with Dr. Sohini Kar at the London School of Economics, we published a major article in the journal Current Anthropology on “Sub-prime Empire: on the in-betweenness of finance,” including critical commentaries from field-leading scholars in economic anthropology. Significant findings from the project will also appear in Cultural Anthropology in my open access article on “Weedy Finance: weather insurance and parametric life on unstable ground.” The policy implications of microinsurance and social welfare for low-income communities are also explored in Development and Change, in my article on “‘Risky Data’ for inclusive microinsurance infrastructures.”

My research suggests that detailed on-the-ground perspectives on how financial systems impact our everyday lives can influence major debates about anthropological theories of value while at the same time making important contributions to public policy and financial regulation. This is especially important when we consider how financial services are adapting to climate change – such as insurance against extreme weather.

These research advances would not be possible without the intense engagement with a global network of scholars working on anthropology of finance. Perhaps this is the silver lining of our Zoom-mediated lives!

The Financial Frontiers group is an international research collaboration that has met monthly to workshop work in progress. I also have presented my findings to highly engaged research communities, including the Cambridge Senior Research Seminar, the economic anthropology working group at the University of San Martin in Buenos Aires, and the anthropology department at Chinese University Hong Kong. And we can do it all without jet-lag!

You can currently download “Sub-Prime Empire: On the In-Betweenness of Finance” for free at: https://doi.org/10.1086/716066

Caroline E. Schuster, Senior Lecturer

SOAA Discipline: Anthropology