I am a cultural anthropologist specializing in economic and legal anthropology. My research focusses on theories of money and value; informal economies; speculative bubbles; anthropology of corruption and the rule of law; housing; migration and remittances; postsocialist transformations; and societies of the Mediterranean.
One area of focus of my research is the anthropology of money and finance at the margins of global capitalism. I explore financial practices that do not fit the textbook definitions of finance but that, nonetheless, proliferate within neoliberal economic regimes. My book entitled, Tales from Albarado: Ponzi Logics of Accumulation in Postsocialist Albania, (Cornell 2020) explores how the Ponzi schemes of 1990s Albania were made possible by legal institutions, social networks, and intersecting formal and informal economic regimes. Read more about Tales of Albarado here.
The book Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Inclusion and Design, which I co-edited with Bill Maurer and Ivan Small, (Berghahn 2018), explores emerging forms of monetary technologies–from digital cash grants to mobile money–that have proliferated around the global South.
Another area of focus of my research is the anthropology of corruption. I look into the discourses, measurements, and judicial reforms that target corruption in postsocialist contexts. I have published various chapters and articles on this topic, including “Corruption, Right On! Hidden Cameras, Satire and Intimacies of Anti-corruption” in the special issue on the Anthropology of Corruption in Current Anthropology.
See here recent publications, blog posts, and podcasts.
Contact: musaraj[at]ohio.edu