Bill Maurer
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William M. Maurer (born March 31, 1968) is an American academic scholar of
legal Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
and
economic An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavi ...
. He currently serves as the dean of the School of Social Sciences at the
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 graduate and pr ...
. He has conducted research on
money Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as ...
,
finance Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
,
economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...
, and
law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
, including the off-shore financial services industry in the
Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
,
alternative currencies A complementary currency is a currency or medium of exchange that is not necessarily a national currency, but that is thought of as supplementing or complementing national currencies. Complementary currencies are usually not legal tender and thei ...
,
Islamic finance Islamic banking, Islamic finance ( ar, مصرفية إسلامية), or Sharia-compliant finance is banking or financing activity that complies with Sharia (Islamic law) and its practical application through the development of Islamic economics ...
,
mobile money A mobile payment, also referred to as mobile money, mobile money transfer and mobile wallet, is any of various payment processing services operated under financial regulations and performed from or via a mobile device, as the cardinal class of d ...
, and traditional and emerging
payment A payment is the voluntary tender of money or its equivalent or of things of value by one party (such as a person or company) to another in exchange for goods, or services provided by them, or to fulfill a legal obligation. The party making the p ...
technologies, as well as
cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank A bank is a financial i ...
like
Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...
and related
blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...
technologies. He has been called the “doyen” of the subfield of the anthropology of finance. Maurer is also the founding director of the Institute for Money Technology and Financial Inclusion, a research institute at UC Irvine funded by the
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was l ...
, and a fellow of the Filene Research Institute. He was previously the founding co-director of the Intel Science and Technology Center in Social Computing, also at UCI.


Career

Maurer received his BA from
Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely follo ...
and, in 1994, his PhD in anthropology from
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
. He joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine in 1996. He was chair of the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine from 2005 to 2011 and was associate dean for research and graduate studies in the social sciences from 2011-13. He was appointed Dean of the School of Social Sciences in July 2013. From 2007-09, Maurer was President of the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology. Maurer is currently associate editor of the ''Journal of Cultural Economy'' and serves as a member of the editorial boards of the ''Journal of Islamic Accounting and Business Research'', ''Cultural Anthropology'', ''Cultural Critique'', and ''PoLAR: The Political and Legal Anthropology Review''. In 2015, he was appointed to the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences of the
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
. He is the recipient of four major National Science Foundation research grants on topics ranging from the cultures of international finance to mobile money and private digital currencies. In 2012, Maurer consulted on the renovation of the Citi Money Gallery at the
British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
. In 2015, he was invited to provide input with 14 other academics to the
United States Department of the Treasury The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States, where it serves as an executive department. The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and t ...
on the redesign of the US$10 bill. In 2016, Maurer was named a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
for noteworthy advances in the fields of law and economic anthropology, specifically in banking and the meaning of money in different cultures.


Research

Maurer’s research encompasses ethnographic and historical work on the Caribbean offshore
tax haven A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or n ...
economy, specifically in the
British Virgin Islands ) , anthem = "God Save the King" , song_type = Territorial song , song = "Oh, Beautiful Virgin Islands" , image_map = File:British Virgin Islands on the globe (Americas centered).svg , map_caption = , mapsize = 290px , image_map2 = Brit ...
, Islamic banking and alternative currencies, and the material technologies and cultural practices money, finance, and law. Maurer’s first book ''Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands'' shows how the offshore tax haven economy was not a foreign imposition, but rather grew out of local practices of
kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
and land ownership and was shaped by local conflicts around
class Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differentl ...
and
race Race, RACE or "The Race" may refer to: * Race (biology), an informal taxonomic classification within a species, generally within a sub-species * Race (human categorization), classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, and/or s ...
. This work highlights the role of colonial legal regimes and national sovereignty claims in the uneven geography of global finance. Maurer’s second book ''Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason'' compares global Islamic banking and finance with the local and alternative currency movement. Maurer’s work on money, especially his widely cited survey of the anthropology of money, challenges assumptions about money’s effects on social life and calls for a shift in focus away from money’s abstract meanings as a tool for producing equivalence and towards its diverse uses and practices, especially in settings that are not strictly market-based. More recently, Maurer has studied the cultural and political implications of mobile and digital technologies, especially cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.


Publications

Maurer is the author of four books, the editor or co-editor of seven collections, and the author of numerous journal articles, book chapters, reviews, working papers, and other publications. His book ''Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason'' received the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing in 2005. He is the Editor of the forthcoming 6-volume series from Bloomsbury Press on ''A Cultural History of Money''.


Books

* ''Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law, and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007) * ''Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason'' (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005) * ''Pious Property: Islamic Mortgages in the United States'' (New York: Russell Sage Press, 2006) * ''How Would You Like to Pay? How Technology is Changing the Future of Money'' (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015)


Selected Edited Collections

* ''Gender Matters: Re-Reading Michelle Z. Rosaldo'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) (with Alejandro Lugo) * ''Globalization Under Construction: Governmentality, Law, and Identity'' (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003) (with Richard W. Perry) * ''Accelerating Possession: Global Futures of Property and Personhood'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006) (with Gabriele Schwab) * ''Data, Now Bigger and Better!'' (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press and the University of Chicago Press, 2015) (with Tom Boellstorff) * ''Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff'' (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2017) (with Lana Swartz) * ''Money at the Margins: Global Perspectives on Technology, Financial Inclusion and Design'' (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Press, 2018) (with Smoki Musaraj and Ivan Small)


Selected articles

* Sanctioned Identities: Legal Constructions of Modern Personhood. ''Identities'' 2(1&2): 1-27, 1995. (with Jane Collier and Liliana Suarez-Navaz) * A Fish Story: Rethinking Globalization on Virgin Gorda. ''American Ethnologist'' 27(3): 670-701, 2000. * Repressed Futures: Financial Derivatives’ Theological Unconscious. ''Economy and Society'' 31(1): 15-36, 2002. * Anthropological and Accounting Knowledge in Islamic Banking and Finance: Rethinking Critical Accounts. ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' 8(4): 645-667, 2002. * In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization. ''Law and Social Inquiry'' 27(4): 701-742, 2002. (With Susan Coutin and Barbara Yngvesson) * Uncanny Exchanges: The Possibilities and Failures of “Making Change” with Alternative Monetary Forms. ''Environment and Planning D: Society and Space'' 21(3): 317-340, 2003. * Due Diligence and “Reasonable Man,” Offshore. ''Cultural Anthropology'' 20(4): 474-505, 2005. * The Anthropology of Money. ''Annual Reviews in Anthropology'' 35: 15-36, 2006.
Finance 2.0
In ''A Handbook of Economic Anthropology, Second Edition'', ed. James G. Carrier. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2012. * An Emerging Platform: From Money Transfer System to Mobile Money Ecosystem. ''Innovations'' 6(4):49-64, 2012. (With Jake Kendall, Philip Machoka, and Clara Veniard) * Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space. ''Journal of Development Studies'' 48(5): 589-604, 2012. * Payment: Forms and Functions of Value Transfer in Contemporary Society. ''Cambridge Anthropology'' 30(2):15-35, 2012. * ‘Bridges to Cash‘: Channelling Agency in Mobile Money. ''Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute'' 19(1): 52-74, 2013. (with Taylor C. Nelms and Stephen C. Rea) * ‘When Perhaps the Real Problem is Money Itself!’ The Practical Materiality of Bitcoin. ''Social Semiotics'' 23(2): 261-277, 2013. (With Taylor C. Nelms and Lana Swartz)
Ledgers and Law in the Blockchain
King's Review, 2015. (With Quinn I. DuPont) * Social Payments: Innovation, Trust, Bitcoin, and the Sharing Economy. ''Theory, Culture & Society'' 35(3):13-33, 2017. (with the Future of Money Research Collaborative)
Blockchains Are a Diamond's Best Friend
In ''Money Talks: Explaining How Money Really Works'', ed. Nina Bandelj, Frederick F. Wherry, Viviana A. Zelizer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.


References


External links

* Bill Maurer'
faculty website

Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
* Maurer's research on emerging forms of payment with th
Future of Money Research Collaborative

Interview
with Maurer describing his past and present research
Interview
between Maurer and archaeologist
Denise Schmandt-Besserat Denise Schmandt-Besserat (born August 10, 1933 in Ay, Marne, France) is a French-American archaeologist and retired professor of art and archaeology of the ancient Near East. She spent much of her professional career as a professor at the Univer ...
on tokens and the origins of accounting
Video
of Maurer delivering a lecture on blockchain at Aarhus University in February 2016
"Money talks: Has money really changed from shells to digital apps? Underneath, money is always a token of our social relations"

"The future of money-like things: Look at the infrastructure that makes money move to understand the future of monetary forms like Bitcoin"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maurer, Bill 1968 births Living people University of California, Irvine faculty American anthropologists American LGBT scientists American university and college faculty deans Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Stanford University alumni Vassar College alumni Academic journal editors 21st-century American male writers 21st-century LGBT people