Friday, June 04, 2004

After a nigth out with Pablo-always a good time--talking about global finance, it occurs to me that another logical project that would have just as much of a connection between the two fields (maybe even more so) would be to talk about the debit card in the US and the way that it and the credit card have been framed in the terms of the millennial discourse of globalization ("it's everywhere you want to be...") they aren't necessarily unique in their use of this marketing, but the global reach of finance capital and the habitus created by these two instruments (both embodied in the ubiquitous "card") which helps to create both a dematerialized notion of money, reifying fictitous capital, and to instill a natural feeling to racking up tremendous debt. Viewing the change over time in advertisements for credit cards vs. the global finance regimes being implanted would be a fairly concrete project. It would also eliminate the need to discuss determination in any causal sense for both would be products of the same producers. There could be a chapter on the way that people use cards and it would be very interesting to see the generational differences between people who opened bank accounts for the first time in the 90s (and hence see debit cards and ATM cards as natural and normal) and those who were mostly writing checks for thirty or more years before that. A very good other option--which would have a much more doable research agenda within the time allowed.

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