Money for Money and the study thereof.

Bill Maurer, of Mutual Life, Limited fame will lead a new institute at University of California, Irvine called the The Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion which has been funded in part by a $1.7 million grant from the Gates foundation. A recent workshop launched the whole thing, with lots of interesting looking panels, and some papers and pointers to more resources. For those interested in the anthropology of money, or for those inerested in anthropologists creating new kinds of dialogue with professionals in finance and development, it looks like it will be a pretty fascinating project.

Christopher Kelty does anthropological and historical research on science and technology, free and open source software, intellectual property and open access, the history of software, and the ethics and politics of nanotechnology. He also teaches classes about all of these things. From 2001 to 2008 he was assistant professor of anthropology at Rice University, in Houston, TX. He know teaches at UCLA and splits his time between the Information Studies department, the Anthropology Department and the Center for Society and Genetics.