Ann Medina
Jamie Luong
Within our society today, there are many ways to make a payment. Purchases are made during every moment of the day and many have opted for an alternative solution to paying for goods and services other than cash, such as with credit and debit cards. Both have many meanings within our society, and have different positive and negative connotations that are based on the influences of age and class. The existence of debit and credit cards has made a definite impact within our society economically, socially, and politically. These cards are often a substitute for cash. They have quickly become widespread all around the world. Click here to learn more about people’s everyday experiences of and ideas about the differences between credit cards and debit cards.
1 comment:
Every day many of us use credit and debit cards to make purchases. And yet there is so little academic research on people's everyday, folk understandings of these technologies. Market analysts have found interesting differences based on age in the use of credit vs debit cards (with younger people preferring debit cards). But they have not explored - as the students here have - people's folk consciousness of what these products are, how they work... and how they can get people into trouble! My colleague at Intel, Scott Mainwaring, was absolutely fascinated by the students' presentation on this project during our class. He thinks that studies of people's understandings (and mis-understandings) of credit and debit cards is going to be an important area for future research as financial services merge with information and communications technologies, and I agree. One of the graduate students in our program, Khaldun Bshara, is working on a paper about the introduction of credit cards -- and the disciplining power of debt -- in the Palestinian territories. He finds that while debt disciplines, it also helps foster new relationships as people share their cards with one another and advertise their worldliness their the display, if not the actual use, of the card. In all, a fascinating paper on a very important topic.
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