| dc.description.abstract | The busrt of the bubble has given momentum to the search of escape routes from the current transnational financial system and its underlying principles. For the past century, The transnational financial system has relied heavily on currency exchange, security backed loans, stocks and shares - all operated through banks, investment agencies, insurance brokers and stock markets. This global financial architecture centred on monetray values. It strived for financial wealth and achieved it for few out of many. This study shows that the practice of finance can create a wealth of a different - a scoial- nature. Applying an ethnographic approach to financial practices, this study tries to uncover how the sociocultural aspects of finance practiced among the poor rural women in Sri Lanka lead to the creation of social wealth beyond financial wealth. It discovers how finance is critical to such communities becauise it is creating wealth beyond financial measurement. Finance comes to Sinalhese women's everyday lives through traditional savings systems - seettu, household and group saving and it operates through frienships, kin relationships and social realtions. These community organisation develop social wealth through their thrifts, based on traditional practices of saving.Since transnational finance is driven by monetary values only, it overlays structures and that ignores local cultures, social networks and community identies necessary for the creation of social wealth. As a consequence, encounters with transnational finance inspire resistance in citizens of developing nations such as Sri Lanka. In an attempt to preserve their more tradional ways of exchange, communities find themselves workign agianst finance. Therefore in this paper I am interested in engaging in a dialogue with a rural community, to learn their ways of organising finance and the extent to which finance becomes critical to their everyday lives | en_US |
