Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how a material infrastructure that enables the storage and movement of cash around Beirut - in the context of rapid inflation and currency devaluation - is opening up new forms of extraction and exploitation, but also new forms of resistance and survival.

Paper long abstract:

Academic scholarship is shifting towards a focus on the emergence of the cashless economy, and all the consequences this has for different groups. But Lebanon in recent years has experienced an opposite phenomenon, a sudden surge in the use of cash in the aftermath of an insolvency crisis and theft of savings which has produced a deep distrust of banks. This has led to the rapid construction of a material infrastructure that enables the storage and movement of cash around the economy and country – itself always shifting in the context of rapid inflation and currency devaluation. Focusing on the city of Beirut, I use ethnographic fieldwork to ask how this infrastructure of cash is impacting - and being shaped by - different groups: from migrant workers, petty investors, small-business owners, delivery platforms, digital wallet start-ups, and money lenders. I specifically examine how relations of power between these groups are being reconfigured through the materiality of cash. By following some of these figures on a day-to-day basis as they navigate the cash infrastructure - using both dollars and the rapidly devaluing Lebanese pound, I reveal how Beirut’s cash economy is opening up new forms of (highly transient) extraction and exploitation, but also new forms of resistance and survival.