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Paper Short Abstract:

This article explores the relationships between a hyper-vigilant working class and a hostile payment infrastructure in Jamaica. It argues that a financial vigilance regime perpetuates inequalities and impacts the success of the adoption of new payment systems, like CBDCs.

Paper Abstract:

This article examines the relationship between working-class people in Kingston and the Jamaican payment infrastructure at the dawn of the introduction of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) - digital cash distributed through mobile devices.

Employing extensive ethnographic fieldwork and delving into bank statements from individuals within the middle-lower income stratum, I analyze discourses, practices, and performances surrounding cash, cards, and bank transfers. These investigations unveil categories of risk and danger related to the flow of money that contribute to a sense of financial hypervigilance among individuals (Ivasiucc et al. 2022). The conceptualization of hypervigilance is then contextualized within the Jamaican milieu: in the embodiment of memories of colonial practices, neo-colonial aspirations linked to social status, and specific perceptions of time and space (Sheller 2012; Thomas 2016).

The malfunctions of the infrastructure, based on both human and non-human actors, not only enlarge the sense of watchfulness among people worried about their upward social mobility but also demonstrate "who and what matters in the prevailing social order" (Alderman and Whittaker 2021). This hostile payment infrastructure exposes societal hierarchies and normative values and becomes the framework of a financial vigilance regime that perpetuates class, race, gender, and kinship inequalities (Bear et al. 2014).

In conclusion, I underscore the significance of such historical, social, and cultural factors associated with the payment infrastructure and their impact on the introduction of new forms of payment, like a CBDC.