Ursula M Dalinghaus
My dissertation, Accounting for Money: Keeping the Ledger of Monetary Memory in Germany, examines experiences of German and European economic integration in Germany since 1989. Specifically, I look at currency unions as a contested, but transformative site in understanding expert and lay understandings about money and economic justice. My study emphasizes the challenges to, and critical possibilities of, interaction between experts and the public - subject positions, which overlap as much as they remain distinct - in accounting for economic agency. My theoretical agenda and research conclusions are based on three years of multi-sited (geographically and institutionally) fieldwork in Frankfurt am Main (west) and Leipzig (east) Germany. I conducted ethnographic research on the public relations work of the German Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank), tracking institutional practices of communicating the euro and the role of central banks to the public, and the diverse kinds of interactions between staff members and laypersons. My ethnographic research in Leipzig also included local institutions and events in which Europeanization and the historical process of division, dictatorship, and transformations since 1989 are represented and publically debated. My dissertation research has been supported by grants that include: a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation fellowship, a graduate colloquium fellowship from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) at the Technical University in Dresden, and grants from the Anthropology Department and the Center for German and European Studies at the University of Minnesota.