My research examines the cultural and moral meanings of money in Cuba’s dual currency economy, given its contested re-insertion into the global market. My interest in postsocialist transition and emerging markets comes from having grown up in pre-liberalization India and in Vietnam during its implementation of the Doi-Moi economic reforms.

I conducted ethnographic research in Havana, over four years, focusing on social practices of multiple currency exchange as a way of revealing the broader structural contradictions of everyday life in Cuba. My work demonstrates the ways money mediates the confrontation between rigid political ideologies and shifting consumption patterns; informal payment schemes; hybrid business practices; and emerging labor hierarchies. I am currently working on a book manuscript titled The New Cuban Counterpoint: Money and Currency Exchange in Post-Soviet Cuba.