Events

Watson Events

CANCELED: Daniel Fridman — Economía in the wild: The making of a museum of economics in Mexico

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.

McKinney Conference Room, 111 Thayer Street

Opened by Mexico’s Central Bank in 2006, the Museo Interactivo de Economía (MIDE) is one of the few museums in the world devoted exclusively to economics and finance, and the only one of its kind in Latin America. MIDE represents an unprecedented effort to present economics to the Mexican general public. Based on interviews with economists, public officials, designers, and museographers, Fridman's research reconstructs the process of turning economics into a museum. It asks how different forms of expertise interact in such a project; how the normative and technical aspects of economics are negotiated; how economic expertise is transformed in order to reach broader publics; and it examines the role of Central Banks as cultural and political actors in Latin America.

Canceled Events
Development Seminar

Daniel Fridman is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT-Austin. Daniel is interested in the intersections of economy and culture, neoliberalism and financialization, economic policy in Latin America, consumer culture, gift-giving, the sociology of money, and the construction of economic subjects. His book Freedom From Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina received Honorable Mention for the Best Book Award 2016-2017, given by the American Sociological Association Section on Consumers and Consumption.