IFFS PLAY

Research seminar with Lena Halldenius, professor of human rights studies at Lund University, and Moa Petersén, associate professor at Division of ALM and Digital Cultures at Lund University. Abstract The research project ”Cash – Human rights and social sustainability in the transition to a cashless society investigates how socio-economically vulnerable groups are affected by the disappearance of cash and the transition towards a cashless society. The empirical focus is on Sweden, where the change is more rapid than anywhere else. There are obvious benefits of the global trend towards cashlessness. However, as pointed out by the UN Committee for Development Policy and noted in the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1), technology can create exclusion and inequality, or acerbate existing ones. Inclusive technologies is a question of justice, but more and smarter technology is not always the solution. We need to understand better how digital exclusion works in affected people’s lives, what their experiences are, and what measures would help them. This project approaches cashlessness as a question of social justice and inclusion, through an interview study focusing on groups identified in existing research as vulnerable to digital exclusion and organizations that represent them. We treat their experiences and testimonies as important sources of knowledge in a bottom-up approach to economic justice. Recorded at the Institute for Futures Studies on February 9 2022.