Mumbuca E-dinheiro and the challenges of community governance: requirements, codes, and data digital community currency governance

Abstract

This paper discusses the governance process of digital complementary currencies (DCCs). Our reflections are based on contributions from fields such as the anthropology of economy and currencies, especially from the perspective of monetary plurality and governance of commons, and also on concepts developed in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The research effort accompanies the material changes of the Mumbuca DCC (Maricá, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), connected to the Brazilian Network of Community Development Banks (CDBs), which has accumulated more than one hundred experiences since 1998. We use three different approaches to investigate the Mumbuca digital platform: the processes related to the requirements of the digital platforms adopted, the tensions concerning its closed architecture model and finally the currency circulation data – now digital, and relatively traceable. The paper explores the impossibility to dissociate, on the one hand, the ‘social practices’ enunciated by the communities related to the local currency proposals (and connected to the idea of money as a commons) and, on the other, the materialities present in digitalization processes. Finally, calling for a sociotechnical approach, it outlines some of the challenges faced by the CDBs Network, towards treating the DCC as a commons.