Sunday, November 23, 2008

Dr Georgina Gómez Receives Distinction for PhD

On April 2nd, Georgina Gómez defended her PhD paper, receiving a number of critical and incisive questions from the review panel. She however clearly responded well as, after private deliberation by the panel, was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy in Development Studies with distinction! Many congratulations to her!

Following is a summary of her paper.

Making markets. The institutional rise and decline of the Argentine Red de Trueque

Georgina M. Gómez

The Argentine Red de Trueque was a unique economic circuit organised by the grassroots against a background of deep economic demise. A group of environmental activists organised their neighbours to start exchanging self-produced goods and services with each other. They thus structured their own market and, as membership grew, they printed their own money to facilitate trade. The Red de Trueque was so successful that after seven years it reached a peak of about 2.5 million participants in 4.700 markets across the country. It became the largest complementary currency system in current days. However, it did not last long at that scale and fell apart. The story of the Red de Trueque discloses the challenges of creating institutions bottom-up and sustaining their governance once they are in place. The thesis reflects on the challenges and limits of civil society organisations to structure a complementary economic system. It further theorises on the potential of development intervention to organise economic institutions.

Source: http://www.iss.nl/News/Dr-Georgina-Gomez-Receives-Distinction-for-PhD

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