Tuesday, February 25 2025, 3 - 4:30pm MLC 348 Dr. Ariel Wilkis Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina Professional Webpage How did the dollar come to play a leading role in Argentina? What cultural, economic, and political processes made the U.S. currency dominant in certain domestic markets? How did the dollar-peso exchange rate become an everyday part of life, something nearly everyone follows? In other words, how precisely did this global currency become a local currency on the other end of the Americas? These are some of the questions we want to address in this talk. For some time, the global expansion of the U.S. currency and its influence on the economic dynamics of different regions was understood as a natural offshoot of America’s predominance in the world economy. However, as the case of Argentina reveals, this process is more complex and, more importantly, exceeds geopolitics. While the dollar is, in fact, a global currency anchored in many countries, multiple articulations of local history, economy, and culture have allowed this grafting. By offering a new lens on the dollar, our research examines another dimension of the economic and political predominance of the United States, telling the story of the greenback as a popular currency outside its home country’s borders. This talk is co-sponsored by Willson Center for Humanities & Arts; Franklin College of Arts and Sciences; Department of Insurance, Legal Studies, & Real Estate; Office of Global Engagement; and Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute. Speaker Bio Dr. Ariel Wilkis received a PhD from EHESS (Paris). He is a professor at Universidad de San Martin, dean in its School of Interdisciplinary Advanced Social Studies, and a researcher at CONICET. He is the author of Historia de Cómos Endeudamos (Siglo XXI, 2024), Las Sospechas Del Dinero (Paidos, 2013), The Moral Power of Money (Stanford UP, 2017) and coauthor of The Dollar: How the US Dollar Became a Popular Currency in Argentina (University of New Mexico Press, 2023). His book Moral Power of Money won the Honorable Mention in the best book award of the Economic Sociology Section, American Sociological Association (2018).
