Mario Schmidt

Mario Schmidt is an anthropologist specializing in economic practices, narratives, and discourses in rural Western Kenya and Nairobi, with a focus on cultural classification of money, the experimentalisation of development aid, and urban migration. His work bridges historical and contemporary analysis of food systems, economic pressures, and the influence of the Durkheim School on local economic understandings.

• Key Research Areas: Economic anthropology, cash transfers, behavioural economics, masculinities, migration, anthropology of food.

Projects:

• The promise of free money: Analyzes local perceptions of unconditional cash transfers and universal basic income in Kenya.
• Selling economic choices: Examines tensions between behavioral science's quantitative methods and local qualitative understandings of money.
• Men under pressure: Explores male migrants' struggles with expectations of success in Nairobi.
• Restoration, reform, or revolution of patriarchy: Investigates Kenyan masculinity consultants' social media and workshops.