Cash and voucher assistance (CVA) has become a widespread humanitarian tool to support people affected by conflicts, displacement, and disasters. It promises improved ways to meet the diverse needs of aid beneficiaries. Current policy and academic debates mainly centre on technocratic questions concerning economy, effectiveness, and equity, and, to a lesser extent, the effects on individual recipients and households. This paper challenges the assumption of CVA as a linear process and argues that the shift to CVA is more than changing the aid delivery platform. It contends that scholarship and practice have so far overlooked the social meaning of money, and therefore its broader implications for humanitarian aid and local markets. The paper presents evidence that CVA impacts on social relations and risks creating new, or exacerbating existing, conflicts in already fragile contexts. It highlights less explored areas of CVA and outlines a multidimensional research agenda that emphasises its potential social and socioeconomic consequences.

中文翻译：

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金钱的社会意义：人道主义现金和代金券援助的多维含义

现金和代金券援助 (CVA) 已成为一种广泛的人道主义工具，用于支持受冲突、流离失所和灾难影响的人们。它承诺改进方法来满足援助受益人的不同需求。当前的政策和学术辩论主要集中在有关经济、有效性和公平的技术专家问题上，并且在较小程度上关注对个人受助者和家庭的影响。本文挑战了将 CVA 视为线性过程的假设，并认为向 CVA 的转变不仅仅是改变援助交付平台。它认为，迄今为止，学术和实践忽视了金钱的社会意义，因此忽视了它对人道主义援助和当地市场的更广泛影响。该论文提供的证据表明，CVA 会影响社会关系，并有可能创造新的或加剧现有的、在已经脆弱的环境中发生冲突。它突出了 CVA 探索较少的领域，并概述了强调其潜在的社会和社会经济后果的多维研究议程。