Life and debt: a view from the south

Deborah James

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper explores how, in countries in the global south where sharp rises in indebtedness have accompanied the financialization of the economy, debt factors into other relationships and meanings in the life of the family and household. Using ethnographic material from South Africa, it explores local concepts of householding, obligation and saving (asking whether relations of commodified debt nullify those of longstanding social commitment), investigates how people convert between cash-based or short term imperatives and moral or longer-term ones, and shows how barriers are sometimes erected between these separate spheres thus making them incommensurable. The paper challenges some accounts of the “financialization of daily life” which imply a one-way, top-down intrusion by the market—with state backing—into people’s intimate relations, commitments and aspirations, and maintains that we need to explore the complicity of participants’ engagement with these processes rather than seeing them as imposed on unwilling victims.

Keywords: aspiration; debt; family; financialisation; household; South Africa; UKRI block grant (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F3 G3 N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2021-02-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-his and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Economy and Society, 5, February, 2021, 50(1), pp. 36 - 56. ISSN: 0308-5147

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:106517

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