The financialization of help: moneylenders as economic translators in the debt-based economy

Considering that debt has become a pervasive feature of contemporary life in Mongolia, this article calls for a nuanced examination of the diversity of current debt relations as evinced through its multiple moral interpretations and social effects. Through case studies of moneylenders in contemporary Dornod Province, I discuss (1) how local actors perceive multiple moralities and types of debt (e.g. formal and informal/kinship); (2) how moneylenders comprise an occupational role as ‘translators’ between these different registers; and thus (3) how they allow local debtor actors to navigate their debt load by moving money between the varying registers. By mobilizing local forms of social value, moneylenders create financial value that supports and enables bank debt. As a result, the moralities and logics of finance have increasingly pervaded aspects of local social relations in the collateralization of social standing and the designation of interest payment as a form of community assistance.