IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/106517.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Life and debt: a view from the south

Author

Listed:
  • James, Deborah

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.

Suggested Citation

  • James, Deborah, 2021. "Life and debt: a view from the south," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106517, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:106517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/106517/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Torkelson, Erin, 2020. "Collateral damages: Cash transfer and debt transfer in South Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Pollio & Liza Rose Cirolia & Jack Ong'iro Odeo, 2023. "ALGORITHMIC SUTURING: Platforms, Motorcycles and the ‘Last Mile’ in Urban Africa," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(6), pages 957-974, November.
    2. Kar, Sohini, 2023. "Domestic values: gendered labor and the uncanniness of critique in marketing life insurance for women," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120591, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Minh T.N. Nguyen, 2021. "Portfolios of Social Protection, Labour Mobility and the Rise of Life Insurance in Rural Central Vietnam," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(2), pages 316-339, March.
    2. Webb, Christopher, 2021. "Giving everyone a fish: COVID-19 and the new politics of distribution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110525, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Siu, Jade & Sterck, Olivier & Rodgers, Cory, 2023. "The freedom to choose: Theory and quasi-experimental evidence on cash transfer restrictions," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    4. Scully, Ben, 2023. "South Africa's response to the Covid-19 pandemic: The crisis in the context of the history of South African capitalism," IPE Working Papers 220/2023, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Institute for International Political Economy (IPE).
    5. Shaukat Ansari, 2022. "Cash Transfers, International Finance and Neoliberal Debt Relations: The Case of Post‐apartheid South Africa," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 53(3), pages 551-575, May.
    6. Ruth Castel‐Branco, 2021. "Improvising an E‐state: The Struggle for Cash Transfer Digitalization in Mozambique," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(4), pages 756-779, July.
    7. Alf Gunvald Nilsen, 2021. "Give James Ferguson a Fish," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 52(1), pages 3-25, January.
    8. Kar, Sohini, 2024. "Who benefits? On welfare and accumulation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 123721, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    aspiration; debt; family; financialisation; household; South Africa; UKRI block grant;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • F3 - International Economics - - International Finance
    • G3 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:106517. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.