Financialization from the margins

Hadrien Saiag (1)

1 IIAC - Institut interdisciplinaire d'anthropologie du contemporain

This article investigates how the Argentine subproletariat perceives the recent consumer credit boom, based on several fi eld visits carried out in one of Argentina's industrial hubs between 2007 and 2016. It analyzes the credit boom in relation to the wider social transformations induced by the left ist Peronist governments during 2003-2015 (especially the incorporation of informal workers into the social protection system). It argues the rise of consumer credit is perceived by those who use it with ambivalence. While it has allowed the subproletariat to access a form of consumption that was previously restricted to upper classes, it also exposes this population to a new form of exploitation based on the discrepancy between the (monthly based) time of fi nance and the (erratic) time of work.

Mots clés: financial exploitation; popular economy; time; consumption; debt; savings; temporalities; social stratifications

Domaines: Anthropologie sociale et ethnologie; Economies et finances; Sociologie

Hadrien Saiag. Financialization from the margins: Notes on the incorporation of Argentina's subproletariat into consumer credit (2009-2015). Focaal — Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2020, Financializations/border/predations, 2020 (87), pp.16-32. ⟨10.3167/fcl.2020.012804⟩. ⟨hal-02516543v2⟩