Mediations between Indebtedness and Consumption: The Construction of Financial Consumers and the Domestication of Credit in Chile
No. 85 (2023-07-01)Author(s)
-
Alejandro Marambio-TapiaUniversidad Católica del Maule, Chile
Abstract
Chile’s specific form of capitalism has given rise to a class of financial consumers who navigate a consumer society with low incomes but easy access to credit. As a result, being in debt has become a common expectation in Chilean society. In this study, we conducted 46 in-depth interviews with indebted financial consumers to examine the practices, materialities, and moral and social evaluations surrounding credit and debt. We explored how these concepts are reinterpreted and domesticated in a context where indebtedness is deeply entrenched. Through our analysis, we identified three interrelated processes: (1) moral operations that allow for the separation of credit from debt; (2) the redefinition of prices, values, and materialities through various credit practices used by financial consumers to survive in a precarious consumer society; and (3) the subjective evaluation and categorization of debt levels, which subverts conventional quantifications and categorizations of debt. Our findings demonstrate how financial consumers can unmoralize indebtedness and redefine credit, providing opportunities for counter-agency, collectivization, and politicization of indebted subjects. This article contributes to the discussion on the meaning of debt, provides insight into the financialization of everyday life, and offers a perspective on installation and participation in a consumer society from the viewpoint of subordinated subjects in the Global South.
References
Banco Central de Chile. 2017. Encuesta Financiera de Hogares 2017. Santiago de Chile: Banco Central de Chile.
Bandelj, Nina. 2012. “Relational Work and Economic Sociology”. Politics & Society 40 (2): 175-201. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329212441597
Bandelj, Nina, Lyn Spillman y Frederick F. Wherry. 2015. “Economic Culture in the Public Sphere: Introduction”. Archives Européennes de Sociologie 56 (1): 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975615000016
Baudrillard, Jean. 2002. Crítica de la economía política del signo. Buenos Aires; Ciudad de México: Siglo XXI Editores.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 2001. “From the Work Ethic to the Aesthetic of Consumption”. En The Bauman Reader, editado por Peter Beilharz, 311-333. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Čada, Karel y Katerina Ptáčková. 2017. “The Domestication of Financial Objects: Narrativisation, Appropriation and Affectivation”. Sociologicky Casopis 53 (6): 857-879. https://doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2017.53.6.378
Carruthers, Bruce G. 2005. “The Sociology of Money and Credit”. En The Handbook of Economic Sociology, editado por Richard Swedberg y Neil J. Smelser, 331-355. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cohen, Lisbeth. 2004. “A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America”. Journal of Consumer Research 31 (1): 236-239. https://doi.org/10.1086/383439
Edwards, Tim. 1999. Contradictions of Consumption: Concepts, Practices, and Politics in Consumer Society. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Filgueira, Carlos. 2007. “Actualidad de las viejas temáticas: clase, estratificación y movilidad social en América Latina”. En Estratificación y movilidad social en América Latina: transformaciones estructurales de un cuarto de siglo, coordinado por Rolando Franco, Arturo León y Raúl Atria, 73-120. Santiago de Chile: Cepal; Lom Ediciones; GTZ.
Fourcade, Marion y Kieran Healy. 2007. “Moral Views of Market Society”. Annual Review of Sociology 32: 285-311. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.33.040406.131642
Gago, Verónica. 2014. La razón neoliberal. Economías barrocas y pragmática popular. Buenos Aires: Tinta Limón.
González-López, Felipe. 2015. “Where Are the Consumers? ‘Real Households’ and the Financialization of Consumption”. Cultural Studies 29 (5-6): 781-806. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2015.1017144
González-López, Felipe. 2021a. “Society against Markets. The Commodification of Money and the Repudiation of Debt”. Sociología & Antropología 11 (1): 97-122. https://doi.org/10.1590/2238-38752021v1114
González-López, Felipe. 2021b. “The Financialization of Social Policy and the Politicization of Student Debt in Chile”. Journal of Cultural Economy 14 (2): 176-193. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2020.1831574
Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First Five Thousand Years. Nueva York: Melville House.
Guzmán, Sebastián G. 2015. “‘Should I Trust the Bank or the Social Movement?’. Motivated Reasoning and Debtors’ Work to Accept Misinformation”. Sociological Forum 30 (4): 900-924. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12201
Han, Clara. 2011. “Symptoms of Another Life: Time, Possibility, and Domestic Relations in Chile’s Credit Economy”. Cultural Anthropology 26 (1): 7-32. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2010.01078.x
Han, Clara. 2012. Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile. Berkeley; Los Angeles; Londres: University of California Press.
Langley, Paul. 2008a. “Financialization and the Consumer Credit Boom”. Competition & Change 12 (2): 133-147. https://doi.org/10.1179/102452908X289794
Langley, Paul. 2008b. “Sub-prime Mortgage Lending: A Cultural Economy”. Economy and Society 37 (4): 469-494. https://doi.org/10.1080/0308514080235789
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2012. The Making of the Indebted Man: An Essay on the Neoliberal Condition. Traducido por Joshua David Jordan. Nueva York: Semiotext(e).
Marambio-Tapia, Alejandro. 2017. “Narratives of Social Mobility in the Post-industrial Working Class and the Use of Credit in Chilean Households”. Revue de la Régulation. Capitalisme, Institutions, Pouvoirs 22: en línea. https://doi.org/10.4000/regulation.12512
Marambio-Tapia, Alejandro. 2020. “Consumo, trabajo, deuda en Chile: el retail como ecosistema socioeconómico de las sociedades de consumo precarias”. En Topografías del consumo, editado por Andrea Dettano, 249-270. Buenos Aires: Estudios Sociológicos Editora.
Marambio-Tapia, Alejandro. 2021. “Educados para ser endeudados: la inclusión ‘social-financiera’ en Chile”. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 83 (2): 389-417. http://revistamexicanadesociologia.unam.mx/index.php/rms/article/view/60089
Marambio-Tapia, Alejandro. 2022. “Normalización de la deuda y retailización del crédito como pilares del neoliberalismo chileno avanzado”. Iberoamericana. Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 51 (1): 14-25. https://doi.org/10.16993/iberoamericana.529
Marambio-Tapia, Alejandro, Haydée Fonseca-Mairena e Iris Argüello Contreras. 2021. “La paradoja del virus: realidades en crisis, emergencia y consolidación de prácticas económicas alternativas”. En Lo comunitario. Alternativas en tiempos de crisis, editado por Verónica Tapia Barría, Francisco Letelier Troncoso, Javiera Cubillos Almendra y Stefano Micheletti Dellamaría, 28-51. Talca: Ediciones UCM.
Marron, Donncha. 2007. “‘Lending by Numbers’: Credit Scoring and the Constitution of Risk within American Consumer Credit”. Economy and Society 36 (1): 103-133. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140601089846
Marron, Donncha. 2014. “‘Informed, Educated and More Confident’: Financial Capability and the Problematization of Personal Finance Consumption”. Consumption Markets & Culture 17 (5): 491-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2013.849590
Montero, Juan Pablo y Jorge Tarziján. 2010. “El éxito de las casas comerciales en Chile: ¿regulación o buena gestión?”. Documentos de Trabajo n.o 565. Banco Central de Chile.
Ossandón, José. 2017. “‘My Story Has No Strings Attached’: Credit Cards, Market Devices and a Stone Guest”. En Markets and the Arts of Attachment, editado por Franck Cochoy, Joe Deville y Liz McFall, 132-146. Londres; Nueva York: Routledge.
Ossandón, José, Joe Deville, Jeanne Lazarus y Mariana Luzzi. 2022. “Financial Oikonomization: The Financial Government and Administration of the Household”. Socio-Economic Review 20 (3): 1473-1500. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwab031
Pellandini-Simányi, Léna, Ferenc Hammer y Zsuzsanna Vargha. 2015. “The Financialization of Everyday Life or the Domestication of Finance? How Mortgages Engage with Borrowers’ Temporal Horizons, Relationships and Rationality in Hungary”. Cultural Studies 29 (5-6): 733-759. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2015.1017142
Pérez-Roa, Lorena. 2014. “El peso real de la deuda de estudios: la problemática de los jóvenes deudores del sistema de financiamiento universitario de la Corfo pregrado en Santiago de Chile”. Education Policy Analysis Archives
: 1-43. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=275031898029
Pérez-Roa, Lorena. 2019a. “Emprendedores por necesidad: el emprendimiento como estrategia de pago de deudas en un contexto precariedad laboral”. Aposta. Revista de Ciencias Sociales 83: 61-75. https://www.redalyc.org/journal/4959/495963605003/495963605003.pdf
Pérez-Roa, Lorena. 2019b. “From ‘Good Credit’ to ‘Bad Debt’: Comparative Reflections on the Student Debt Experience of Young Professionals in Santiago, Chile, and Montreal, Canada”. Economic Anthropology 6 (1): 135-146. https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12137
Pérez-Roa, Lorena. 2021. “Consumistas, deudores o morosos: explorando las ambivalencias de los imaginarios sobre las prácticas económicas y sus consecuencias para la intervención social”. Revista Perspectivas: Notas sobre Intervención y Acción Social 38: 87-113. https://doi.org/10.29344/07171714.38.2750
Ritzer, George. 2001. Explorations in the Sociology of Consumption: Fast Food, Credit Cards and Casinos. Londres; Nueva Delhi; Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Rona-Tas, Akos y Alya Guseva. 2018. “Consumer Credit in Comparative Perspective”. Annual Review of Sociology
(1): 55-75. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053653
Sabaté, Irene. 2018. “To Repay or Not to Repay: Financial Vulnerability among Mortgage Debtors in Spain”. Etnográfica. Revista do Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia 22 (1): 5-26. https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.5130
Sabaté, Irene. 2019. “Sobrendeudamiento, ejecuciones hipotecarias y cuestionamiento de la legitimidad de las deudas”. Arbor 195 (793): a516-a516. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2019.793n3004
Soederberg, Susanne. 2014. Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population. Nueva York: Routledge.
Stillerman, Joel. 2012. “Chile’s Forgotten Consumers: Poor Urban Families, Consumption Strategies, and the Moral Economy of Risk in Santiago”. En Consumer Culture in Latin America, editado por John Sinclair y Anna Cristina Pertierra, 67-79. Nueva York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137116864_5
Villarreal, Magdalena. 2014. “Regimes of Value in Mexican Household Financial Practices”. Current Anthropology
(S9): S30-S39.https://doi.org/10.1086/676665
Villaseca, Ángeles e Ingrid Padópulos. 2011. “Representaciones sociales de pobreza y sus correlatos en política social”. Revista Sociedad y Equidad 1: 1-8. https://sye.uchile.cl/index.php/RSE/article/view/10608
Warde, Alan. 2005. “Consumption and Theories of Practice”. Journal of Consumer Culture 5 (2): 131-153. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540505053090
Wilkis, Ariel. 2014. “Sociología del crédito y economía de las clases populares”. Revista Mexicana de Sociología 76 (2): 225-252. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=32130485004
Wilkis, Ariel. 2018. The Moral Power of Money: Morality and Economy in the Life of the Poor. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Zelizer, Viviana. 2021. The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief, and Other Currencies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Revista de Estudios Sociales
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.