The indebted woman : kinship, sexuality, and capitalism / Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar, and G. Venkatasubramanian.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Guérin, Isabelle, author.

Santosh Kumar (Social worker), author.

Venkatasubramanian, G. (Govindan), author.

Series:

Culture and economic life.

Culture and Economic Life Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Capitalism--Social aspects--India--Tamil Nadu.

Debt--India--Tamil Nadu.

Poor women--India--Tamil Nadu--Social conditions.

Poor women Social conditions.

Sex role--Economic aspects--India--Tamil Nadu.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2023]

Summary:

"Poor women have become essential cogs in the wheel of financialized capitalism. Globally, it is most often women who manage household debt to make ends meet, and that debt has exploded over the last decade, reaching an all-time high after the COVID-19 pandemic. Across various categories of loans, including subprime lending, microcredit policies, and consumer loans, as well as rent and utilities, women are overrepresented as clients and managers, and are being enfolded into the system. The Indebted Woman discusses the crucial yet invisible roles poor women play in making and consolidating debt and credit markets. Isabelle Guérin, Santosh Kumar and G. Venkatasubramanian spent over two decades observing a credit market that specifically targets women in the Indian countryside of east-central Tamil Nadu. They found that paying off debts required labor, frequently involved sexual transactions, and shaped women's bodies and subjectivities. Bringing together ethnography, statistical surveys, and financial diaries, they offer for the first time a comprehensive theory for this sexual division of debt that goes far beyond the Indian case, exposing the ways capitalism transforms womanhood, and how this transformation in turn fuels capitalism"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Tables and Figures

Authors' Note

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Intimacies and Measurement

2. Kinship Debt

3. The Sexual Division of Debt

4. Debt Work

5. Bodily Collateral

6. Debt and Love

7. Human Debts

8. What Does the Future Hold?

Notes

References

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781503636910

1503636917

OCLC:

1393309690