The financialization of everyday life: Caring for debts

Abstract

This paper examines current research on financialization in economic geography through the lens of recent feminist interventions in the financialization of social reproduction. Although the financialization literature provides new perspectives by interrogating everyday household economies, debt relations and subjectivities, I argue that there needs to be a critical re-evaluation of what the financialization of everyday life is in the context of neoliberal austerity regimes and the crisis of care. My paper does this by expanding the boundaries of the financialization literature in economic geography, connecting long-lasting concerns from feminist political economy. It draws attention to the intimate relationship between indebtedness, care and everyday life and discusses limits to financialization when debts are cared for at the expense of social reproduction. Finally, it emphasizes the need for feminist politics to decolonize the financial narrative over daily life and feminist methodologies to understand the intimate, embodied and lived experiences of indebtedness for alternative knowledge production. This work will contribute to the dialogue between economic geography and feminist political economy in the domain of financialization, highlighting research on everyday finance and debt in economic geographies.