Arranging Practice Consumption, credit and saving on a settlement in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires

Abstract

The following paper is an attempt to explore some dimensions involved in the use of money by subaltern sectors from José León Suárez, province of Buenos Aires. We claim that the specific practices of consumption, credit and saving, that take place at the intersection between the perceptions about income and the formal and informal mechanisms regulating the relationship to money, tend to widen the inequalities found in those social sectors. In this sense, our paper claims that consumption practices are structured by perceptions around income, that is, the nature of the job involved – whether formal or informal – the regularity and periodicity of wages, and the modality of wage payment – bank account or otherwise. Within this framework, we may find differential access to credit – in banks and retail stores as well as “credit rating” and “trust” among relatives and neighbors and small local stores – that entail associated ways of dealing with time both as an experience and something that can be calculated upon. All these dimensions, crisscrossed by regulations, exclusions and controls that shape the ways of spending, frame differential approaches to the use of money and saving.