Current Issue

The journal publishes original manuscripts that address Latin America and the Caribbean from any of the disciplinary approaches of the social sciences and humanities. Researchers from all over the world are welcome to submit their manuscripts, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

A mídia como base material da financeirização: modelos mentais e instrução prévia em aplicativos de pagamento

By Ada Cristina Machado Silveira, Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, and Sodertorn University, Sweden

Media communication processes have triggered profound transformations in the way everyday activities are carried out. To these transformations, the concept of mediatization has been accepted as a broad phenomenon worthy of the already consolidated notion of globalization. Mediatization can be conceived as a possible synthesis between the transformations of communicative and social processes. In this paper we present considerations about how financialization activities focus on media processes from global North and Brazilian theoretical approaches. The empirical case of the adoption of a payment application and the prior instruction requirements determined to users of digital platforms are taken. It is proposed as a model of financialization procedures and confirms support of the ongoing media process. The brief analysis points to the requirements of prior instruction required in terms of reconfiguration of mental models brought in such innovation.

https://www.iberoamericana.se/articles/10.16993/iberoamericana.556/

Entre Cuidado e Exploração. Quando a Dívida Entra nas Relações de Família e Vizinhança num Bairro Periférico

By Marie Kolling, Danish Institute for International Studies, Denmark

The proliferation of consumer credit during Brazil’s boom years was embedded in visions of national progress for all – including the very poor. This so-called “financial inclusion” has come at a high cost. Based on fieldwork in Salvador, Bahia (between 2012–2019), this article provides insights into the ways debt has transformed the conditions of urban poverty and social relations. In poor neighborhoods, families get caught up in vicious debt circles as they now struggle with a ‘double burden of debt’: debt in the local informal economy as well as the financialized economy. The ethnography shows that debt is often left unsettled, and that among women in a peripheral neighbourhood of Salvador, dreams and debt become intimately intertwined, as they depend on credit to provide for the family on a daily basis, to deal with unexpected events, and to “build a life” (construir uma vida). It is argued that in this context of stark poverty, debt fosters interdependencies that accentuate unequal and unstable relationships among neighbours and within families, relationships that are characterized by both care (Han 2012) and exploitation (Stack 1975).

https://www.iberoamericana.se/articles/10.16993/iberoamericana.560/