Debt and Obligation in Contemporary Ramallah
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/19665/debt-and-obligation-in-contemporary-ramallahn
Entre dépendendance...
Given low rates of pay, this can mean many years of working the equivalent of two days a week for the bank (since banks can by law deduct up to forty percent of an individual’s salary upon deposit for debt repayment).
... et frugalité volontaire mais invisible et politiquement signifiante :
In Um-Asharayet, the multiple ways in which residents owe things to others creates a space of social, which is to say political, contestation—if we understand politics to be the ways in which the problems of living together are worked through and worked out. This space is dynamic and changing, but it would be wrong to assume that there is some sort of teleological end point. While Israeli and PA elites and international donor states have a very great capacity to act in this context, residents such as those in Um-Asharayet we have talked with also shape the current state of affairs by circulating ideas about the enduring and renewed importance of social ties and commitments, including their importance over financial obligations. As Waleed contends, “Social obligations are the basic obligations and financial obligations are just a means to facilitate social life.” Residents also develop or reinforce economic relations in ways that bypass banks through personal agreements with traders and building owners. We also encountered acts of personal austerity where residents refused to live a consumption-driven lifestyle. Rami told us, ‘It is not important for me to possess everything that my friend or neighbor owns. I guess satisfaction with your personal financial situation is an important aspect in the process of acclimatization. Loans provide temporary luxury.” During our research there were also multiple examples of improvisation, where residents used what was at hand—such as the urban environment—to enable social life at little to no cost (e.g. a wedding lunch in a parking garage).
Often such ideas and practices are far less visible than adverts for the Bank of Palestine, and in some cases actively seek invisibility. Hence the potency of such acts may seem negligible in the face of the power of the PA-businessmen-donor consensus. However, as Elizabeth Povinelli (2011: 78) reminds us, “The social worlds of the impractical and disagreeable remain in durative time. They persist. But do not persist in the abstract.” Put another way, while living with debt might be seen as a sacrificial good (i.e. suffer now, benefit later) from the perspective of dominant worlds, or as a state of limbo by critical scholarly communities, those who live in such a situation are by necessity problem solvers, constantly working away at how to endure and move beyond such conditions. One of the key challenges in contemporary Ramallah is how to support and disseminate such practices of endurance and invention.
#frugalité #résistance #aliénation #dette #banque #consommation
