Mapping the Invisible: Methodological Issues on Debt, Inclusion, and Violence

Abstract

The aim of this article is to delve into the dynamics of exploitation of bodies and territories to make visible, through a detailed and broad empirical and theoretical analysis, what we have long referred to as a feminist reading of debt, now linked to more recent dynamics resulting from the post-pandemic period. In this article, we first aim to highlight the methodological and theoretical findings of ongoing research, which allow us to identify and systematize the connections between household debt and violence, labor, social reproduction, and dispossession. Secondly, we explore in depth the characterization of the  "financial inclusion" policies implemented in Argentina during the pandemic and continued in the two subsequent years, critically examining their assumptions and limitations. We are also interested in examining how the information generated by these policies is used (or not) both to investigate gender-based violence and to penalize the financial practices of the most impoverished sectors. Furthermore, we aim to delve deeper into the characterization of a form of violence intertwined with over-indebtedness. As a third and final objective, we seek to reflect from a feminist financial pedagogy on the tension between the grammar of financial inclusion and that of debt relief.