Principles or pragmatics? Debt advice as a comparative encounter

James, Deborah ORCID: 0000-0002-4274-197X (2022) Principles or pragmatics? Debt advice as a comparative encounter. In: Pelkmans, Mathijs and Walker, Harry, (eds.) How People Compare. Routledge, 107 - 127. ISBN 9781032229973

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Abstract

This chapter draws on a study of advice encounters in the UK and South Africa to explore two apparently contradictory facets of comparison. In the everyday life of such encounters, because advisors start from the generalized grid and recipients start from specific practices that appear as unique, comparison pushes them in different directions. There are forces – here tagged as ‘principles’ – that propel some towards abstraction and generalization, just as there are other forces – glossed as ‘pragmatics’ – that propel others towards particularism or even incline them to refuse all comparison. But each of these tendencies represents a pole in an unrealized binary: fully general, abstract comparisons are always undermined, in the end, by the compelling nature of particulars, of difference and incommensurability; just as particularism is impossible to maintain in the face of the forces that drive towards abstraction. Thus, the two tendencies – in advice encounters as in anthropology itself – interact in often paradoxical ways, and the stark binary collapses back into hybrids. The chapter, as an ethnographic account of these opposing forces in two distinct settings, also reveals the relations of inequality and exploitation that are in play and gives an account of attempts, during the advice encounter, to mitigate or ameliorate those relations. It is a comparison of comparisons structured in and around unequal exchanges of the kind that result from (and that in turn intensify) status and wealth differentials such as those of creditor vs debtor.

Item Type:	Book Section
Official URL:	https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003283669
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Anthropology
Subjects:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology H Social Sciences > HG Finance H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited:	22 Jan 2024 15:12
Last Modified:	17 Oct 2024 18:21
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121439

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