The Indebted Woman

Reviews / Votes

"This book is pathbreaking in the most literal sense: it opens the way for more studies of women and debt as central features of capitalist economies. It gives insight into the ways in which the reproduction of capital depends on women's reproductive labor as household debt managers, but also into the ways in which they strategically navigate the system."
-Joan W. Scott, Princeton University "With gripping evidence and theoretical acumen, Guerin, Kumar, and Venkatubramanian reframe our understandings of the debt economy. By foregrounding the deeply gendered labor of debt, The Indebted Woman launches a new research agenda. A book that transcends disciplinary boundaries and moves forward the analysis of intimate economies."
-Viviana A. Zelizer, author of The Purchase of Intimacy and Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy "The Indebted Woman is a compact account of the credit markets in South Arcot, and in particular their disproportionate effect on Dalit women.... Where the book shines is in its conscientious economic research, awakening readers to the lived experiences of Dalit women and their invisible and indispensable role in the South Indian economy."
-Annelie Hyatt, Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism "The Indebted Woman is a groundbreaking exploration of the relationships between capitalism, patriarchy, and female debt."
-Maryann Bylander, The Developing Economies "This is an ambitious book building a picture of the different ways in which women are indebted and the ways in which they strive to repay their debts. It gives an account of the dilemmas faced by women juggling loans from multiple sources both to survive and to advance the position of their families. It is unusually rich in its coverage of psychological as well as social and economic aspects of their debt relationships."-Judith Heyer, Journal of South Asian Development "[The Indebted Woman] offers a powerful and compelling analysis of the mutual determinations of economic conditions and the dynamics of capitalism, the kinship system, and women's subjectivity and sexuality, at the base of financial capitalism."-John Harriss, The Journal of Peasant Studies "The arguments presented, linking debt with kinship, capitalism, and sexuality, leave one with much food for thought."-R. V. Bhavani, Review of Agrarian Studies "This book... offers valuable insight into the gendered dimensions of financialized debt and rural poverty. It will be critical reading for economic anthropologists and anthropologists of South Asia, and anyone interested in the intersection of gender, finance, and poverty."-Sohini Kar, American Ethnologist "The figure of the 'indebted woman' is the ontology of femininity introduced in this book that expands our understanding of finance and establishes it to be deeply gendered."-Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Contemporary Sociology