Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research conducted on economic institutions in Soweto and Johannesburg, this paper explores the themes of uncertainty and nostalgia through the lens of savings and credit clubs.

Paper long abstract:

Recent financial crises have turned the eyes of academics, activists and citizens to the hitherto obscured role of global finance - outside of the well-documented role of the IMF and World Bank - in shaping national economies, the dynamics of currency fluctuations, and surging inflation. Anthropologists too have turned their attention to the social organisation and culture of finance (Ho 2009, Zaloom 2006) while a growing body of literature on finacialisation points to the phenomenal growth of finance-related trade and speculation in financial markets (Epstein 2005, Martin 2002). In this paper, I want to contribute to this debate by demonstrating how, through a small savings club in Soweto formed by male working class men from the same neighbourhood, citizens appropriate the world of finance for their own social and economic ends - how through finance they make their economy human, even in times of greater uncertainty, growing inequality and a nostalgic longing for order. Whereas club members are to some extent dependent on the global organisation of finance and markets, finance itself opens up spaces of self-organization and experimentation with forms of solidarity that could be described as forms of financialisation from below.