In “Life in Debt: Times of Care and Violence in Neoliberal Chile” by Clara Han, the author sets out to survey the debt-ridden landscape found in what is a modern day población, which is the Chilean equivalent of a shanty town or ghetto called La Pincoya, Chile. The author introduces the readers to several families whom she uses as subjects to explain the socio-economic landscape as a result of the seventeen year long dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The author’s focus in the book is to “consider how the states ‘care’ in the democratic transition is inhabited by the past” (p. 3). This is framed in the sense of how the everyday life is fragmented into unequal social arrangements. That is it say that the author role is creating ethnographic …show more content…
According to a standard narrative, neoliberal governments have eradicated protective tariffs and national industry; dismantled the regulatory and welfare apparatuses of the state; and helped create an individualist, consumerist ethos focused on individual social mobility (Rosenblatt 1). Clara Han explores the effect of these economic policies and how they have affected families in their communities; these complex political relationships have been woven into the fabric of Chile and it becomes particularly evident in the consumerist culture that has affected Han’s subject Sra. Flora. Sra. Flora’s family can be seen as the ideal example of the effects neoliberal policies have upon people. Her nuclear family consists of her four adult children, two grandchildren and her partner Rodrigo. Sra. Flora’s daughter Florcita and son in law Kevin were pasta base drug …show more content…
Through the narrative of Sra. Flora the author explains the economic indebtedness of the poor and how, Sra. Flora explains, they have a “loaned life.” This becomes an interesting criticism of the wealth disparity in the country, as these economic policies do not favor disenfranchised classes, and further does not foster a true sense of ownership—which can be contrasted with American efforts to create a national identity in the US via homeownership. Sra. Flora further explains how interest loans and cash advances do not allow for upward mobility, and states that the rich pay in cash for their mortgages while the poor pay for their appliances in credit (p. 39). She further expands the power an Equifax-owned credit company known as DICOM has over the Chilean