Harker, CG; Shebeitah, R; Sayyad, D; (2019) The gender of debt and space: Notes from Ramallah-Al Bireh, Palestine. Geoforum , 98 pp. 277-285. 10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.04.018.

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Abstract

This paper argues that space is crucial to understanding intersections of gender and debt, and the gender of debt as a concept. Drawing on existing accounts of gender and debt, and ethnographic research in the Palestinian conurbation of Ramallah Al Bireh, we argue that articulations of gender, debt and space can be examined through practices of becoming indebted, managing debt and ‘wearing’ debt. In Ramallah, home spaces play a particularly important role as an expensive commodity that is forcing an increasing number of (usually male) residents to become indebted, a context through which debts are managed (usually by women), and an active co-constituent of debt through interiority, and the privacy this affords (unequally distributing the emotional, embodied labour of living with debt). In conclusion, we turn to the gender of debt to think through the intersections of postcolonial and gendered difference, and argue for decentring the Eurocentric bias of existing conceptualisations of debt and finance. This contributes to work examining the active role geographies play in constituting debts, both in practice and in theory.

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