“So I took up the struggle!” : rethinking economic representations and practices of popular groups through trajectories of social mobility

Abstract

This text raises questions that emerged while developing research on the process, currently underway in Brazil, in which popular groups’ attain increased access to financial services and mechanisms and the credit supply available to low income people has expanded. Using one informant’s trajectory as our guiding thread, we will take a critical look at some of the original premises of our research and attempt to put together new research hypotheses. The latter are meant to relativize differences and take a more nuanced approach to the borders which we had initially supposed could be drawn around the logics that guide the economic and financial life of individuals of popular classes and the principles that reign actions of the agents who provide them with financial services. Keywords: Economic Anthropology, Economic Sociology, credit and consumption, popular classes and economic practices, social mobility.