How to mix money and intimacy

There's a notion in western society that money taints love and friendship: witness our hang-ups over split billing, divorce settlements, and gift-giving. So you should seek to keep finance and relationships separate – right?

“Money is always about social interdependency, and social interdependency is so often channelled through money,” says Dr Caroline Schuster.

In this episode, Carly talks about how being aware of the way money and intimacy are inextricably linked can help us to make better financial decisions. She also references her research on microlending in Paraguay, and how looking beyond the numbers can reveal the stories and realities of everyday people.

Dr. Caroline E. Schuster is a cultural anthropologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the ANU. She is also the Director of the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS). My interest in informal markets, and particularly women’s livelihoods, drew her to study “microcredit” – small loans with no collateral – as part of a global trend of financial inclusion that brings banking services to poor women in the global south. Some of that work features in an article on how Microfinance could wind up being the new subprime in The Conversation and in her book, Social Collateral: women and microfinance in Paraguay’s smuggling economy.

Her wider work centres on “Fintech” – technology and financial innovation. Her current research project, which is supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, looks at consequential differences between modes of sharing risk and promising security through the lens of insurance cover. She explores disaster capitalism and the financialization of local risk-mitigation strategies in the context of our ever more unstable climate.

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The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat.

Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho.

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