Global Money, Local Dealings

This book offers a rare view of what debt means beyond balance sheets. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, Michael Haas follows taxi drivers in West Africa and Central America as they borrow, defer, repay, and improvise. Under the promises of development and microfinance, indebtedness emerges as a social, moral, and temporal practice: loans buy time, organise relationships, and keep hopes alive, but also create pressure and dependency. The study shows why financial inclusion does not bring security, but transforms everyday life in ambivalent ways. It speaks to anthropology, sociology, development studies, and finance. Haas researches global development and economic anthropology.