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Carly Schuster

The Australian National University, Archaeology and Anthropology, Faculty Member

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Address: School of Archaeology and Anthropology, CASS
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The Australian National University
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Khulna University

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Papers by Carly Schuster

Gender and COVID‐19

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2021

Feminist insights have already played an important role in our rapidly developing understanding o... more Feminist insights have already played an important role in our rapidly developing understanding of COVID-19. Intersectional research has drawn attention to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women of color?particularly in the care industry and essential services?as well as the amplified discrimination faced by LGBTQI+ people. Understanding the pandemic as a gendered catastrophe builds outward from feminist anthropological research, thematizing two key areas: (1) masculinity and (2) the home as a site of gendered labor. Since the 1970s anthropologists have led scholarly debates about the domestic?public distinction, and since the 1990s they have incorporated feminist theory into the disciplinary mainstream's engagement with men and manhood. Paying attention to how familiar dichotomies such as nature/culture and public/private operate during the crisis can yield unexpected insights and alliances, offering powerful conceptual tools to turn feminist anthropology's le...

Your family and friends are collateral: microfinance and the social

Cultural Anthropology, 2015

This essay is part of a collaborative project, broadly conceived as "Generating Capitalism,&... more This essay is part of a collaborative project, broadly conceived as "Generating Capitalism," or the Gens collective. The introductory abstract for the project can be found at the Cultural Anthropology journal's "Theorizing the Contemporary" series: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/650-generating-capitalism.

‘Risky Data’ for Inclusive Microinsurance Infrastructures

The recent enthusiasm for &#39;big data&#39; (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the i... more The recent enthusiasm for &#39;big data&#39; (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interpenetration of public social policy and data from private technology firms. This article examines the process in reverse, whereby public information systems become the basis for increasing financial intermediation. Drawing on ethnographic research on Paraguayan microinsurance programmes, this article describes the broader mandate of &#39;financial inclusion&#39; embedded in the suite of banking services that support the state&#39;s conditional cash transfer welfare initiative, Tekoporã. The article analyses the process by which inclusive insurance infrastructures are built and maintained as an opportunity to critique the political economy of data production that supports financialization. The concept of &#39;risky data&#39; describes not only the way that the social lives and relations of the poor are quantified and converted into financial knowledge, but also the way that the urgent new mandate to produce such data further exposes public policy and state institutions to new risks to their legitimacy. The Paraguayan case exemplifies the key mechanism of &#39;risky data&#39; for inclusive infrastructures: the extraction of financial value and speculative profits from state-led investment in a public resource, which amplifies the risks of both service denial and data surveillance.

Gender and smuggling

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling, 2021

The dominant approach to gender and smuggling in criminological debates has been premised on the ... more The dominant approach to gender and smuggling in criminological debates has been premised on the notion of women's progressive "emancipation" from restrictive and patriarchal gender roles (Selmini, 2020; Siegel, 2014: 56). It was understood that feminist political struggles the world over would shatter glass ceilings and lead to gender parity, including parity in the illicit labour of smuggling and organised crime. Summarising this thinking, Siegel (2014: 56) writes that, according to this approach, the role of women in criminal families was previously limited to being a passive, obedient and silent wife, mother and sister whose task was to take care of the household, raise the children, participate in funerals and weddings and promote the image of the male family member as 'men of honour.' These social restrictions were expected to be erased by changing gender norms and women's liberation. Early-and controversial-feminist theories (e.g., Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975) emerged from the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1970s and posited that patterns revealing women's comparative absence from criminal activity would evolve once women were included as active and independent participants in the labour market and public sphere (Selmini, 2020: 347). In the decades after feminist debates focused attention on women's liberation-including gender parity when it came to criminal profits-the 'emancipation' hypothesis has been critically re-evaluated along two axes. First, feminist theory has taken a much more nuanced approach to gender justice, particularly through wider explorations of subjectivity (Bourgois, 1996; Hautzinger, 2007), gender relations (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005), and multiple intersecting forms of inequality (Thomas and Galemba, 2013). Second, the emancipation hypothesis was revealed to be a fallacy based on "a lack of in-depth historical research [that] has resulted in the misleading observation that in the past only very few women occupied top positions in organized crime" (Siegel, 2014: 63). The rejection of progressive narratives of women's empowerment was paired with a burgeoning research agenda tracking the global flows of information, economic opportunity, media representations, and communication channels that position women in complex ways vis-à-vis illegal markets (Kleemans et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2007). Despite feminist scholarship challenging the traditional view and documenting women's multifaceted role in illicit economies, both popular and scholarly accounts reproduce and

Subprime Empire

Current Anthropology, 2021

In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to bl... more In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to blame: reckless speculative finance or irresponsible (often low-income) borrowers. This essay takes up this set of moral arguments about what the poor can and should be able to afford by examining subprime logics at a global scale: subprime empire. Predatory lending in heartland America and development-oriented microcredit in places such as India and Paraguay appear not just to be geographically disparate but also to have different moral valences. After closer inspection, however, we argue that subprime lending and microfinance are two sides of the same coin. Our analysis of microfinance allows us to understand what is happening in the "in-between" as capital flows between financial investors and poor borrowers. By comparing financialization in India and Paraguay, we document and theorize the making of subprime empires that rely on actors within marginal financial sites to stabilize the evaluative frameworks and social interdependencies that make profits flow. We argue that the forms of financial capture and conversion in the "financial inbetween" reproduce imperial dynamics by naturalizing the limited expectations of economic subjects of the global south and erasing the violence inherent in these forms of economic redistribution that maintain those expectations as such.

The Indebted Wage: Putting Financial Products to Work in Paraguay's Tri-Border Area

Anthropological Quarterly, 2019

ABSTRACT:This article focuses on what I will call the "indebted wage": the process thro... more ABSTRACT:This article focuses on what I will call the "indebted wage": the process through which wage labor is transformed into financial assets and new forms of accumulation. I begin with the observation that many Paraguayan families work in order to channel money into debt-based investments. This invites a conceptual shift: can we extend the wage relationships outward from a language of exploitation and into a language of indebtedness as well? I track the effort invested in "keeping on payment," investments in the infamous free trade zone on Paraguay's triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil, how money moves into economies of debt, and processes whereby the wage is restructured as an investment. I argue that while both the poor and elites of Paraguay see promise in Ciudad del Este's de-regulated market, it is the low income and precarious labor of the working poor that bears the risks without accumulating the wealth of these transfers.

The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2019

es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotellamiento para las rutas de... more es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotellamiento para las rutas de contrabando en el hemisferio, el mercado del contrabando-o actividades mau-arroja una serie de preguntas sobre la legitimidad y el capitalismo comercial. Muestro cómo los autos mau se articulan en una serie de embotellamientos, desde 'hacer fila' en el puente internacional, el trabajo de 'cazacoches' que confiscan los vehículos robados, hasta una fuerzaélite de la aduana encargada de la vigilancia de los autos de contrabando de Paraguay. Mau es una expresión y un mecanismo para regular el capitalismo de frontera, la acumulación y el libre comercio. Por lo tanto, se debe tratar a mau como una forma reguladora de gobernanza económica en tensión dinámica con la terminología pública y oficial del comercio, como la "integración" económica y la "libre circulación" que dominan el mercado común del Mercosur. [Burocracia, capitalismo fronterizo, contrabando, economía informal, fronteras, Paraguay, Triple Frontera, zona franca] A b s t r a c t Within the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is infamous for stolen cars. Since Ciudad del Este is a crucial bottleneck for smuggling on the continent, the contraband-or mau-car market throws up a series of questions about legitimacy and commercial capitalism. I show how mau cars articulate across a series of bottlenecks, from traffic snarls on the international bridge, to the work of insurance adjustors who seize stolen vehicles, to an elite customs task force charged with surveillance of Paraguay's contraband cars. Mau is an idiom as well as a practical mechanism for regulating frontier capitalism, accumulation, and

Ethnography, 2017

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor ... more The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on Terror. We define “extreme fieldwork” as a research design likely to yield the kinds of data that Price identifies as “Dual Use Anthropology.” The bulk of our essay is devoted to providing warrants for the claim that there are strong incentives to brand oneself as an “extreme” fieldworker – which may be the post-9/11 equivalent of chasing what Trouillot called the “savage slot.” We argue that for some topics in certain research settings, uncomfortably, the more care and effort one invests in ethnographic best practices, the more likely it is that...

Introduction: (De)materializing Kinship—Holding Together Mutuality and Difference

Social Analysis, 2016

Although kinship studies have traditionally focused on 'solidarity' and 'mutuality', dis-alignmen... more Although kinship studies have traditionally focused on 'solidarity' and 'mutuality', dis-alignment, exclusion, and difference are equally crucial foci for analysis. In this introduction, we explore articulations of mutuality and difference through the lens of materiality, particularly the matter of politics and value and the semiotics of material life. We suggest that non-mutuality and exclusion are especially apparent in contexts where kinship intersects with the consolidation of economic and human capital. We then draw attention to the ways in which material signs are productive forces of relatedness in day-today interactions between humans, non-humans, and other material things. By examining the gaps and fissures within kinship through the lens of material practice, the contributors to this special section uncover new opportunities for critical engagement with theories of difference, semiotics, and value.

Comparative projects and the limits of choice: ethnography and microfinance in India and Paraguay

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2016

In recent years, microfinance-the suite of financial products offered to the poor-has been widely... more In recent years, microfinance-the suite of financial products offered to the poor-has been widely adopted in international development policy. Organizations around the world have replicated this model successfully. This essay takes the comparative case more explicitly to read against the tendency to understand microfinance as the globally institutionalized and realized norm, and local unruly credit economies as the exception. We go beyond comparing credit in India and Paraguay in order to illustrate how comparison is actually central to the banking practices of microfinance. Moreover, it is the collaborative anthropological project that helps to show this, allowing not only for empirical grounds of comparison, but also raising theoretical and methodological questions of comparison itself. In juxtaposing microfinance in our two fieldsites, we find that as credit proliferates globally, so do the comparative projects both of borrowers and lenders in the disparate worlds of Kolkata and Ciudad del Este. At the same time, these were constrained by the global financial comparisons between countries made by investors. Ethnographic methods are vital for understanding how microfinance becomes part of a wider repertoire of financial strategies used by women while simultaneously offering the grounds for women to undertake their own acts of comparison.

The social unit of debt: Gender and creditworthiness in Paraguayan microfinance

American Ethnologist, 2014

Reconciling Debt: Microcredit and the Politics of Indigeneity in Argentina's Altiplano

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2010

... distributed (though at the time of this research, the cooperative had consistently showed a n... more

Weedy Finance: Weather Insurance and Parametric Life on Unstable Grounds

Cultural Anthropology, 2021

Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance c... more Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance companies are now selling weather derivatives to poor farmers, this article tracks financial practices that depend less on the healthy crops and more on the weeds that thrive among the profitable plants. Parametric insurance operates like a derivative and is triggered by certain weather conditions, which raises questions about the limits of survivability for human-crop relations. I sketch out a series of concerns about weeds as an entry point and helpful heuristic for multiple overlapping kinds of speculation in a multispecies, capitalist, and troubled landscape. By gridding the world to a limited set of expedient parameters, what generative social and human grounds do we lose in the process? A speculative anthropological imaginary might posit “weedy finance” as a critical standpoint and set of political claims for casting climate-based finance as one of the lively systems that can and sh...

Gender and COVID-19

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2021

The pandemic through a feminist lens Despite the rapidly evolving and uncertain epidemiology of C... more The pandemic through a feminist lens Despite the rapidly evolving and uncertain epidemiology of COVID-19, the gendered effects of the pandemic and the ensuing political, economic, and health policies to mitigate its effects are already becoming apparent at the time of writing (2021). The labor market analyst C. Nicole Mason, who leads the Institute for Women's Policy Research, calls the economic fallout of the pandemic a "shecession" (Gupta 2020) as women make up the majority of the workforce in sectors that have been most impacted by social distancing guidelines (e.g., retail and hospitality) and are further impacted by the collapse of the childcare industry in many countries. In the United States, black and Latina women work disproportionately in essential services on the frontline of the pandemic and are at higher risk of contracting the virus (Zine 2020). In Australia, political analysts have linked the men-first approach to pandemic relief-that is, supporting industries dominated by men and tax cuts where men are projected to get more than twice the benefit as women-to the poor representation of women in government (73.9 percent of cabinet ministers are men and 73.2 percent of the Liberal National Party government's members of parliament are men [Wallace 2020]). Universities typify many of these trends. In the pandemic's first year, women scientists made up a small fraction of the experts tapped to shape public opinion and steer national task forces (about 24 percent), while the gender imbalance in publishing output has widened considerably across disciplines (Minello 2020). As feminist scholarship has long attested, caring responsibilities continue to devolve to women, and university academics are no exception. Indeed, the sexual division of labor in households has only been exacerbated by the crisis in childcare and home-schooling responsibilities under national and targeted stay-at-home orders. Simply put, the pandemic is exposing gendered inequalities that feminist scholars have been naming, theorizing, and militating against since at least the 1970s. How might feminist anthropology document and analyze the profound shifts catalyzed by a global pandemic, the effects of which are most often cast in depersonalized, data-driven, epidemiological, and economic terms? Moreover, how might we begin to pick out the gendered effects of COVID-19 when it is understood as a radically egalitarian pathogen: "The virus does not discriminate!" has been one of the signature slogans of the public health response. To answer these questions and view the pandemic as a gendered disaster, anthropologists have adopted a feminist lens to peer inside these medical and market aggregates. What has emerged is a story of both human and interspecies differences that locates and

'Risky Data' for Inclusive Microinsurance Infrastructures

Development and Change, 2021

The recent enthusiasm for 'big data' (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interp... more The recent enthusiasm for 'big data' (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interpenetration of public social policy and data from private technology firms. This article examines the process in reverse, whereby public information systems become the basis for increasing financial intermediation. Drawing on ethnographic research on Paraguayan microinsurance programmes, this article describes the broader mandate of 'financial inclusion' embedded in the suite of banking services that support the state's conditional cash transfer welfare initiative, Tekoporã. The article analyses the process by which inclusive insurance infrastructures are built and maintained as an opportunity to critique the political economy of data production that supports financialization. The concept of 'risky data' describes not only the way that the social lives and relations of the poor are quantified and converted into financial knowledge, but also the way that the urgent new mandate to produce such data further exposes public policy and state institutions to new risks to their legitimacy. The Paraguayan case exemplifies the key mechanism of 'risky data' for inclusive infrastructures: the extraction of financial value and speculative profits from state-led investment in a public resource, which amplifies the risks of both service denial and data surveillance.

Subprime Empire On the In-Betweenness of Finance

by Carly Schuster and Sohini Kar

Current Anthropology, 2021

In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to bl... more In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to blame: reckless speculative finance or irresponsible (often low-income) borrowers. This essay takes up this set of moral arguments about what the poor can and should be able to afford by examining subprime logics at a global scale: subprime empire. Predatory lending in heartland America and development-oriented microcredit in places such as India and Paraguay appear not just to be geographically disparate but also to have different moral valences. After closer inspection, however, we argue that subprime lending and microfinance are two sides of the same coin. Our analysis of microfinance allows us to understand what is happening in the "in-between" as capital flows between financial investors and poor borrowers. By comparing financialization in India and Paraguay, we document and theorize the making of subprime empires that rely on actors within marginal financial sites to stabilize the evaluative frameworks and social interdependencies that make profits flow. We argue that the forms of financial capture and conversion in the "financial inbetween" reproduce imperial dynamics by naturalizing the limited expectations of economic subjects of the global south and erasing the violence inherent in these forms of economic redistribution that maintain those expectations as such.

WEEDY FINANCE: Weather Insurance and Parametric Life on Unstable Grounds

Cultural Anthropology, 2021

Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance c... more Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance companies are now selling weather derivatives to poor farmers, this article tracks financial practices that depend less on the healthy crops and more on the weeds that thrive among the profitable plants. Parametric insurance operates like a derivative and is triggered by certain weather conditions, which raises questions about the limits of survivability for human-crop relations. I sketch out a series of concerns about weeds as an entry point and helpful heuristic for multiple overlapping kinds of speculation in a multispecies, capitalist, and troubled landscape. By grid- ding the world to a limited set of expedient parameters, what generative social and human grounds do we lose in the process? A speculative anthropological imaginary might posit “weedy finance” as a critical standpoint and set of political claims for casting climate-based finance as one of the lively systems that can and should be intentionally and selectively weeded out. [financialization; parametric insurance; weather; commercial agriculture; kinship; Paraguay]

Ethnography, 2018

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor migh... more The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on Terror. We define ''extreme fieldwork'' as a research design likely to yield the kinds of data that Price identifies as ''Dual Use Anthropology.'' The bulk of our essay is devoted to providing warrants for the claim that there are strong incentives to brand oneself as an ''extreme'' fieldworker-which may be the post-9/11 equivalent of chasing what Trouillot called the ''savage slot.'' We argue that for some topics in certain research settings, uncomfortably, the more care and effort one invests in ethnographic best practices, the more likely it is that the researcher will engage in behaviors that could be confused with spycraft.

The Indebted Wage: Putting Financial Products to Work in Paraguay's Tri-Border Area

Anthropological Quarterly, 2019

This article focuses on what I will call the “indebted wage”: the pro- cess through which wage la... more This article focuses on what I will call the “indebted wage”: the pro-
cess through which wage labor is transformed into financial assets and new forms of accumulation. I begin with the observation that many Paraguayan families work in order to channel money into debt-based investments. This invites a conceptual shift: can we extend the wage relationships outward from a language of exploitation and into a language of indebtedness as well? I track the effort invested in “keeping on payment,” investments in the infamous free trade zone on Paraguay’s triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil, how money moves into economies of debt, and processes whereby the wage is restructured as an investment. I argue that while both the poor and elites of Paraguay see promise in Ciudad del Este’s de-regulated market, it is the low income and precarious labor of the working poor that bears the risks without accumulating the wealth of these transfers. [Keywords: Labor, financialization, credit/ debt, kinship, gender, family businesses, Latin America]

The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2019

R e s u m e n En la Triple Frontera entre Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, la ciudad paraguaya de Ci... more R e s u m e n En la Triple Frontera entre Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, la ciudad paraguaya de Ciudad del Este es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotel-lamiento para las rutas de contrabando en el hemisferio, el mercado del contrabando-o actividades mau-arroja una serie de preguntas sobre la legitimidad y el capitalismo comercial. Muestro c ´ omo los autos mau se articulan en una serie de embotellamientos, desde 'hacer fila' en el puente internacional, el trabajo de 'cazacoches' que confiscan los vehículos robados, hasta una fuerzá elite de la aduana encargada de la vigilancia de los autos de contrabando de Paraguay. Mau es una expresí on y un mecanismo para regular el capitalismo de frontera, la acumulací on y el libre comercio. Por lo tanto, se debe tratar a mau como una forma reguladora de gobernanza económicaecon´económica en tensí on dinámica con la terminología p ´ ublica y oficial del comercio, como la "integrací on" económicaecon´económica y la "libre circulací on" que dominan el mercado comúncom´común del Mercosur. [Burocracia, capital-ismo fronterizo, contrabando, economía informal, fronteras, Paraguay, Triple Frontera, zona franca] A b s t r a c t Within the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is infamous for stolen cars. Since Ciudad del Este is a crucial bottleneck for smuggling on the continent, the contraband-or mau-car market throws up a series of questions about legitimacy and commercial capitalism. I show how mau cars articulate across a series of bottlenecks, from traffic snarls on the international bridge, to the work of insurance adjustors who seize stolen vehicles, to an elite customs task force charged with surveillance of Paraguay's contraband cars. Mau is an idiom as well as a practical mechanism for regulating frontier capitalism, accumulation, and 498 J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

Gender and COVID‐19

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2021

Feminist insights have already played an important role in our rapidly developing understanding o... more Feminist insights have already played an important role in our rapidly developing understanding of COVID-19. Intersectional research has drawn attention to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on women of color?particularly in the care industry and essential services?as well as the amplified discrimination faced by LGBTQI+ people. Understanding the pandemic as a gendered catastrophe builds outward from feminist anthropological research, thematizing two key areas: (1) masculinity and (2) the home as a site of gendered labor. Since the 1970s anthropologists have led scholarly debates about the domestic?public distinction, and since the 1990s they have incorporated feminist theory into the disciplinary mainstream's engagement with men and manhood. Paying attention to how familiar dichotomies such as nature/culture and public/private operate during the crisis can yield unexpected insights and alliances, offering powerful conceptual tools to turn feminist anthropology's le...

Your family and friends are collateral: microfinance and the social

Cultural Anthropology, 2015

This essay is part of a collaborative project, broadly conceived as "Generating Capitalism,&... more This essay is part of a collaborative project, broadly conceived as "Generating Capitalism," or the Gens collective. The introductory abstract for the project can be found at the Cultural Anthropology journal's "Theorizing the Contemporary" series: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/650-generating-capitalism.

‘Risky Data’ for Inclusive Microinsurance Infrastructures

The recent enthusiasm for &#39;big data&#39; (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the i... more The recent enthusiasm for &#39;big data&#39; (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interpenetration of public social policy and data from private technology firms. This article examines the process in reverse, whereby public information systems become the basis for increasing financial intermediation. Drawing on ethnographic research on Paraguayan microinsurance programmes, this article describes the broader mandate of &#39;financial inclusion&#39; embedded in the suite of banking services that support the state&#39;s conditional cash transfer welfare initiative, Tekoporã. The article analyses the process by which inclusive insurance infrastructures are built and maintained as an opportunity to critique the political economy of data production that supports financialization. The concept of &#39;risky data&#39; describes not only the way that the social lives and relations of the poor are quantified and converted into financial knowledge, but also the way that the urgent new mandate to produce such data further exposes public policy and state institutions to new risks to their legitimacy. The Paraguayan case exemplifies the key mechanism of &#39;risky data&#39; for inclusive infrastructures: the extraction of financial value and speculative profits from state-led investment in a public resource, which amplifies the risks of both service denial and data surveillance.

Gender and smuggling

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling, 2021

The dominant approach to gender and smuggling in criminological debates has been premised on the ... more The dominant approach to gender and smuggling in criminological debates has been premised on the notion of women's progressive "emancipation" from restrictive and patriarchal gender roles (Selmini, 2020; Siegel, 2014: 56). It was understood that feminist political struggles the world over would shatter glass ceilings and lead to gender parity, including parity in the illicit labour of smuggling and organised crime. Summarising this thinking, Siegel (2014: 56) writes that, according to this approach, the role of women in criminal families was previously limited to being a passive, obedient and silent wife, mother and sister whose task was to take care of the household, raise the children, participate in funerals and weddings and promote the image of the male family member as 'men of honour.' These social restrictions were expected to be erased by changing gender norms and women's liberation. Early-and controversial-feminist theories (e.g., Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975) emerged from the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1970s and posited that patterns revealing women's comparative absence from criminal activity would evolve once women were included as active and independent participants in the labour market and public sphere (Selmini, 2020: 347). In the decades after feminist debates focused attention on women's liberation-including gender parity when it came to criminal profits-the 'emancipation' hypothesis has been critically re-evaluated along two axes. First, feminist theory has taken a much more nuanced approach to gender justice, particularly through wider explorations of subjectivity (Bourgois, 1996; Hautzinger, 2007), gender relations (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005), and multiple intersecting forms of inequality (Thomas and Galemba, 2013). Second, the emancipation hypothesis was revealed to be a fallacy based on "a lack of in-depth historical research [that] has resulted in the misleading observation that in the past only very few women occupied top positions in organized crime" (Siegel, 2014: 63). The rejection of progressive narratives of women's empowerment was paired with a burgeoning research agenda tracking the global flows of information, economic opportunity, media representations, and communication channels that position women in complex ways vis-à-vis illegal markets (Kleemans et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2007). Despite feminist scholarship challenging the traditional view and documenting women's multifaceted role in illicit economies, both popular and scholarly accounts reproduce and

Subprime Empire

Current Anthropology, 2021

In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to bl... more In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to blame: reckless speculative finance or irresponsible (often low-income) borrowers. This essay takes up this set of moral arguments about what the poor can and should be able to afford by examining subprime logics at a global scale: subprime empire. Predatory lending in heartland America and development-oriented microcredit in places such as India and Paraguay appear not just to be geographically disparate but also to have different moral valences. After closer inspection, however, we argue that subprime lending and microfinance are two sides of the same coin. Our analysis of microfinance allows us to understand what is happening in the "in-between" as capital flows between financial investors and poor borrowers. By comparing financialization in India and Paraguay, we document and theorize the making of subprime empires that rely on actors within marginal financial sites to stabilize the evaluative frameworks and social interdependencies that make profits flow. We argue that the forms of financial capture and conversion in the "financial inbetween" reproduce imperial dynamics by naturalizing the limited expectations of economic subjects of the global south and erasing the violence inherent in these forms of economic redistribution that maintain those expectations as such.

The Indebted Wage: Putting Financial Products to Work in Paraguay's Tri-Border Area

Anthropological Quarterly, 2019

ABSTRACT:This article focuses on what I will call the "indebted wage": the process thro... more ABSTRACT:This article focuses on what I will call the "indebted wage": the process through which wage labor is transformed into financial assets and new forms of accumulation. I begin with the observation that many Paraguayan families work in order to channel money into debt-based investments. This invites a conceptual shift: can we extend the wage relationships outward from a language of exploitation and into a language of indebtedness as well? I track the effort invested in "keeping on payment," investments in the infamous free trade zone on Paraguay's triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil, how money moves into economies of debt, and processes whereby the wage is restructured as an investment. I argue that while both the poor and elites of Paraguay see promise in Ciudad del Este's de-regulated market, it is the low income and precarious labor of the working poor that bears the risks without accumulating the wealth of these transfers.

The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2019

es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotellamiento para las rutas de... more es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotellamiento para las rutas de contrabando en el hemisferio, el mercado del contrabando-o actividades mau-arroja una serie de preguntas sobre la legitimidad y el capitalismo comercial. Muestro cómo los autos mau se articulan en una serie de embotellamientos, desde 'hacer fila' en el puente internacional, el trabajo de 'cazacoches' que confiscan los vehículos robados, hasta una fuerzaélite de la aduana encargada de la vigilancia de los autos de contrabando de Paraguay. Mau es una expresión y un mecanismo para regular el capitalismo de frontera, la acumulación y el libre comercio. Por lo tanto, se debe tratar a mau como una forma reguladora de gobernanza económica en tensión dinámica con la terminología pública y oficial del comercio, como la "integración" económica y la "libre circulación" que dominan el mercado común del Mercosur. [Burocracia, capitalismo fronterizo, contrabando, economía informal, fronteras, Paraguay, Triple Frontera, zona franca] A b s t r a c t Within the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is infamous for stolen cars. Since Ciudad del Este is a crucial bottleneck for smuggling on the continent, the contraband-or mau-car market throws up a series of questions about legitimacy and commercial capitalism. I show how mau cars articulate across a series of bottlenecks, from traffic snarls on the international bridge, to the work of insurance adjustors who seize stolen vehicles, to an elite customs task force charged with surveillance of Paraguay's contraband cars. Mau is an idiom as well as a practical mechanism for regulating frontier capitalism, accumulation, and

Ethnography, 2017

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor ... more The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on Terror. We define “extreme fieldwork” as a research design likely to yield the kinds of data that Price identifies as “Dual Use Anthropology.” The bulk of our essay is devoted to providing warrants for the claim that there are strong incentives to brand oneself as an “extreme” fieldworker – which may be the post-9/11 equivalent of chasing what Trouillot called the “savage slot.” We argue that for some topics in certain research settings, uncomfortably, the more care and effort one invests in ethnographic best practices, the more likely it is that...

Introduction: (De)materializing Kinship—Holding Together Mutuality and Difference

Social Analysis, 2016

Although kinship studies have traditionally focused on 'solidarity' and 'mutuality', dis-alignmen... more Although kinship studies have traditionally focused on 'solidarity' and 'mutuality', dis-alignment, exclusion, and difference are equally crucial foci for analysis. In this introduction, we explore articulations of mutuality and difference through the lens of materiality, particularly the matter of politics and value and the semiotics of material life. We suggest that non-mutuality and exclusion are especially apparent in contexts where kinship intersects with the consolidation of economic and human capital. We then draw attention to the ways in which material signs are productive forces of relatedness in day-today interactions between humans, non-humans, and other material things. By examining the gaps and fissures within kinship through the lens of material practice, the contributors to this special section uncover new opportunities for critical engagement with theories of difference, semiotics, and value.

Comparative projects and the limits of choice: ethnography and microfinance in India and Paraguay

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2016

In recent years, microfinance-the suite of financial products offered to the poor-has been widely... more In recent years, microfinance-the suite of financial products offered to the poor-has been widely adopted in international development policy. Organizations around the world have replicated this model successfully. This essay takes the comparative case more explicitly to read against the tendency to understand microfinance as the globally institutionalized and realized norm, and local unruly credit economies as the exception. We go beyond comparing credit in India and Paraguay in order to illustrate how comparison is actually central to the banking practices of microfinance. Moreover, it is the collaborative anthropological project that helps to show this, allowing not only for empirical grounds of comparison, but also raising theoretical and methodological questions of comparison itself. In juxtaposing microfinance in our two fieldsites, we find that as credit proliferates globally, so do the comparative projects both of borrowers and lenders in the disparate worlds of Kolkata and Ciudad del Este. At the same time, these were constrained by the global financial comparisons between countries made by investors. Ethnographic methods are vital for understanding how microfinance becomes part of a wider repertoire of financial strategies used by women while simultaneously offering the grounds for women to undertake their own acts of comparison.

The social unit of debt: Gender and creditworthiness in Paraguayan microfinance

American Ethnologist, 2014

Reconciling Debt: Microcredit and the Politics of Indigeneity in Argentina's Altiplano

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2010

... distributed (though at the time of this research, the cooperative had consistently showed a n... more

Weedy Finance: Weather Insurance and Parametric Life on Unstable Grounds

Cultural Anthropology, 2021

Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance c... more Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance companies are now selling weather derivatives to poor farmers, this article tracks financial practices that depend less on the healthy crops and more on the weeds that thrive among the profitable plants. Parametric insurance operates like a derivative and is triggered by certain weather conditions, which raises questions about the limits of survivability for human-crop relations. I sketch out a series of concerns about weeds as an entry point and helpful heuristic for multiple overlapping kinds of speculation in a multispecies, capitalist, and troubled landscape. By gridding the world to a limited set of expedient parameters, what generative social and human grounds do we lose in the process? A speculative anthropological imaginary might posit “weedy finance” as a critical standpoint and set of political claims for casting climate-based finance as one of the lively systems that can and sh...

Gender and COVID-19

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2021

The pandemic through a feminist lens Despite the rapidly evolving and uncertain epidemiology of C... more The pandemic through a feminist lens Despite the rapidly evolving and uncertain epidemiology of COVID-19, the gendered effects of the pandemic and the ensuing political, economic, and health policies to mitigate its effects are already becoming apparent at the time of writing (2021). The labor market analyst C. Nicole Mason, who leads the Institute for Women's Policy Research, calls the economic fallout of the pandemic a "shecession" (Gupta 2020) as women make up the majority of the workforce in sectors that have been most impacted by social distancing guidelines (e.g., retail and hospitality) and are further impacted by the collapse of the childcare industry in many countries. In the United States, black and Latina women work disproportionately in essential services on the frontline of the pandemic and are at higher risk of contracting the virus (Zine 2020). In Australia, political analysts have linked the men-first approach to pandemic relief-that is, supporting industries dominated by men and tax cuts where men are projected to get more than twice the benefit as women-to the poor representation of women in government (73.9 percent of cabinet ministers are men and 73.2 percent of the Liberal National Party government's members of parliament are men [Wallace 2020]). Universities typify many of these trends. In the pandemic's first year, women scientists made up a small fraction of the experts tapped to shape public opinion and steer national task forces (about 24 percent), while the gender imbalance in publishing output has widened considerably across disciplines (Minello 2020). As feminist scholarship has long attested, caring responsibilities continue to devolve to women, and university academics are no exception. Indeed, the sexual division of labor in households has only been exacerbated by the crisis in childcare and home-schooling responsibilities under national and targeted stay-at-home orders. Simply put, the pandemic is exposing gendered inequalities that feminist scholars have been naming, theorizing, and militating against since at least the 1970s. How might feminist anthropology document and analyze the profound shifts catalyzed by a global pandemic, the effects of which are most often cast in depersonalized, data-driven, epidemiological, and economic terms? Moreover, how might we begin to pick out the gendered effects of COVID-19 when it is understood as a radically egalitarian pathogen: "The virus does not discriminate!" has been one of the signature slogans of the public health response. To answer these questions and view the pandemic as a gendered disaster, anthropologists have adopted a feminist lens to peer inside these medical and market aggregates. What has emerged is a story of both human and interspecies differences that locates and

'Risky Data' for Inclusive Microinsurance Infrastructures

Development and Change, 2021

The recent enthusiasm for 'big data' (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interp... more The recent enthusiasm for 'big data' (Data for Development, D4D) highlights the increasing interpenetration of public social policy and data from private technology firms. This article examines the process in reverse, whereby public information systems become the basis for increasing financial intermediation. Drawing on ethnographic research on Paraguayan microinsurance programmes, this article describes the broader mandate of 'financial inclusion' embedded in the suite of banking services that support the state's conditional cash transfer welfare initiative, Tekoporã. The article analyses the process by which inclusive insurance infrastructures are built and maintained as an opportunity to critique the political economy of data production that supports financialization. The concept of 'risky data' describes not only the way that the social lives and relations of the poor are quantified and converted into financial knowledge, but also the way that the urgent new mandate to produce such data further exposes public policy and state institutions to new risks to their legitimacy. The Paraguayan case exemplifies the key mechanism of 'risky data' for inclusive infrastructures: the extraction of financial value and speculative profits from state-led investment in a public resource, which amplifies the risks of both service denial and data surveillance.

Subprime Empire On the In-Betweenness of Finance

by Carly Schuster and Sohini Kar

Current Anthropology, 2021

In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to bl... more In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to blame: reckless speculative finance or irresponsible (often low-income) borrowers. This essay takes up this set of moral arguments about what the poor can and should be able to afford by examining subprime logics at a global scale: subprime empire. Predatory lending in heartland America and development-oriented microcredit in places such as India and Paraguay appear not just to be geographically disparate but also to have different moral valences. After closer inspection, however, we argue that subprime lending and microfinance are two sides of the same coin. Our analysis of microfinance allows us to understand what is happening in the "in-between" as capital flows between financial investors and poor borrowers. By comparing financialization in India and Paraguay, we document and theorize the making of subprime empires that rely on actors within marginal financial sites to stabilize the evaluative frameworks and social interdependencies that make profits flow. We argue that the forms of financial capture and conversion in the "financial inbetween" reproduce imperial dynamics by naturalizing the limited expectations of economic subjects of the global south and erasing the violence inherent in these forms of economic redistribution that maintain those expectations as such.

WEEDY FINANCE: Weather Insurance and Parametric Life on Unstable Grounds

Cultural Anthropology, 2021

Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance c... more Based in the agrarian worlds of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, where insurance companies are now selling weather derivatives to poor farmers, this article tracks financial practices that depend less on the healthy crops and more on the weeds that thrive among the profitable plants. Parametric insurance operates like a derivative and is triggered by certain weather conditions, which raises questions about the limits of survivability for human-crop relations. I sketch out a series of concerns about weeds as an entry point and helpful heuristic for multiple overlapping kinds of speculation in a multispecies, capitalist, and troubled landscape. By grid- ding the world to a limited set of expedient parameters, what generative social and human grounds do we lose in the process? A speculative anthropological imaginary might posit “weedy finance” as a critical standpoint and set of political claims for casting climate-based finance as one of the lively systems that can and should be intentionally and selectively weeded out. [financialization; parametric insurance; weather; commercial agriculture; kinship; Paraguay]

Ethnography, 2018

The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor migh... more The discipline of anthropology recoils instinctively at the idea that its researchers' labor might contribute to the national security state; other disciplines celebrate the same contributions as evidence of policy impact. In this article, we examine the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on Terror. We define ''extreme fieldwork'' as a research design likely to yield the kinds of data that Price identifies as ''Dual Use Anthropology.'' The bulk of our essay is devoted to providing warrants for the claim that there are strong incentives to brand oneself as an ''extreme'' fieldworker-which may be the post-9/11 equivalent of chasing what Trouillot called the ''savage slot.'' We argue that for some topics in certain research settings, uncomfortably, the more care and effort one invests in ethnographic best practices, the more likely it is that the researcher will engage in behaviors that could be confused with spycraft.

The Indebted Wage: Putting Financial Products to Work in Paraguay's Tri-Border Area

Anthropological Quarterly, 2019

This article focuses on what I will call the “indebted wage”: the pro- cess through which wage la... more This article focuses on what I will call the “indebted wage”: the pro-
cess through which wage labor is transformed into financial assets and new forms of accumulation. I begin with the observation that many Paraguayan families work in order to channel money into debt-based investments. This invites a conceptual shift: can we extend the wage relationships outward from a language of exploitation and into a language of indebtedness as well? I track the effort invested in “keeping on payment,” investments in the infamous free trade zone on Paraguay’s triple frontier with Argentina and Brazil, how money moves into economies of debt, and processes whereby the wage is restructured as an investment. I argue that while both the poor and elites of Paraguay see promise in Ciudad del Este’s de-regulated market, it is the low income and precarious labor of the working poor that bears the risks without accumulating the wealth of these transfers. [Keywords: Labor, financialization, credit/ debt, kinship, gender, family businesses, Latin America]

The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 2019

R e s u m e n En la Triple Frontera entre Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, la ciudad paraguaya de Ci... more R e s u m e n En la Triple Frontera entre Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, la ciudad paraguaya de Ciudad del Este es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotel-lamiento para las rutas de contrabando en el hemisferio, el mercado del contrabando-o actividades mau-arroja una serie de preguntas sobre la legitimidad y el capitalismo comercial. Muestro c ´ omo los autos mau se articulan en una serie de embotellamientos, desde 'hacer fila' en el puente internacional, el trabajo de 'cazacoches' que confiscan los vehículos robados, hasta una fuerzá elite de la aduana encargada de la vigilancia de los autos de contrabando de Paraguay. Mau es una expresí on y un mecanismo para regular el capitalismo de frontera, la acumulací on y el libre comercio. Por lo tanto, se debe tratar a mau como una forma reguladora de gobernanza económicaecon´económica en tensí on dinámica con la terminología p ´ ublica y oficial del comercio, como la "integrací on" económicaecon´económica y la "libre circulací on" que dominan el mercado comúncom´común del Mercosur. [Burocracia, capital-ismo fronterizo, contrabando, economía informal, fronteras, Paraguay, Triple Frontera, zona franca] A b s t r a c t Within the tri-border area where Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay meet, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is infamous for stolen cars. Since Ciudad del Este is a crucial bottleneck for smuggling on the continent, the contraband-or mau-car market throws up a series of questions about legitimacy and commercial capitalism. I show how mau cars articulate across a series of bottlenecks, from traffic snarls on the international bridge, to the work of insurance adjustors who seize stolen vehicles, to an elite customs task force charged with surveillance of Paraguay's contraband cars. Mau is an idiom as well as a practical mechanism for regulating frontier capitalism, accumulation, and 498 J o u r n a l o f L a t i n A m e r i c a n a n d C a r i b b e a n A n t h r o p o l o g y

Gender and Smuggling

THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF SMUGGLING, 2021

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research r... more The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research related to smuggling, reflecting on key themes, and charting current and future trends. Divided into six parts and spanning over 30 chapters, the volume covers themes such as mobility, borders, violent conflict, and state politics, as well as looks at the smuggling of specific goods-from rice and gasoline to wildlife, weapons, and cocaine. Chapters engage with some of the most contentious academic and policy debates of the twenty-first century, including the historical creation of borders, re-bordering, the criminalisation of migration, and the politics of selective toleration of smuggling. As it maps a field that contains unique methodological, ethical, and risk-related challenges, the book takes stock not only of the state of our shared knowledge, but also reflects on how this has been produced, pointing to blind spots and providing an informed vision of the future of the field. Bringing together established and emerging scholars from around the world, The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of conflict studies, borderland studies, criminology, political science, global development, anthropology, sociology, and geography.

Chapter 1: Entrepreneurship (in Social Collateral: Women and Microfinance in Paraguay's Smuggling Economy)

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt Along a South Asian River

Review: The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson (eds.), Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013. 475 pp.

In the Weeds: Teaching Weedy Anthropology and an Interview with Caroline E. Schuster (Society for Cultural Anthropology)

by Janita Van Dyk and Carly Schuster

Fieldsights, 2022

For this supplementals post, Janita Van Dyk and Caroline E. Schuster created a sample syllabus, w... more For this supplementals post, Janita Van Dyk and Caroline E. Schuster created a sample syllabus, which includes discussion questions, pedagogical exercises, and a final assignment for a course on “Weedy Anthropology.” This syllabus is partial and could feature additional weeks and readings based on interest and familiarity. Instructors can also fold selections of readings and exercises into existing syllabi—on the more-than-human and multispecies, the political ecology of agrarian and agricultural landscapes, and settler ecologies and plantations.

Following the sample syllabus, this supplemental post also features an interview with Schuster, where she discusses the numerous ways that farming and insurance are entangled with “benevolent development” in the Global South, financial speculation in agricultural settings, the commodification of food, and the intersecting temporalities of finance and agriculture.

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