Abstract
Financial diaries were first developed by Stuart Rutherford to provide a better method for understanding the lives of people living in precarious conditions around the world. Financial diaries help uncover the social relations that are hidden in nationwide statistics by adding important ethnographic and financial information on a day-to-day basis. The financial diaries in the present study track the daily cash flows of 39 people from March 2015 to November 2016 in the town of Kapasia, Bangladesh. The diaries provide a precise look at the different financial decisions the diarists took over time and the different interactions that others had with them. We propose the usage of financial diaries as a way to enhance both the practical and philosophical aspects of the capabilities approach, using an approach that is broadly informed by sociological theory. Money is a process underpinned by many different types of religious, political, economic and social relations. Through financial diary data we try to delineate the rules and resources embedded in the social structure of the diarists to understand some of their capabilities. The present chapter provides examples measuring how resources such as debt, transfers and gifts can either enhance or reduce people’s ability to be and do different things.
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Change history
24 November 2020
Correction to: V. Beck et al. (eds.), Dimensions of Poverty, Philosophy and Poverty 2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31711-9_21
Notes
- 1.
The diarists live and work around the market town of Kapasia, whose population is over 350,000 people according to a 2011 census (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics 2012).
- 2.
We would like to express our deep gratitude to Stuart Rutherford, Md Kalimullah and all the staff at P9 for their time, support, insights and for providing us with the data and background information that made this research possible.
- 3.
All the diarists’ names are changed for confidentiality purposes.
- 4.
The other financial diaries research around the world that we reviewed above are in line with our claims.
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Linares, J., Su, Yh. (2020). Measuring Capabilities: Using Financial Diaries in Bangladesh. In: Beck, V., Hahn, H., Lepenies, R. (eds) Dimensions of Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31711-9_21
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