Financialisation and Social Reproduction in Baku, Azerbaijan

My current project examines how financialisation and financial instruments are linked to household social reproduction and class transformation in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku. Following a decade of dramatic oil-fuelled economic growth, the recent oil-price crisis has seen Azerbaijan face economic woes with banking sector instability, currency devaluation, and mounting household indebtedness. This has put the country’s state-driven development model under pressure and undermined its relative economic independence vis-à-vis the world system. So how has this emerging economic landscape of financialisation been formed in relation to elite interests? How does it articulate with broader trends of financial globalisation? And most importantly, how do these processes affect the economic situation of the population?

I use a mixed quantitative/qualitative approach to research everyday household financial practices and the domestication of financial instruments (savings, loans, mortgages) by different segments of Baku’s population. The survey, administered to 150 participants, will explore how the use of financial instruments by households relates to the economic and social status of their members in order to identify how the financialisation processes may contribute to patterns of socio-economic stratification. This shall be complemented by in-depth, semi-structured interviews with household members and ethnography of household and community economic practices. In addition, I shall seek to contextualise this with expert interviews that explore the recent economic history of Azerbaijan, especially the development of the banking sector as it is embedded both within the particular economic context and power structures of Azerbaijan and as it relates to broader economic processes.

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