Credit Consumption As a Gift Expression Under the Perspective of Low Income Elderly

Abstract

Objective: this article reports the results of a study that sought to investigate how credit consumption is expressed as a gift from the perspective of  seniors with low income.

Method: this research made use of ethnographic procedures of participant observation and interview. For the analysis of the data collected, it was used the discursive textual analysis.

Originality/relevance: the credit works as a major component of cultural functions capable of generating a sense of freedom or imprisonment, working too like a mechanism of production and governance of collective and individual subjectivities, which has been few studies under the prism of the elderly of income.

Results: it was possible to note that the gift holds not only the paying-act objectivity but, above all, it penetrates the subjective, transforming something singular and unique, including the affections, the bonds, the emotions, into something manageable as borrowing the name to take a credit. The gift is lived in community, its effects are announced and the breaking of any part of the cycle represents an act against the community itself and not only an elderly person.

Theoretical contributions: the theoretical discussion is based on the discussion of gift cycle and the symbolic consumption of credit in Brazilian culture, especially in the context of the low-income elderly, exceeding the habitual view of this theme in literature.

Social and managerial implications: the discussion is based on the premise that by combining these topics, it is possible to note the cultural impact of credit in the market.