Back to Search
Start Over
'New' but 'Squeezed': Middle Class and Mortgaged Homeownership in Croatia.
- Source :
-
Critique of Anthropology . Dec2022, Vol. 42 Issue 4, p439-456. 18p. - Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- Some recent anthropological accounts of middle classes centred on their indebted home-ownership. They stressed its two contrastive logics fitting a wider binary – exposing 'squeezed' middle classes in the global North to increasing risks, and supporting the ascent of their 'new' counterparts in the South. The genealogy of middle-class housing debt in Croatia presented in this article reveals another, post-socialist trajectory where mundane and opaque institutional practices regulating access to housing finance, such as bank credit scoring and the allocation of state housing benefits, were key in steering a middle class inherited from socialism towards mortgaged home-ownership. The latter was articulated as a middle-class experience only after the 2000s credit boom had come to an end and the consequences of rampant predatory lending became visible and subject to contestation. The resulting middle-class subjectivities are ambiguous and, as comparisons with other Eastern European cases suggest, accessible for a range of political projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0308275X
- Volume :
- 42
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- Critique of Anthropology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 160375381
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X221139159