The retail-banking expansion in Chile and the "democratisation" of credit practices: juggling with threats, opportunities, and the unavoidable

This paper tries to address how Chilean households are dealing with the retailled“democratisation” of credit that the neoliberal Chilean society hasexperienced from 20 years ago. The social place of credit use and indebtednesshas been researched in the context of austerity measures, sovereign debtissues, and the subprime crisis; fewer accounts have drawn attention in placeswhere the credit expansion had happened in times of economic growth, andmoreover has been considered an essential feature of modernisation and theestablishment of a consumer culture. Using theory of practices as a syntheticapproach, contradictory elements in everyday lives of families emergesattached to credit practices.