Debt and Emotional Labour in Present Day Serbia

On the Affects of Indebtedness

Abstract

This article deals with the affective aspects of indebtedness in present-day Serbia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Belgrade and Šabac during the period 2016-19, it analyses gendered aspects of affective states created and triggered by indebtedness. Indebtedness is here conceptualized to involve not just material and financial obligation, but also asymmetry in emotional labour. That way, the article contributes to the line of research that challenges understandings of debt as a binary relationship between creditor and debtor and argues for a perspective that encompasses the complex affective involvements of indebted subjects and the imbrication of indebtedness, emotional labour, love and care in the everyday life. The ethnographic fieldwork setting is kafana, a tavern with the live neofolk music, which is a space for reflection, expression or venting of the affects, but primarily for their modification, and therefore a primary site for research on postsocialist affect(s). Through the ethnographic vignettes of requesting, performing and consuming songs, as well as material obtained from the pre- and post-performance conversations with employees and customers who found themselves in different situations of debt, it analyses the affective registers of indebtedness and points out that the gendered asymmetry in care debt is formulated in the language and logic of emotional capitalism.