Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The project aimed to collect detailed oral testimony from 40 retired working-class people on their experiences of credit, debt and consumerism. The interviews were to designed to gather innovative historical information on the changing circumstances of financial management in working-class homes. Information was sought on the impact of family gender, generation, neighbourhood, occupation, income, and religion on financial decision making. The project also set out to identify and describe the various forms of credit used by working-class consumers in Belfast and to explain changes over time. Amongst these forms of credit was the credit union and information was sought on this form of financial institution. However, as very few of the interviewees provided detailed information on credit unions, it was necessary to conduct a small number of interviews with individuals below retirement age. This also helped to establish factors of change and continuity within the working class economies of Belfast. The opportunity also arose to interview two licensed moneylenders from families with long experience of providing loans to working-class communities in Northern Ireland. As well as aiming to gather testimony on experiences of, and attitudes towards, credit and debt, the project was designed to excavate and explore the forms of social memory that exist within working-class Belfast. The examination of credit and debt, with their association with factors such as levels of poverty or affluence and respectability offered an excellent vehicle through which to pursue this aim. Interviewees addressed issues of money management in families, pawnbroking, moneylending, check trading, the role of the Co-op, mail order catalogues, hire puchase, banking, credit unions, mortgages, credit cards amongst other methods of financial management.
Main Topics:
The dataset is of 30 separate interviews with a total of 32 individuals. The majority probe the life histories of the interviewees through the prism of their familial and personal experiences of credit, debt and money management. As the interviewees range in age from their forties to one hundred years of age there is a broad range of experiences from corner shop tick through to credit cards and credit unions. The majority of interviews took place in four Belfast day centres and the interviews hail from Catholic and Protestant backgrounds and a range of working-class occupations The interviews reveal the attitudes towards credit and debt and how they were mediated in every day practice. Frequently, for example, interviewees do not identify various forms of credit as credit and, as a result, narrate a life history where debt has been avoided. Thus there is a strong degree of ambivalence and ambiguity in many of the testimonies that reflects the censure that was placed, in the past on `bad managers' (particularly the wife of course) in the working class community. Cultural attitudes towards various forms of credit impacted upon their use, but, of course, levels of income, size of family and, particularly, the spending habits of the male breadwinner were all important elements in levels of credit use. Two interviews were also conducted with licensed moneylenders who are from families with long experience of providing loans in working class communities. Their testimony offered a different perspective on credit and debt in working class Belfast and helps establish the practices and thinking of creditors.
Purposive selection/case studies
Face-to-face interview
