This book analyses how Calon Gypsies in Brazil have responded to global financial
transformations and shifted their economic practices from itinerant trade to moneylending. It
also explores their role as ethnic credit providers offering rare insight into the financial
lives of poor and lower-middle-class Brazilians.More broadly this volume examines how ethnic
difference is created in a context where fixed and collective structures supporting ethnic
identity are missing. It is important reading for economic anthropologists cultural economists
and all those interested in processes of financialisation from a local perspective as well as
those fascinated by informal economies how exchange and debt relate to social and political
marginality and how financial credit becomes 'domesticated' by communities.
