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For low-income or precariously employed households in Australia, the re-allocation of risk over the past forty years has four crucial economic dimensions: the fraying of the social security net; changes in labour market dynamics; heightened uncertainty arising from income volatilities; and new hazards generated by the financialisation of daily life. Household financial capabilities are negatively influenced by the compounding impacts of each of these risks. Case examples from a BSL study illustrate each impact and their interactions. The dominant idea that individual capabilities are malleable (and thus can be optimised) whilst circumstances and norms are fixed is countered by an expanded view of Sen’s/Nussbaum’s capability approach (CA) that includes collective capabilities. Collective capabilities can change norms, and so, the concept provides a needed link between the political and macroeconomic movement of risk re-allocation and individual or household financial capabilities. The Australian Unemployed Workers’ Union is used as an example to show how collective action can challenge structural conditions, and expand or protect the capabilities of individuals.

In this article, we draw on a recent Australian study to illustrate how social time in precariously employed or low-income households is increasingly riven by uncertainty and risk. We apply two concepts, riskscapes and timescapes, to examine how these households respond to and are buffeted by the economic and temporal insecurities they experience in labour, welfare and finance markets. Using May and Thrift’s four categories of time, – representations, technologies, social disciplines and rhythms – we highlight how household timescapes interact with their riskscapes to exacerbate economic insecurity.

The emotional and moral context of high cost, small loan lending has an important bearing on how low-income people engage in the mixed economy of credit, which is a term used to describe the different sectors involved in providing credit, from informal transactions between family and friends to formal fringe financial lenders and multinational banks. Decisions about accessing credit are constrained by more than material circumstances or access to information about the financial cost of such transactions. How individuals perceive different credit options is also influenced by emotions such as shame, guilt or anger. The emotional dimension is critical for understanding how, where and when individuals access credit. The policy field needs to give more attention to these neglected dimensions of decision-making, particularly since ‘financial literacy’ programs targeted at low-income households assume that lack of financial and budgetary knowledge is the key issue. Here, we argue, drawing on an empirical study, that a wider range of cultural and emotional factors needs to be taken into account in making sense of the social relations of money, credit and debt.

This paper focuses on how community workers in Shepparton viewed the impact of the Place Based Income Management (PBIM) trial on the lives of their clients, their clients' families, and the broader community. The paper responds to criticism that there has been a lack of community voices in the development of PBIM or of their inclusion in the formal evaluation framework, raised in Philip Mendes's 2013 study of this trial site. A key policy goal underlying Income Management is that the tool assists low income people to become better money managers. Our study found that Shepparton community workers also used the parlance of 'tool' to describe the programmatic value of the BasicsCard in their interactions with clients. However, the BasicsCard appeared marginal to their discussions. Three clear themes emerged from the interviews: Shepparton's focus on voluntary clients, and ascertaining why participation in the local trial had dropped; that support for IM centred on the voluntary measure and the extra resources available to assist clients; and pragmatically locating the program in the middle of a welfare continuum that stretched from the voluntary Centrepay at one end to the highly coercive and restrictive paternalism of State Trustees at the other.

In the last few decades, payday lending has mushroomed in many developed countries. The arguments for and against an industry which provides small, short-term loans at very high interest rates have also blossomed. This article presents findings from an Australian study to contribute to the international policy and practice debate about a sector which orients to those on a low income. At the heart of this debate lies a conundrum: Borrowing from payday lenders exacerbates poverty, yet many low-income households rely on these loans. We argue that the key problem is the restricted framework within which the debate currently oscillates.

This paper surveys ethnographic film as it has been presented over the years on British television, particularly in the Disappearing World series. A detailed criticism leads to the conclusion that anthropologists should not place too much faith in the kind of films that are presented for the general public on television. The involvement of anthropologists in these productions has often amounted to a less-than-happy marriage.

Since the publication of Anthropology and Photography (Edwards 1992) almost two decades ago, there has been an explosion of anthropological interest in historical ethnographic photography and other...

y training I am an Indianist with a (largely unrelated) theoretical interest in film: what follows constitutes a more abstract plea for the introduction of some theoretical rigour into debates on ethnographic film. In particular, I wish to counter the almost willful ignorance visual anthropologists maintain with regard to film theory. It could be said that not only are writings primarily concerned with live-action feature film of little relevance to documentary ethnographic films, but that such a standpoint is likely to be heavily biased towards an Occidentalist perspective and thus have little to offer a discussion on films produced outside this perspective. On the former point I have commented elsewhere (Banks forthcoming b) and will continue to do so, wishing to add little beyond what I say below. On the latter point I feel there is a deeper problem concerning the nature of the 'Orientalism' debate. It is no longer novel to suggest that there are fundamental weaknesses in Said's (1985) argument concerning the Orientalist's view of the so-called 'other,' not least that he himself commits the very crime he accuses others of: constructing a monolithic mirror in which to see himself. More generally, the problem of ethnocentrism is one that, like the poor, will be with us always. Each generation of anthropologists feels that it has recognised and addressed the problem, only to have the charge thrown back in its face by its descendants. The temptation to regard the latest liberal orthodoxy as mere fashion is great. Take, for example, the current concern with indigenous voices and indigenous perspective. In the world of ethnographic film this has manifested itself in a focus on locally produced films, texts which allow the people we white western anthropologists study to speak back to us and beyond us, breaking the hegemony of our discourse of representation. Our continuing pre-occupation with authenticity (the seductive veracity referred to in the title of this piece) tempts us to welcome such text as the pure voice of the 'other.' Yet, akin in a sense to Said's observation that the Orient begins to speak with the voice of the Occident (1985:322 ff), we should be wary of such claims. Watching recently a film that claimed to be the first wholly made by an Australian Aboriginal (My survival as an aboriginal, Essie Coffey 1979), I was struck by how inauthentic it seemed. The strongest flavour was of a mid-seventies transatlanticism: the flared denim jeans; the folksy-cum-CW the 'consciousness-raised' voice of the main subject/filmmaker as she talked of 'reclaiming our culture' and took a group of Aboriginal children into the bush to show them what plants and animals they might eat The fUm is undoubtedly one of great sincerity and it is always possible that the look and feel of some generalised 'Aboriginal culture' happens to resemble that of liberal West Coast America, ca. 1974, though personally I doubt it The problem is, of course, that film is not a neutral' transparent' medium (Banks 1988) and that applies as much to nonwestern films as it does to western ones. Baudry (1985:534) has argued that the (literal) perspective adopted by film (and therefore video, which mimics film in this respect), is a western bourgeois perspective, which would mean that a non-western filmmaker has an uphill struggle from the outset Some have doubtless taken on this challenge and triumphed, successfully subverting the western perspective forced upon them; testimonies to their success will be found elsewhere in this issue. One could therefore argue that for an African (or anyone else) to fight against 'Africanist' visual representations he or she will have to read Baudry (and others) to understand the enemy. This seems an unfair burden: why should a Kayap6 Indian present his credentials in film theory before he picks up a video camera? The problem is ours, the (largely) white western academics who

The feature film True Stories [Byrne 1986] is analysed as a pastiche of a documentary film. Using this analysis, the author then goes on to discuss some of the assumptions underlying the production and use of ethnographic films and suggests that some of the insights of the ‘post modernist’ school of anthropological criticism may be of value in challenging these assumptions.