Measuring Capabilities: Using Financial Diaries in Bangladesh

Abstract

Financial diaries were first developed by Stuart Rutherford to provide a better method for understanding the lives of people living in precarious conditions around the world. Financial diaries help uncover the social relations that are hidden in nationwide statistics by adding important ethnographic and financial information on a day-to-day basis. The financial diaries in the present study track the daily cash flows of 39 people from March 2015 to November 2016 in the town of Kapasia, Bangladesh. The diaries provide a precise look at the different financial decisions the diarists took over time and the different interactions that others had with them. We propose the usage of financial diaries as a way to enhance both the practical and philosophical aspects of the capabilities approach, using an approach that is broadly informed by sociological theory. Money is a process underpinned by many different types of religious, political, economic and social relations. Through financial diary data we try to delineate the rules and resources embedded in the social structure of the diarists to understand some of their capabilities. The present chapter provides examples measuring how resources such as debt, transfers and gifts can either enhance or reduce people’s ability to be and do different things.