Algorithmic Intimacy

Abstract

English Abstract: Kenya is a frontier market for ‘financial technology’, or FinTech. This industry – which merges mobile telephony and digital data with commercial lending – has grown spectacularly, with millions of Kenyans borrowing for household, emergency, and commercial expenses. This industry’s frenzied growth has been fuelled by not merely the pursuit of profit, but also a decidedly more developmental aspiration, namely ‘financial inclusion’. This article analyzes the curious merger of public good and private gain, the technological innovations, and sorts of knowledge work that undergird this field. It particularly examines the novel manner in which digital lenders capitalise on intimacy, converting practices of kinship and entrustment into frontiers of extraction. Personal and social data are translated into credit scores, extended family networks are mediated by financial services, and interpersonal relations subsidise risky lending decisions. In contrast to a view of capitalism as abstracting and alienating, this analysis foregrounds the sorts of personal relations, sentiments and obligations that are incorporated. Through fieldwork with borrowers, industry members and regulators, we show that digital lending relies on a conversion between different registers of wealth – in people, in things and in knowledge – and we track the ethical negotiations and anxious attachments that constitute this curious utopia.French Abstract: Le Kenya est un marché frontière pour la « technologie financière », ou FinTech. Cette industrie – qui fusionne la téléphonie mobile et les données numériques avec les prêts commerciaux – a connu une croissanc spectaculaire, des millions de Kenyans empruntant pour des dépenses domestiques, d’urgence et commerciales. La croissance frénétique de ce secteur a été alimentée non seulement par la recherche du profit, mais aussi par une aspiration résolument plus axée sur le développement, à savoir « l’inclusion financière ». Cet article analyse la curieuse fusion du bien public et du gain privé, les innovations technologiques et les types de travail de la connaissance qui sous-tendent ce domaine. Il examine en particulier la nouvelle manière dont les prêteurs numériques capitalisent sur l’intimité, convertissant les pratiques de parenté et de confiance en frontières d’extraction. Les données personnelles et sociales sont traduites en scores de crédit, les réseaux familiaux étendus sont médiatisés par les services financiers, et les relations interpersonnelles subventionnent les décisions de prêt risquées. Contrairement à une vision du capitalisme comme étant abstrait et aliénant, cette analyse met en avant les types de relations personnelles, les sentiments et les obligations qui sont incorporés. Grâce à un travail de terrain avec des emprunteurs, des membres de l’industrie et des régulateurs, nous montrons que le prêt numérique repose sur une conversion entre différents registres de richesse – en personnes, en choses et en connaissances – et nous suivons les négociations éthiques et les attachements anxieux qui constituent cette curieuse utopie.

Financial inclusion and the contested infrastructures of cash transfer payments in South Africa

“…Debt was simply lived with as a condition of low grant values, widespread unemployment and rising costs. As Donovan and Park (2022) have noted in Kenya, digital debts, which are seen as necessary to mediate kinship relations, are ultimately a product of stagnating economy where access to everyday forms of liquidity is needed to make ends meet. Digital debts, they argue, allow for immediacy and liquidity but can also transform social ties and produce new anxieties and constraints.…”

“…While the mediation of these infrastructures can make these systems work for the poor, they are also critical to finance capital’s accumulation strategies. In Kenya, the popular M-Pesa mobile payment and lending system relies on what Donovan and Park (2022) call algorithmic intimacy, in which the family and kinship relations are frontiers of accumulation for M-Pesa’s owner Safaricom. In the context of poverty and stagnating incomes, small loans through M-Pesa allow people to maintain kinship bonds, often across urban and rural space; however, they also create new anxieties and constraints.…”

Blurring ‘social justice’ with ‘market justice’ in recent experiments with healthcare and social protection in the Global South

“…Alongside attempts to reform national health insurance, Kenya has experimented with micro-insurance schemes. Their products are embedded in infrastructures of financial capitalism, fintech and digital technologies offered by Safaricom, Kenya’s mobile phone giant, and M-PESA, its mobile money platform (Donovan and Park, 2022). Here, they piggyback on the financial inclusion agenda, which offers an attractive model for investors, with the expansion of health insurance markets through digital platforms recognized as an emerging frontier in Kenya (Neumark and Prince 2021).…”

Private health care, cancer, and the vulnerable middle class in Kenya

“…The struggles of Roselida, Jacinta, and their families illuminate how realigned relations among capital, states, markets, patients, and medicine are shaping patterns of access to medical treatment (Ong & Collier, 2005; Rose, 2007; Sunder Rajan, 2012), as states disinvest from public services while promoting the marketization of health on a model of consumer choice (Wilson, 2011). Kenya, with its intensive “fintech” capitalism (Donovan & Park, 2019, 2022; Kusimba, 2021; Park, 2020; Schmidt, 2019), decades of public health care austerity (Kabia at al., 2019; Pfeiffer & Chapman, 2010; Prince & Marsland, 2013), expanding private health care markets (Ahoya, 2018), and growing middle class, is emerging as an important site for these forms of biocapital. As Kenya becomes a location for global investment in corporate medicine, the vulnerability of an exploitable middle class to biocapitalist ventures is recalibrating its value.…”