In a world marked by political and economic uncertainty, debt appears to be a constant, an enormous dark cloud weighing upon our lives. We are always in debt, struggling to make ends meet, maintain repayments, and balance the books. In the wake of financial crash of 2008 debt was big news and many imagined the end of capitalism itself.
Although the idea of revolutionary economic transformation may have faded from the popular imagination, the problem of the crushing weight of debt remains. Perhaps we have normalised this crippling state of indebtedness, come to terms with it, and imagine that we will always live in ‘the red’? Is there any way to live in ‘the black’ today?
There is a school of economic thought, Keynesianism, that makes the argument that indebtedness in itself is not the problem. According to this view, we can endlessly push repayment off into the future in the name of social development. However, the problem with indebtedness today is that it is largely unsustainable because it is not concerned with supporting social progress and the development of societies that can support individuals, families, and communities moving into the future. Instead, the current state of indebtedness is a symptom of a global social and economic system – global capitalism – which makes the individual the centre of everything, regards vast socio-economic inequality as the effect of a kind of economic state of nature where the only law is the law of the survival of the fittest, and ignores what we might call the proper, sociological, understanding of debt.
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The Sociology of Debt, by Mark Featherstone is available on the Policy Press website. Order here for £60 or get the EPUB for £21.59.
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The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
Hazel’s comment:
I shall not be buying this but I might try to skim read it in the British Library at some future date.
I shall not be buying this but I might try to skim read it in the British Library at some future date.
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