What happens when borrowing goes bad? New book explores the hidden world of consumer credit and debt collection

The secretive and controversial world of consumer credit borrowing – credit cards, store cards, personal loans and the experiences of people who default on them – are explored by a Goldsmiths, University of London researcher in his new book, Lived Economies of Default.

Lived Economies of Default explains what happens when everyday forms of borrowing go ‘bad’, when people start to default on their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay.

Dr Joe Deville follows a journey of default, from debtors’ borrowing practices, to the electronic and physical intrusion of collectors into people’s everyday lives, to attempts by debtors to seek outside help.

He draws on research from the interior of the debt collections industry, debtors' own accounts, and historical insight into technologies of lending and collection.

In the process, Dr Deville shows that to understand this particular market, we need to understand the central role played within it by the management of debtors’ emotional states.

Lived Economies of Default makes a major contribution both to understanding the relationship between emotion and calculation in markets and the role of consumer credit in our societies and economies.

Dr Joe Deville is a postdoctoral researcher at Goldsmiths. He is a member of the Goldsmiths Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process (CSISP) and the new research group, the Political Economy Research Centre (PERC).

Dr Deville's research for Lived Economies of Default was funded by the ESRC.

Lived Economies of Default: Consumer Credit, Debt Collection and the Capture of Affect has been published by Routledge as part of the CRESC Culture, Economy and the Social series.

For more information visit the Lived Economies website.

 

Reviews

“Nothing less than a theoretically astute reflection on the character of obligation, the making of markets and the character of affect in the entanglements of debt today”

- Bill Maurer, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine

“Immensely readable and deftly argued”

- Gregory J. Seigworth, Professor of Communication Studies, Millersville University