Discourses and Practices of Debt: Sin, Risk, Power and Social Change

• In Event: 4255 - Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 9. Markets and Morality

Abstract

Historically, debt has played a critical role in most if not all societies. David Graeber (2011) argues that debt essentially constitutes society because social relations and morality are built upon it. Though early monetary exchange required social trust, particularly when hard currency was scarce, as capitalism developed these exchanges became increasing rational and impersonal, which threatened the very sociality of human interaction (Simmel 1990). Today,
modern financial instruments have reconfigured debtors into abstract, quantifiable numbers, reduced to the value of their credit scores. This paper will explore how and why creditor-debtor relationships have changed over time by examining the discourses and practices surrounding debt. Much of the discourse surrounding debt has been centered on if it is productive. Religious authorities conceptualized debt as sinful because they considered it unproductive, demonizing moneylenders who profited from usury. The discourse on debt shifted in Europe during the Reformation, when credit became necessary to fund trade and economic development. Risk came to inform the discourse on debt and interest became viewed as a form of compensation to creditors for their risky investments (Brook 2007; Mann 2002). Debt became valued as not only economically productive, but politically productive as well. Debt was practiced as a technology of power by sovereigns to control populations, manage labor shortages, wage wars, and build nation-states. More recently debt has been understood as productive because it is a form of power that constitutes subjects that can be controlled and disciplined via indebtedness (Di Muzio and Robbins 2016; Mayhmud 2012). Though debt may be “an instrument of oppression,” it also produces new forms of transgressions and resistance (Balibar 2013). Just as the bourgeoisie produces its own proletariat gravediggers, creditors produce debtors that may structurally transform society, or at the very least demand that some of their debt be cancelled.

Author

• Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy, John Carroll University