Introduction: towards a sociology of debt

Abstract

In this introductory chapter I consider the diverse meanings of the idea of debt in the contemporary world. Starting with the current problem of apparently ever-expanding debt, I explain the origins of the globalisation of the condition of indebtedness through a discussion of processes of financialisation, where money is entirely virtual and weightless. In order to situate the idea of financialisation in a sociological context, I show how the financial crisis of 2007-2008 gave weight to the weightless fictitious capital of the fully financialised world in the form of the dead weight of debt that crushes the indebted and creates a new power relation, which Maurizio Lazzarato writes of in terms of the creditor / debtor relation. While economics tends to conceive of debt in terms of number and objective mathematical calculation, the idea of the weight of debt focus upon the subjective experience of indebtedness founded upon a particular subordinate subject position, the debtor, which it then becomes possible to understand sociologically and critically oppose on the basis of different value systems.