Published
May 23, 2025Page count
224 pagesISBN
978-1529239423Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressPublished
May 23, 2025Page count
224 pagesISBN
978-1529239430Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
The Personal Life of Debt
As the cost of living rises, British households face unprecedented levels of debt. But many commentators characterise those who stash away envelopes, leave telephones ringing, or hide from debt collectors as irresponsible.
The first full-length ethnography of debt problems in Britain, this book uses long-term fieldwork on a southern English housing estate to give a sensitive retelling of the everyday lives of indebted people.
It argues that the inequalities of debt go beyond economic questions to include the way state coercion hinders people’s efforts to define what they truly value. Indeed, from finance to housing and even parenthood, the potential for dispossession has become a pervasive method of power that strikes at the heart of personal life.
Ryan Davey is Lecturer in Social Sciences at Cardiff University, working across anthropology and sociology.
Introduction
Part I. Expressions of Indebtedness
1. “You can’t argue with them”: debt and the struggle for value
2. Making debt into an object: the work of debt advisers
Part II. Prospects of expropriation
3. Unsettled homes: the interruptible futures and violable spaces of rented housing
Chapter 4. “But I do wish better for my kids”: parental attachment and forced child removal
Chapter 5. The arts of indebted optimism: between fiction and reality
Conclusion
