• Critically apply theories, methods and concepts of economic sociology to the particular problems of money and debt in modern society
• Critically discuss different sociological debt theories
• Explain political and legal theories of sovereignty as applied to the problem of national/state debt
• Outline the socio-political influences that rising private and public debt levels may have on the functioning of democracy
• Discuss both historical and contemporary practices of indebting as well as debt relief

Rising levels of debt have become today’s foremost political-economic problem. In 2018, the Institute of International Finance estimated that global debt had reached 247 Trillion US Dollars and the debt-to-GDP ratio was 318 percent. But debt is more than a set of economic figures, it is a social phenomenon. In large parts of the developing world, for example, debt is used to enslave people into work in agriculture, the textile industries, and prostitution. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that over 50 Billion US Dollars is made annually in the exploitation of workers through debt bondage.

Based on a mix of lectures and case study discussions, this course will introduce students to the various socio-economic and political logics that cause Western societies to fall deeper and deeper into the abyss of private (household), corporate and public debt. After discussing briefly how mainstream economics defines debt, the course continues in three parts that takes students through various perspectives on the relationship between debt and society.

Part 1 discusses sociological theories of money as debt/credit as well as so-called ‘state theories’ of money (chartalism). This part will draw on writings in the sociology of debt, money and time. In this section we will compare and contrast economic debt to other social logics of indebtedness, for example gratitude and gift giving. We will also compare and contrast purely economic ‘(re)payment’ to alternative social logics of ‘paying your debt to society’, such as punishment and imprisonment (debtors’ prison).

Part 2 considers the now infamous case of the EU Troika’s de facto management of the Greek economy since 2010, which in large parts went against the expressed will of the Greek people as legitimized by national elections. This part uses the concept of sovereignty to discuss to what extent increasingly internationalized debt regimes contribute to the erosion of traditional notions of national sovereignty as expressed in elections and national parliaments. We will discuss various approaches to the idea of sovereignty in relation to sovereign debt, for example via Westphalian state theory, John Austin, Carl Schmitt and J. J. Rousseau.  

Part 3 closes the circle around the debt economy by discussing the historical-anthropological origins of money as debt. For this, we will read anthropological and also theological authors, such as Marcel Mauss, David Graeber, Keith Hart and Devin Singh. Based on these readings, we will ask what the consequences for modern Western society are that money understood as debt developed first within a religious-ritualistic context. Through the ages, religions indebted humans to a demanding God, but can they also offer an escape from the logic of debt? How, for example, do organized religions today deal with and legitimize debt relief, debt jubilees, and usury-free financial instruments?       

Indicative Reading List

David Graeber, Debt: the First 5000 Years. Melville House, 2011.

Costas Lapavitsas, Social Foundations of Markets, Money and Credit. Routledge 2003.

Joseph Vogl, The Sovereignty Effect: Markets and Power in the Economic Regime, in: Qui Parle, Vol. 23, No. 1 (2014), pp. 125-155.

Devin Singh, ‘Sovereign debt’, Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 46, No. 2 (2018), pp. 239-266

Michel Aglietta, Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power. Verso Books, 2018 (Chapter 2: ‘Logics of Debt and Forms of Sovereignty’)

Keith Hart and Horacio Ortiz, ‘The Anthropology of Money and Finance: Between Ethnography and World History’, Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 43 (2014), pp. 465-482. 

Elettra Stimilli, The Debt of the Living. SUNY Press 2017.

Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of theIndebted Man: an Essay on the Neoliberal Condition. London 2012.