Drawing together insights from key figures in the collections industry and observation at one of the UK's largest debt purchasers, this paper opens up the socio-material mechanisms of ‘market attachment’ through which, drawing on Franck Cochoy, the potential ‘captation’ of the defaulting...

Media coverage of the recent financial crisis has referred extensively to various past crises, and in particular to the events of the 1930s. This article suggests that the idea of the Great Depression has effectively come to function as a kind of historical ‘black mirror’ -- a quasi-object...

Why has the financial crisis not led to more radical public contestation and political reforms? In investigating the muted response to the crisis so far, the paper highlights the significance of ideological fantasy for appreciating the interpenetration of economy and society. We interpret this...

This paper takes the appearance of the figure of the ‘zombie bank’ during the recent financial crisis as a starting point to think about how to historicize crisis. A zombie bank is an undercapitalized financial institution that continues to operate due to the support extended to it by the...

Summoned up within the defined-contribution (DC) plans that now predominate in the UK and USA, the financial subject of the retirement investor is identified by behavioural economics as the crucial problem to be solved in present-day occupational pension provision. Interventions are being made...

This paper sets out to show how, in recent years, governing authorities have responded to problematic personal debt through the emergent concept of ‘over-indebtedness’. As mainstream consumer credit has become progressively de-moralized, authoritative intervention now turns particular...