Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry

This penetrating and original book introduces a new concept to the late-neoliberal lexicon, debtfare, as credit contracts displace social contracts, entrenching a parasitic “poverty industry.” A compelling and significant contribution. Jamie Peck, Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy, University of British Columbia, Canada.

In the grand tradition of Marx, Simmel, Mauss and Harvey, Soederberg reveals the powers and paradoxes of credit as an instrument of capital accumulation, class regulation, and symbolic subjugation. A timely and stimulative contribution to the scientific and civic reevaluation of the role of finance in the workings of neoliberalism as a distinctive form of rule. Loïc Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley, author of Urban Outcasts and Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity.

Debtfare is a necessary term and book to grasp the present moment. A political economy of the baleful poverty industry it provides a conceptual antidote to coercive financial inclusion by enlisting the force of Marx, Money and the State. Randy Martin, Faculty Director of Art and Public Policy, New York University, USA.

Here is a radical inquiry that does not fall into the easy language of “more”—more debt, more poverty, and on. Rather than documenting the sufferings of the poor, it examines the machinery that combines states and the poverty sector – a kind of new state-industrial complex. This unflinching examination is a major contribution to our understanding of poverty, business, and the state. Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, author of Expulsions.

Susanne Soederberg’s Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry (here forward Debtfare States) is perhaps the most rigorous historical materialist analysis of the state’s role in transforming the “surplus population” into a platform for credit-led accumulation.Debtfare States should be required reading for radical financial geographers interested in role of the state in finance-led accumulation. Mark Kear, University of Arizona

Susanne Soederberg is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Political Economy at the Department of Global Development Studies, cross appointed with the Department of Political Studies, Queen’s University, Canada.

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