Building on the pioneering status of Susanne Soederberg’s Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population, this section of the Progress in Political Economy (PPE) blog is dedicated to creating a space for reflection on its central arguments as well as, hopefully, providing a wider platform for public engagement on issues of poverty and consumer credit.
Debtfare States is a pathbreaking book that examines new forms of governance based on the political and socio-economic mechanisms linked to the expansion of credit and state strategies to legitimise social reproduction through private debt. The import of Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry was recently confirmed by Susanne Soederberg’s award of the prestigious International Political Economy Group (IPEG) Book Prize of the British International Studies Association in 2015.
The collation of posts in this section reflects critical commentaries, reviews, and engagements as well as the author’s own reflections on this stimulating book for tackling prevalent assumptions about finance, debt, and the poverty industry.
Progress in Political Economy has made a wonderful job in compiling reviews and critiques of Susanne Soederberg’s great book Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Discipline and the Surplus Population. After the introductory summary by the author herself, Cemal Burak Tansel then [...]
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Following the reading of Susanne Soederberg’s Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry by the Past & Present Reading group in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney, the group put together “Ten Questions on Debtfare States”. In this fascinating [...]
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In a novel form of engagement, we are presenting here ten questions to Susanne Soederberg on her recent award-winning book Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry, which have been put together by those members of the Past & Present Reading Group that collectively completed the book. A [...]
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“Did you know that approximately 3 million Australians – around 16.9% of the adult population – are either fully or severely excluded from obtaining credit from the banks?” So asks the peak body representing Australia’s payday lenders as part of their Small Loans Big Need [...]
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The following post is based on a longer review of the book to be published in September 2016 issue of the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
If you were to enter a cryogenic sleep in 2008, wake up in early 2016 and take a quick glance at the fortunes of Western capitalism, you [...]
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With the news that Susanne Soederberg has been awarded the 2015 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize, we are re-posting this feature on her book. There is also a short trailer on Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry, available [...]
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Furthering the focus on academic trailers, this post features Susanne Soederberg’s Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry: Money, Distribution and Surplus Population.
The book proposes an original notion to what is called debtfarism to capture new configurations of class-based [...]
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Since the 1990s, a mounting number of people living near or below the poverty line have become increasingly reliant on expensive consumer loans to either replace and/or augment their wages to pay for basic subsistence needs, such as groceries, rent, education, health bills, and so forth. [...]
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