Between a knock at the door and a knock to your score: re-thinking ‘governing through debt’ through the hopeful ‘imaginaries’ of UK debtors

Samuel Kirwan

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2021, vol. 14, issue 2, 159-175

Abstract: This paper draws upon research in the UK debt advice sector to consider the role played by the credit referencing sector in shaping how UK society is ‘governed by debt.’ In response to existing literature within cultural economy on the ‘governmentality of the credit file,’ the paper draws upon two images of the ‘debt trails’ concept to foreground the hopeful futures, shaped by and mediated through relationships with intimate others, that are conjured and articulated by debtors. It describes in this respect two distinct ‘imaginaries’ that take hold in debtors’ speculative practices; that of a stable household anchored in a strong or improved credit file, and that of a household that is able to manage the ‘hard edges’ of ‘priority’ debt enforcement. While the latter marks a distinct limit for the ‘power’ located in the credit referencing sector, the paper finishes by noting how changes in income and household budgets are re-shaping this speculative landscape.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2020.1818602 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jculte:v:14:y:2021:i:2:p:159-175

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJCE20

DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2020.1818602

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Cultural Economy is currently edited by Michael Pryke, Joe Deville, Tony Bennett, Liz McFall and Melinda Cooper

More articles in Journal of Cultural Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().