Tag Archives: credit

Why is Northern Europe so Indebted? The Impact of Welfare on Household Debt

Posted on May 29, 2021 by Oleg Komlik

by Martino Comelli* You might think the U.S. would be world champion of household debt, yet the highest private indebtment has always been in the Nordic countries. Debt, however, takes different forms. In Scandinavia, inclusive welfare systems make debt into … Continue reading →

Posted in Community members posts, Papers | Tagged consumption, credit, debt, European Union, financialization, varieties of capitalism, welfare | 1 Comment

‘American Bonds’ by Sarah Quinn — The Best Book in Economic Sociology and Political Economy for 2020

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

The ES/PE global academic community is pleased to announce the granting of the Best Book in Economic Sociology and Political Economy Award for 2020 to Sarah Quinn‘s superb, enlightening, thoroughly researched and engagingly written American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Awards, Books | Tagged ‪securitisation‬, credit, developmental state, Economic Sociology, embeddedness, finance, policy, Political economy, politics, state | Leave a comment

Fictionalizing the Economy and Reviewing Imagined Futures of Capitalism

Posted on February 24, 2017 by Oleg Komlik

by Lars Crusefalk* In the book Imagined Futures – Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics, a leading economic sociologist Jens Beckert argues that social scientists need to put more emphasis on how actors in modern capitalistic societies handle uncertainty in relation to … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Community members posts | Tagged capitalism, consumption, credit, expectations, forecasting, imagination, innovations, money, uncertainty | Leave a comment

Princes of the Yen and the Japanese Shock Doctrine

Posted on July 5, 2016 by Oleg Komlik

“It is better for the Bank of Japan not to attract attention and remain as quit as the forest in a rural shrine.” – Hisato Ichimada, the 18th Governor of the Bank of Japan, 1946-1954 (Werner 2003: 70) “Thanks to this … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Video | Tagged banking system, central banking, credit, financial system, interest groups, Japan, monetary policy, Political economy | Leave a comment

Créditez-vous français? Credit as a relationship and a practice

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

I’m subscribed to “Gdr-economie-sociologie” – an academic mailing list of French and French-speaking economic sociologists and political economists. Receiving through this list announcements about new interesting and enlightening books and articles (in French), intellectually inviting conferences and seminars (conducted in … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged banking, banking system, credit, debt, Economic Sociology, France, household | 7 Comments

Listen to the Athenian Solon: “Our virtue sticks with us and makes us strong, but money changes owners all day long”

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Solon (c. 638 – c. 558 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker and poet, particularly known for ending exclusive aristocratic control of the government and his efforts to legislate against political, economic, and moral decline in archaic Athens, whose elite was obsessed with wealth, power, and prestige. His first … Continue reading →

Posted in Oleg Komlik | Tagged credit, debt, Greece, oligarchy, slavery, state, wealth | Leave a comment

Fed with credit: financial “liberalization”, deregulation and the role of credit in Iceland’s collapse

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Beginning in the 1990s, Iceland embarked on a major “liberalization” policy, privatizing its financial sector and reorganizing regulation. The resulting highly concentrated banking sector refocused on investment banking and international operations, while businesses, consumers and the finance industry itself borrowed … Continue reading →

Posted in Papers | Tagged banking system, credit, financial crisis, financial liberalization, Iceland, neoliberalism, policy, regulation | Leave a comment

Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism

Posted on June 30, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Miranda Joseph‘s important and interesting book Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism is a timely scholarly endeavour to understand, what I once termed Neoliberal Pauperism. Joseph’s research focuses on one of the key practices related to debt’ control – accounting and quantification. It studies modes … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged accounting, credit, debt, Economic Sociology, finance, gender, neoliberalism, valuation | 2 Comments

Money is a mode of governance in a material world of capitalism

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Money travels the modern world in disguise. It looks like a convention of human exchange – a commodity like gold or a medium like language. But its history reveals that money is a very different matter. It is an institution … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged capitalism, credit, debt, economic history, monetary system, money, state, United Kingdom | 1 Comment

Credit makes you free! Neoliberalism, politics of debt and the subjugation of the working poor

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

Under the rubric of ‘financial inclusion’, lending to the poor – in both the global North and global South – has become a highly lucrative and rapidly expanding industry since the 1990s. A key inquiry of Susanne Soederberg’s penetrating and … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged class, credit, debt, Economic Sociology, financialization, governance, institutions, Mexico, neoliberalism, poverty, power, state, United States | 4 Comments

What is money? Can we grasp the current state of the economy as a crisis of money itself?

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Oleg Komlik

The latest crisis has incited substantial conversation about debt, banking, financialization, and the commodification of everyday life. All these issues are inherently related to money. But what exactly is money? Where does it come from? Who does make our money … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged banking, capitalism, credit, crisis, debt, Economic Sociology, economics, money, valuation | 2 Comments

“… Until Debt Tear us Apart”: Debt is a Product of Power Relations

Posted on December 6, 2014 by Oleg Komlik

Debt is a product of power relations which inherently exhibits capturing and dominating mechanisms of subordination, appropriation and exploitation in various societal, political and economic fields. Debt is a degrading institutional tool which not merely controls and masters labor in advance, it also self- … Continue reading →

Posted in Theory in Pictures | Tagged capitalism, credit, debt, power | 4 Comments

The history of money and its “divine” metamorphosis in the 20th century

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Oleg Komlik

A noted cultural anthropologist Professor Jack Weatherford observed in his fascinating The History of Money: “In the 20th century, we saw money turn rapidly from paper into plastic and then into mere electronic blips generated in computers, transferred over telephone … Continue reading →

Posted in Books | Tagged banking, credit, economic anthropology, economic history, finance, money, policy | 4 Comments

“Crisis, Value & Hope: Rethinking the Economy” — Current Anthropology special issue

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Oleg Komlik

“Crisis, value, and hope are three concepts whose intersection and mutual constitution open the door for a rethinking of the nature of economic life away from abstract models divorced from the everyday realities of ordinary people, the inadequacies of which … Continue reading →