Book•
Debt: The First 5000 Years
01 Jan 2011-
TL;DR: In this paper, anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: 5,000 years ago, during the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems.
Abstract: Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that 5,000 years ago, during the beginning of the agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems. It is in this era, Graeber shows, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. With the passage of time, however, virtual credit money was replaced by gold and silver coins—and the system as a whole began to decline. Interest rates spiked and the indebted became slaves. And the system perpetuated itself with tremendously violent consequences, with only the rare intervention of kings and churches keeping the system from spiraling out of control. Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.
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TL;DR: Investigating the associations of multiple indices of financial debt with psychological and general health outcomes among 8400 young adult respondents from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health suggests that debt is an important socioeconomic determinant of health that should be explored further in social epidemiology research.
307 citations
Cites background from "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
...psychological burden associatedwith being indebted (Dossey, 2007; Dudley, 2000; Graeber, 2011; Williams, 2005, 2008)....
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...Historical and ethnographic research has characterized the severe social stigma and psychological burden associated with being indebted (Dossey, 2007; Dudley, 2000; Graeber, 2011; Williams, 2005, 2008)....
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TL;DR: Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces.
Abstract: Implementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and well-being in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalised the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces.
286 citations
Cites background from "Debt: The First 5000 Years"
...Attentive stress and disposability are intensified by unrealistic expectations fostered by a quantified, machinelike image of human productivity, further intensified by permanent indebtedness leading to a sense of permanent inadequacy (Gill, 1995; Graeber, 2011)....
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...Attentive stress and disposability are intensified by unrealistic expectations fostered by a quantified, machine-like image of human productivity, further intensified by permanent indebtedness leading to a sense of permanent inadequacy (Gill, 1995; Graeber, 2011)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the stratifying effects of economic classifications and argue that in the neoliberal era market institutions increasingly use actuarial techniques to split and sort individuals into classification situations that shape life-chances.
Abstract: This article examines the stratifying effects of economic classifications. We argue that in the neoliberal era market institutions increasingly use actuarial techniques to split and sort individuals into classification situations that shape life-chances. While this is a general and increasingly pervasive process, our main empirical illustration comes from the transformation of the credit market in the United States. This market works as both as a leveling force and as a condenser of new forms of social difference. The U.S. banking and credit system has greatly broadened its scope over the past twenty years to incorporate previously excluded groups. We observe this leveling tendency in the expansion of credit amongst lower-income households, the systematization of overdraft protections, and the unexpected and rapid growth of the fringe banking sector. But while access to credit has democratized, it has also differentiated. Scoring technologies classify and price people according to credit risk. This has allowed multiple new distinctions to be made amongst the creditworthy, as scores get attached to different interest rates and loan structures. Scores have also expanded into markets beyond consumer credit, such as insurance, real estate, employment, and elsewhere. The result is a cumulative pattern of advantage and disadvantage with both objectively measured and subjectively experienced aspects. We argue these private classificatory tools are increasingly central to the generation of ‘‘market-situations’’, and thus an important and overlooked force that structures individual life-chances. In short, classification situations may have become the engine of modern class situations. 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
281 citations