Spaces of Interest: financial governance and debt subjectivity
01 Apr 2015-Vol. 4, Iss: 1
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the growing industry of Alternative Finance Service Providers (AFSPs), focusing on the rapid expansion of payday and title loan lending, and argue that the increased presence of AFSPs has occurred in conjunction with practices of finance capitalism, which serve to constitute a specific economic subject.
Abstract: This paper considers the phenomenon of financialization, the integration of everyday life activities into the logic of finance capital, and the spatio-temporal fixes attached to emergent dynamics of capital circulation. I analyze the growing industry of Alternative Finance Service Providers (AFSPs), focusing on the rapid expansion of payday and title loan lending. I argue that the increased presence of AFSPs has occurred in conjunction with practices of finance capitalism, which serve to constitute a specific economic subject. Examining the practices of TMX Finance LLC, the largest title loan company in the United States, I argue that the preferential distribution of debt dramatically shapes the space we live in, and seeks to order the bodies that occupy those spaces.
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01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the relationship between the spatial distribution of the alternative finance service providers (AFSP) industry and consider the impacts of this saturated presence on the individuals who live in these neighborhoods.
Abstract: Despite being a decade removed from the 2008 Financial Crisis, an alarming number of Americans are turning to alternative finance service providers (AFSP) for “short term” loans. These loans typically carry triple digit interest rates and can contribute to exacerbating the financial precarity of the borrowers. This article investigates the relationship between the spatial distribution of the AFSP industry and considers the impacts of this saturated presence on the individuals who live in these neighborhoods. Using the Phoenix metropolitan area as a site of exploration, I examine where the industry has pooled and look at the descriptive characteristics of those spaces. Mapping the industry’s presence provides a rich cartography of debt that breaks upon ethnic, racial, and class lines. To link the spatial dimensions of debt practices to the body I draw upon Jacques Derrida’s (1994) conception of ontopology, an amalgam of ontology and topos, that stresses the co-constitutionality of space and corporeal subjectivity. I argue that the spatial production of debt provides a richer lens through which to view the uneven distribution of difference that reinforces historical inequalities.
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