Description:
Challenging how social scientists, policymakers, legal scholars, and the public examine household debts and wellbeing, Viral Debt traces how debt moves within and across households to communities and institutions, with devastating effects.
Review Quotes:
"Debt does not accumulate by accident; it ramps up by design, settling unevenly across the social landscape, blighting the lives and futures of all but a wealthy elite. Debt has gone viral; finally, a single book explains how, when, where, and why that happened."
Susan Smith, Professor of Geography and President of the British Academy
"Situating debt within a conceptual framework of 'virus' and 'contagion', this book offers a new approach to the study of debt in today's society. In the wake of the global pandemic, this timely and important work deserves to be read and discussed widely."
Nicholas Gane, Professor of Sociology, University of Warwick
"This volume offers a novel framing of viral debt and how treating debt as a virus helps us understand 'bad debts.' They bring patently to light how indebtedness transcends individual choices and faults. This is an important book for the time we are in!"
Nina Bandelj, Chancellor's Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine