“The first in-depth ethnographic research on debt formation in the contemporary Palestinian context, this groundbreaking work proposes a host of new ways for social geographers to rethink debt at multiple scales. <i>Spacing Debt</i> ambitiously engages theoretical debates across a wide array of disciplinary approaches and effectively links it with fascinating and carefully treated ethnographic cases and interview materials.”

- Deborah James, author of, Money from Nothing: Indebtedness and Aspiration in South Africa

“This is the first sustained treatment of the everyday lives of debt in the Palestinian context based on in-depth fieldwork and long-term engagement with the communities under study. Theoretically innovative and ethnographically rich, this groundbreaking study offers much-needed sociological insight into Palestine's neoliberal debt regime, while showing how Palestine as 'colonial exception' is a rich site to theorize social geographies of debt.”

- Rema Hammami, Birzeit University,

<p>“<i>Spacing Debt </i>is an essential read for scholars of debt and finance, and for those interested in modes of theory-building that start from the ways in which people live and choose to narrate their lives.... Thinking of debt as endurance helps us see people living with debt as active agents."</p>

- Enora Robin, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research

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“<i>Spacing Debt </i>is a thorough and important book that will serve as a refer­ence on the livelihood of urban Palestinians for years to come. Ethnographically grounded and theoretically ambitious, the book offers an interesting read on courses in economic sociology, global develop­ment, and the like.”

- Lotte Segal, Middle East Journal

In Spacing Debt Christopher Harker demonstrates that financial debt is as much a spatial phenomenon as it is a temporal and social one. Harker traces the emergence of debt in Ramallah after 2008 as part of the financialization of the Palestinian economy under Israeli settler colonialism. Debt contributes to processes through which Palestinians are kept economically unstable and subordinate. Harker draws extensively on residents' accounts of living with the explosion of personal debt to highlight the entanglement of consumer credit with other obligatory relations among family, friends, and institutions. He offers a new geographical theorization of debt, showing how debt affects urban space, including the movement of bodies through the city, localized economies, and the political violence associated with occupation. Bringing cultural and urban imaginaries into conversation with monetized debt, Harker shows how debt itself becomes a slow violence embedded into the everyday lives of citizens. However, debt is also a means through which Palestinians practice endurance, creatively adapting to life under occupation.
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Drawing on ethnographic research in the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Christopher Harker how Israel's use of debt to keep Palestinians economically unstable is a form of slow colonial violence embedded into the everyday lives of citizens.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781478009900
Publisert
2021-01-08
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
431 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

Forfatter

Biographical note

Christopher Harker is Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London.