What Went Wonga? Consumer Freedom and the Indebted Society
- Date: Wednesday 28 January 2015, 16:00 – 17:00
- Location: Social Sciences Building, seminar rooms 12.21 and 12.25
- Type: Seminars
- Cost: Free
Dr Davis intends to sketch out a historical sociology of the relationship between debt and freedom that challenges some of the assumptions informing our understanding of the global financial crisis.
Abstract
On 2 October 2014, the pay-day lending firm Wonga agreed to cancel £220m worth of so-called 'bad debt'. In this paper, I use this case as a way of initiating a discussion concerning the antagonisms between a credit-fuelled form of consumer freedom and the entrapments of an indebted society. Drawing upon my research in the sociology of money, and my own direct involvement in the Jubilee 2000 Campaign, I intend to sketch out a historical sociology of the relationship between debt, freedom and morality that may start to challenge some of the fundamental economic assumptions informing our understanding of the global financial crisis".