Apologies for cross-posting
“Debt trails: Mapping relations of debt and credit from everyday actors to
global credit markets”
WORKSHOP
with Paul Langley and Liz McFall
3-4 March 2016, Budapest, Hungary, ELTE University
*To apply please send a 300-word abstract by the 14th of December 2015 to *
*[log in to unmask]* <[log in to unmask]>*.*
*See detailed CfP below.*
*CfP*
*Debt trails: Mapping relations of debt and credit from everyday actors to
global credit markets*
*WORKSHOP*
The 2007-8 global financial crisis was interpreted by many as a challenge
to mainstream economics and as an opportunity for social sciences to
provide alternative explanations. This opportunity has hardly been
realised, even though the crisis has given further impetus to studies
looking at credit and debt outside the economics discipline. One of the
reasons lies in the disciplinary variety and diverse theoretical lenses
used by social sciences, ranging from economic sociology to economic
geography, political economy and Social Studies of Finance, which arguably
do not provide a uniform, let alone universal explanation as economics
does.
One of the main divisions among social science takes on credit and debt is
between what can be termed microscopic vs macroscopic research agendas. The
application of Actor-Network Theory, Science and Technology Studies and
practice-theory approaches to economic phenomena, particularly in the
interdisciplinary field of Social Studies of Finance, has been celebrated
for describing the very concrete, material processes that make up the
Economy (cf. MacKenzie 2006
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_11>; McFall 2014
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_12>; Deville 2015
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_5>). This work
resonates with Latour’s (2005
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_10>) program to
follow the actors and with Christophers’ (2011
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_3>a; 2011
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_2>b) call to
‘follow the money’ by applying the commodity chain approach to money, and
credit in particular, in order to reveal ‘the social and economic relations
both underpinning and occasioned by money's creation and circulation’
(2011a:1069-70). Critics, on the other hand, saw these accounts as merely
providing ‘all cogs and no car’, getting lost in empirical detail, being
devoid of politics (Winner 1993
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_16>; Mirowski
and Nik-Khah 2007
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_13>) and
ignoring the most important sites of credit and debt relations:
institutions, regulation, and ultimately, social relations (Gilbert 2011
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_7>). More
macroscopic approaches (cf. Langley 2008
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_9>; Crouch 2009
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_4>; Krippner 2011
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_8>), developing
larger theoretical and empirical claims, in turn, were praised for actually
proving the car rather than merely the cogs; and were at the same time
accused by critics of missing empirical detail and filling the resulting
gaps with concepts and the untraceable operation of larger forces, such as
Power or the Social.
One way of approaching this divide is to suggest that different scales
require different theoretical lenses. If one is to study everyday debt or a
smaller local site, microscopic concepts, such as ‘practices’, and
microscopic methods, such as ANT, are useful; whereas the study of the
global financial system requires a ‘bigger’ lens, such as a political
economy approach. Others, in contrast, see these approaches as reflecting
different ontologies and choices implying trade-offs between detail and
generality of the argument. According to this view, the same theoretical
and empirical tools can be applied irrespective of the ‘size’ of the
phenomenon; size is seen as a matter of scale. This question is one of the
key concerns of this workshop.
The second concern relates to the fact that most empirical work and derived
theories on credit and debt are focused on Western contexts, despite some
notable attempts to counter the trend (cf. Deville and Seigworth 2015
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_6>). To some
extent this phenomenon is an unintended consequence of the approaches
described above. If meeting the imperative of a clear ‘theoretical
contribution’ is a challenge for all microscopic studies, it is all the
more so for those carried out outside Western contexts, in ‘less
interesting’ places. For macroscopic studies, in turn, a theory based on
data on these ‘special’ cases is simply not general enough. As a result,
the study of credit and debt in non-Western contexts is more developed in
comparative studies (cf. Schwartz and Seabrooke 2008
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_15>; Bohle 2014
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_1>), and
ironically, in economics, where – thanks to its universalistic ontology -
context hardly matters. The second aim of the workshop is to reflect on
the plurality of debt and debt trails, and to open up questions not only
about local-global connectivities and variations, but also about how these
variations can actually be constitutive of the nature of the debt relation
itself (cf. Ossandón forthcoming
<https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#150f279bb0992fc1__ENREF_14>).
The workshop seeks to bring these diverse theoretical lenses and area
focuses into conversation and features an exchange between *Paul Langley*
and *Liz McFall* exploring the challenge of practice focused studies. The
aim is to foster a more thorough understanding of debt and credit and to
open up theoretical exchanges across disciplinary boundaries. To do that
the workshop focuses on the following questions:
1.
Do we have to change our theoretical lens when we look at different
actors of the credit/debt phenomenon? Or can the same theories that we use
to understand everyday borrower practices be used to understand
international regulation? What are the trade-offs that are involved in our
choice?
2.
Which analytical terms are best suited to describe the relationship
between different actors? Why and how do these relations matter? What do we
gain by connecting different actors of the credit and debt market compared
to focusing on one or two actors?
3.
What do we gain by studying contexts outside Western countries and in
what ways can these studies be brought into dialogue with the existing body
of knowledge? Are variations mainly interesting from a comparative angle,
or are these connections and variations central to the debt relations
themselves?
The workshop welcomes participants working either on a specific actor of
the credit/debt market or on their interconnections, broadly conceived.
Participants will be asked to send a short (3000 word) piece reflecting on
the theme of the workshop based on their own research.
The workshop will take place in Budapest, and is hosted by the
Department of Media and Communication, ELTE University with support from
the Journal of Cultural Economy
<http://www.journalofculturaleconomy.org/> and the Hungarian Scientific
Research Fund (OTKA).
*To apply please send a 300-word abstract by the 14th of December 2015
to **[log in to unmask]* <[log in to unmask]>*.*
*Paul Langley* is Reader in Economic Geography at Durham University. His
research combines cultural economy and economic geography approaches to
understand financial markets, including everyday credit and savings,
sub-prime mortgages, financial regulation and alternative forms of finance.
He is author of the books World Financial Orders (Routledge, 2002), The
Everyday Life of Global Finance (Oxford University Press, 2008) and
Liquidity Lost (Oxford University Press, 2015).
*Liz McFall* is Head of the Department of Sociology at the Open
University and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cultural Economy. Her
research has traced the making of diverse consumer markets, including the
market for health insurance and payday loans, using pragmatic, historical
and cultural economy approaches. Her books include Advertising: A Cultural
Economy (Sage, 2004), Conduct: sociology and social worlds (Manchester
University Press, 2008), Devising Consumption: cultural economies of
insurance, credit and spending (Routledge, 2014) and Market and The Arts of
Attachment (Routledge, 2016).
Workshop organizers: Léna Pellandini-Simányi (ELTE), Ferenc Hammer
(ELTE), Zsuzsanna Vargha (University of Leicester)
*References*
Bohle, D. (2014). "Post-socialist housing meets transnational finance:
Foreign banks, mortgage lending, and the privatization of welfare in
Hungary and Estonia." *Review of International Political Economy* *21*(4):
913-948.
Christophers, B. (2011a). "Credit, where credit's due. Response to "Follow
the thing: credit''." *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* *29*:
1089-1091.
Christophers, B. (2011b). "Follow the thing: Money." *Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space* *29*: 1068-1084.
Crouch, C. (2009). "Privatised Keynesianism: An Unacknowledged Policy
Regime." *The British Journal of Politics & International Relations* *11*(3):
382-399.
Deville, J. (2015). *Lived Economies of Default. Consumer Credit, Debt
Collection and the Capture of Affect*. London, Routledge.
Deville, J. and G. J. Seigworth, Eds. (2015). *Special Issue: Everyday Debt
and Credit of Cultural Studies*. 29 (5-6).
Gilbert, E. (2011). "Follow the thing: Credit. Response to "Follow the
thing: Money''." *Environment and Planning D: Society and Space* *29*:
1085-1088.
Krippner, G. R. (2011). *Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of
the Rise of Finance*. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Langley, P. (2008). *The everyday life of global finance: Saving and
borrowing in Anglo-America*. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). *Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to
Actor-Network-Theory*. Oxford ; New York, Oxford University Press.
MacKenzie, D. (2006). *An engine, not a camera: how financial models shape
the markets*. Cambridge (MA), MIT Press.
McFall, L. (2014). *Devising Consumption: Cultural economies of insurance,
credit and spending*. New York ; London, Routledge.
Mirowski, P. and E. Nik-Khah (2007). Markets Made Flesh: Perforrnativity,
and a Problem in Science Studies, Augmented with Consideration of the FCC
Auctions. *Do economists make markets? On the Performativity of Economics*.
D. MacKenzie, F. Muniesa and L. Siu. Princeton, Princeton University Press*:
*190-254.
Ossandón, J. (forthcoming). "Sowing consumers in the garden of mass
retailing in Chile." *Consumption Markets & Culture, special issue,
“consuming finance”, edited by P. Langley*.
Schwartz, H. and L. Seabrooke (2008). "Varieties of Residential Capitalism
in the International Political Economy: Old Welfare States and the New
Politics of Housing." *Comparative European Politics* *6*: 237-261.
Winner, L. (1993). "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding It Empty: Social
Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology." *Science Technology Human
Values* *18*(3): 362-378.
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