Lived Economies of Default: Consumer Credit, Debt Collection and the Capture of Affect

231 Pages·2015·7.18 MB·English

by  Joe Deville

Hear the words ‘debt collection’ and your mind turns to a host of unsavoury char-
acters: loan sharks, repossession men or thugs who show up seizing (or smash-
ing) personal property in the name of an even greater-maligned figure, the
creditor. Yet credit and debt collection are central economic and affective ele-
ments of modern economies and consumer-driven social life. In this unique and
trenchant study, Joe Deville explains how the debt collection industry emerged,
how it is evolving, and how it is ever more dependent on both data analytics and
emotional labour, the two supplementing and amplifying one another far beyond
the rational management of risk on which lending historically has depended.
Deville illuminates the quotidian work of debt collection agencies and their
tools—telephone scripts, collection letters—as well as the intra- and intercorpo-
rate and personal relations that make debt collection an affective as well as a
political (and profitable) enterprise. The book is nothing less than a theoretically
astute reflection on the character of obligation, the making of markets and the
character of affect in the entanglements of debt today.
Bill Maurer, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Professor of
Anthropology, University of California, Irvine
Debt, it turns out, is not the only thing that is intimate and impersonal, cumula-
tive and disintegrative, charged and discharged. By following out the ways that
affect routes though the bodies of debtors and the modulating assemblages of
debt collectors, Joe Deville offers a vivid account of consumer default that pulses
with everyday intensities and calculative capturings. Immensely readable and
deftly argued, Deville displays an astonishing agility for moving among the
moods and modes of histories, case-studies, technologies, and theories at pre-
cisely the right moment, revealing what folds and unfolds at the fraught material-
ities of the economic and the affective.
Gregory J. Seigworth, Professor of Communication Studies, Millersville
University
Lived Economies of Default is a striking achievement, essential reading for stu-
dents and researchers in the social studies of finance, economic sociology and
cultural economy. Not only does Deville provide the first book-length analysis of
consumer debt collection in the UK for over forty years, he also charts a new
course for the study of the materialities, affects and intimacies of contemporary
market lives.
Paul Langley, Reader in Economic Geography, Durham University
An incisive and timely analysis of the business of contemporary debt collection,
in which repayment is not forced through bodily incarceration or the seizing of
assets as in times past but, rather, coaxed through carefully calibrated psychologi-
cal campaigns and the seizing of affects. Techniques and tools of escalating
urgency work to ratchet up defaulters’ shame, anxiety, and dread and turn them
into responsible borrowers. Lived Economies of Default is an empirically fasci-
nating, ethnographically rich, theoretically sophisticated account of consumer-
credit capitalism and its discontents.
Natasha Dow Schüll, Associate Professor, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
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Lived Economies of Default
Consumer credit borrowing – using credit cards, store cards and personal loans –
is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when
these everyday forms of borrowing go ‘bad’, when people start to default on
their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay? It is this poorly understood,
controversial, but central part of both the consumer credit industry and the lived
experiences of an increasing number of people that this book explores.
Drawing on research from the interior of the debt collections industry, as well
as debtors’ own accounts and historical research into technologies of lending and
collection, this book examines precisely how this ever more sophisticated,
globally-c onnected market functions. It focuses on the highly intimate tech-
niques used to try and recoup defaulting debts from borrowers, as well as on the
collection industry’s relationship with lenders. Joe Deville follows a journey of
default, from debtors’ borrowing practices, to the intrusion of collections tech-
nologies into their homes and everyday lives, to the collections organisation, to
attempts by debtors to seek outside help. In the process he shows that to under-
stand this particular market, we need to understand the central role played within
it by emotion and affect.
By opening up for scrutiny an area of the economy which is often hidden
from view, this book makes a major contribution to understanding both the rela-
tionship between emotion and calculation in markets and the role of consumer
credit in our societies and economies. This book will be of interest to students,
teachers and researchers in a range of fields, including sociology, anthropology,
cultural studies, economics and social psychology.
Joe Deville is a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, based jointly at
the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process and the Political
Economy Research Centre. He is also the co- founder of the Charisma research
network and an editor of Journal of Cultural Economy.
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Lived Economies of Default
Consumer credit, debt collection and the
capture of affect
Joe Deville
First published 2015
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Joe Deville
The right of Joe Deville to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-i n-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Deville, Joe.
Lived economies of default : consumer credit, debt collection and the
capture of affect / by Joe Deville.
pages cm
1.Consumer credit–Great Britain. 2. Collecting of accounts–Great
Britain. 3. Collection agencies–Great Britain. 4. Consumer credit.
5. Collecting of accounts. 6. Collection agencies. I. Title.
HG3756.G7D48 2015
332.7′50941–dc23 2014033839
ISBN: 978-0-415-62250-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-38325-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
List of illustrations xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgements xvi
List of abbreviations xviii
Introduction: lived economies of default 1
A controversial object 3
Devices 6
Economisation 8
Affect 10
Outline of the book 13
1 ‘A curious and sort of subconscious temptation’: the lure of
consumer credit 18
The early history of the credit card 21
Shifts in the modes of calculation 26
Lures for feeling 35
Conclusion 40
2 In the fold of default: living with market attachments 44
Markets, attachments, folding 45
Enfolding the market: living in anticipation 51
Unfolding the life of default: calculation and the capture of
affect 58
Living with sticky attachments 62
Conclusion 68
3 The discovery and capture of affect: a history of debt
collection 73
The long history of body attachment 74