What constitutes this case as a crisis? How is this debt crisis classed, racialized, gendered, and otherwise prejudicial and/or predatory in its structure and consequences? Who profits from the crisis and who are most adversely impacted in terms of exposure to risk, access to assistance, and adverse health impacts?

Consumer Debt Crisis

This essay assignment asks that you research a significant debt crisis (past, current, or impending) and make an analytical argument as to its political significance beyond the events of its specific history. You may consider a particular market of consumer debt or a certain case of sovereign debt within a specific geography and historical period (e.g., medical debt crisis in the US post 9/11). Include details of the crisis’ history, causes, and effects that are relevant to your overall argument. This is not a book report—be selective about the descriptive information you include and provide citations for all such information. The bulk of the essay should rather be composed of your analysis of the economic, political, historical, and geographic factors that structure this specific debt crisis, and your argument as to the overall political lesson we can glean from engaging with this specific case.

In the course of your analysis, you may want to consider the following: What constitutes this case as a crisis? How is this debt crisis classed, racialized, gendered, and otherwise prejudicial and/or predatory in its structure and consequences? Who profits from the crisis and who are most adversely impacted in terms of exposure to risk, access to assistance, and adverse health impacts? What type of discourse (explanatory genres, narrative representations) surround this debt crisis and what capitalist myths and notions of morality, human nature, the state and society does this discourse naturalize? What is the role (potential or actual) of austerity, stimulus, relief, (corporate) welfare in structuring the crisis and its resolution? Engaging with these questions should function in service to your overall argument, in which you derive a generalizable political lesson from this particular case of debt-related crisis.