12 Consumer Credit, Self-Discipline, and Risk Management

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the embodied economy of mass market consumer credit, an area of economic activity that ballooned at the same time as the housing market. Drawing on governmentality literature, it examines the ways in which the responsibilities of borrowers for outstanding credit obligations have been transformed in the booming mass market for credit cards, such that individual borrower subjects come to perform entrepreneurial self-disciplines that extend well-beyond simply meeting repayments. The chapter emphasizes the intersection of the legal and extra-legal in the punishment of debtors, and how risk calculations in credit scoring can be understood as a technology of government. It offers reflections on the tensions and contradictions that are lived by individual credit card holders as the crisis unfolds, specifically arguing that self-disciplines of risk management fall short of completely containing the complexities and inherent uncertainty in economic life, such as precarious labour markets.

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