Indebted life and money culture: Payday lending in the United Kingdom

Langley, P.; Anderson, B.; Ash, J.; Gordon, R.

Abstract

Critical social scientific research holds that credit–debt is a principal economic and governing relation in contemporary economy and society, but largely neglects money’s role in indebted life. Drawing on qualitative research in the payday loan market in the United Kingdom, the paper shows that borrowers typically relate to loans in monetary rather than financial terms and incorporate them into practices of payment, spending and online banking. To analyse how indebted life is variously experienced and enacted through money, the concept of money culture is developed to refer to money’s culture, money’s meanings and money’s affects. Borrowers enter into and negotiate payday loans through a digitally mediated money culture that both mobilizes and runs counter to money’s powerful fictions as circulating universal equivalent and calculative means of account.

Citation

Langley, P., Anderson, B., Ash, J., & Gordon, R. (2019). Indebted life and money culture: Payday lending in the United Kingdom. Economy and Society, 48(1), 30-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2018.1554371

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 21, 2018
• Online Publication Date: Mar 22, 2019
• Publication Date: 2019
• Deposit Date: Nov 23, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 22, 2020
• Journal: Economy and Society
• Print ISSN: 0308-5147
• Electronic ISSN: 1469-5766
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 48
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 30-51
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2018.1554371
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1308756