Borrowed identities
Class(ification), inequality and the role of credit-debt in class making and struggle
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3387368 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Sparke (0000-0001-7253-7681), Matthew Sparkes (0000-0002-6636-2931, University of Cambridge, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 67 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1417-1434 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-0261 • E-ISSN: 1467-954X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0038026119831563 |
| OpenAlex | W2917994861 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 44 |
Class analysis has re-emerged as a pertinent area of enquiry. This development is linked to a growing body of work dubbed cultural class analysis, that utilises Bourdieu's class scheme to develop rich understandings of how culture and lifestyle interacts with economic and social relations in Britain, generating inequalities and hierarchies. Yet cultural class analyses do not properly account for the way individuals resist their relative class positions, nor the role of unsecured credit in facilitating consumption. This article contributes to this area by examining how unsecured credit and problem debt influences consumption and class position amongst individuals with modest incomes. Drawing on 21 interviews with individuals managing problem debt, this article details how class inequality emerges through affective states that include anxiety and feelings of deficit. It also shows how these experiences motivate participants to rely on unsecured credit to consume cultural goods and engage in activities in a struggle against their class position, with the intention of enhancing how they are perceived and classified by others. The findings indicate that cultural class analyses may have overlooked the symbolic importance of mundane consumption and goods in social differentiation. This article further details how these processes entangle individuals into complex liens of debt - which lead to over-indebtedness, default, dispossession and financial expropriation - illustrating how investigations of credit-debt can better inform understandings of class inequality, exploitation and struggle
Class (philosophy) · Class analysis · Consumption (sociology) · Credit card · Debt · Economics · Epistemology · Inequality · Market economy · Political science · Social class · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Finance · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology
Affective infrastructure
Spatial dynamics of post-crisis deleveraging
Can household debt influence income inequality? Evidence from Britain
The Political Economy of Household Debt & The Keynesian Policy Paradigm
The Structures of Accumulation, Financial Identity and Saving
Consumer credit and personal networks
The young Australian feminine property investor
Debt for status? Consumer credit, ordinary consumption, and the sense of place
Consumer culture, precarious incomes and mass indebtedness
Structures of Consumption and Professional Identity
Payment problems through a social class lens
Revolting Subjects
The Everyday Life of Global Finance
Social mobility and class structure in modern Britain
Culture, Class, Distinction
Trickle-Down Consumption
Austerity and the household
Financialised Capitalism
Escaping the Tyranny of Earned Income? The Failure of Finance as Social Innovation
Costs and benefits of neoliberalism. A class analysis
The integrating role of private homeownership and mortgage credit in British neoliberalism
The US Debtfare State and the Credit Card Industry
Hidden sides of the credit economy
Hire Purchase in a Free Society
Spaces of debt resistance and the contemporary politics of financialised capitalism
The intimate spaces of debt
The Pursuit of (Past) Happiness? Middle-class Indebtedness and American Financialisation
Brief History of Neoliberalism
Capitals, assets, and resources
Social space and cultural class divisions
Twenty-First Century Dis-Ease? Habitual Reflexivity Or the Reflexive Habitus
Uprooting Class? Culture, World-Making and Reform
Cultural sociology and new forms of distinction
Classificatory Struggles
Class in Contemporary Britain
Introduction
Introduction to Elites from the 'Problematic of the Proletariat' to a Class Analysis of 'Wealth Elites
Spectres of Marxism
Poverty Talk
In Other Words
Intersubjectivity and Bourdieusian Approaches to 'Identity
Class and employment
Distinguishing Financialization from Neoliberalism
Cultural vs Economic Capital
A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC's Great British Class Survey Experiment
Class Identities and the Identity of Class
Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption
Lending by numbers
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |