Social Movements and the Politics of Debt: Transnational Resistance against Debt on Three Continents

It Would Have Been Hard To Miss The Pivotal Role Debt Has Played For Contentious Politics In The Last Decades. The North Atlantic Financial Crisis, Global Recession And European Debt Crisis - As Well As The Recent Waves Of Protest That Followed Them - Have Catapulted Debt Politics Into The Limelight Of Public Debates. Profiting From Years Of Fieldwork And An Extensive Amount Of Empirical Data, Christoph Sorg Traces Recent Contestations Of Debt From North Africa To Europe And The Us. In Doing So, He Identifies The Emergence Of New Transnational Movement Networks Against The Injustice Of Current Debt Politics, Which Struggle For More Social And Democratic Ways Of Organizing Debt Within And Between Societies. Frontmatter -- Table Of Contents -- List Of Figures -- Selected Abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- 1 D.r.e.a.m. (debt Rules Everything Around Me) -- Introduction -- The Southern Origins Of Recent Contentious Debt Politics -- Social Movement Studies Versus Critical Political Economy -- Contentious Debt Politics And How To Study Them -- The Outline Of This Book -- The Argument Of The Book -- 2 Theories Of Financialization And Social Movements -- Some Preliminary Thoughts On Financialization -- (political-)economic Approaches: Neo- And Post-keynesianism -- Varieties Of Marxist Thought -- Historical Sociology - World-systems Approach -- Markets, Networks, Culture -- Social Movement Studies -- Social Movement Studies' Traditional Agenda -- New Developments: Social Movement As Process -- Structure Versus Movement -- 3 The Financialization Of Capitalism -- Finance And Debt Under Capitalism -- The Recent Financialization Of Capitalism -- Financialized Actors And Institutions -- 4 Contentious Debt Politics Since The Southern Debt Crisis -- Introduction -- From The Imf Riots To The Emergence Of Transnational Advocacy Networks And Jubilee 2000 -- A Class Of Debtors In And For Itself? Grievances And Cleavages Of Debt -- Political Opportunities And Threats -- Mobilizing Structures -- Identity, Knowledge, Framing -- Repertoires Of Action -- Some Tentative Conclusions: Two Approaches To Contentious Debt Politics At The Eve Of The Nafc? -- 5 Responding To The Multiple Crises Of Financialized Capitalism -- Introduction -- From Financial To Economic Crisis -- From Financial-economic To Political And Social Crisis -- From Political And Social Crisis To Crisis Of Legitimacy -- The Debt Politics Movement Reacts To Financial Crisis And Anti-austerity Protests -- Moving From Crisis To Resistance -- 6 Debtors' Clubs And Debtors' Unions -- A New Cycle Of Contention: The Emergence Of New Anti-austerity Movements -- New Movement Organizations, Transnational Networks, And Movement Parties -- Excursion: The Illustrative Case Of Blockupy -- From Anti-austerity To New Contentious Debt Politics -- Yes Ican: The International Citizen Debt Audit -- Old And New Organizational Repertoires -- By Way Of Conclusion: A Virtuous Mutual Appropriation Towards A Debtors' Cartel -- 7 Who Owes Whom? Deconstructing Debt Fetishism -- Introduction -- Eurodad: Everything Development Finance -- Cadtm: The Debt System -- Ican: Putting The Citizen In Citizen Debt Audit -- Each One Teach One: Putting The Creditors And The System Into The Limelight -- What Is To Be Done? And Who's Gonna Do It? -- 8 Collective Debtor Action And Prefigurative Debt Politics -- Introduction -- Lobbying Against Vulture Funds For A New International Financial Architecture -- Towards An Athens Club: The Greek Truth Committee On Public Debt -- The Truth Committee's Preliminary Report And The Ensuing Greek Tragedy -- The People Want The Overthrow Of The Regime's Debt: Tunisia's Post-revolutionary Debt Audit -- Prefiguring A Democratic Finance: Municipal Audits, People's Bailout, And Beyond -- Different Ways Of Engaging Debt -- 9 Towards A More Democratic Debt Politics? -- Introduction -- Lineages Of Recent Contentious Debt Politics -- Three Ways Of Tackling The Debt Problematique -- Meditations On A Theory Of Contentious Debt Politics -- Debtors Of The World, Unite! -- Bibliography -- Referenced Primary Sources -- Secondary Literature -- Index Christoph Sorg. Mode Of Access: Internet Via World Wide Web. In English.