Spacing Debt: Obligations, Violence, and Endurance in Ramallah, Palestine

In Spacing Debt Christopher Harker demonstrates that financial debt is as much a spatial phenomenon as it is a temporal and social one. Harker traces the emergence of debt in Ramallah after 2008 as part of the financialization of the Palestinian economy under Israeli settler colonialism. Debt contributes to processes through which Palestinians are kept economically unstable and subordinate. Harker draws extensively on residents' accounts of living with the explosion of personal debt to highlight the entanglement of consumer credit with other obligatory relations among family, friends, and institutions. He offers a new geographical theorization of debt, showing how debt affects urban space, including the movement of bodies through the city, localized economies, and the political violence associated with occupation. Bringing cultural and urban imaginaries into conversation with monetized debt, Harker shows how debt itself becomes a slow violence embedded into the everyday lives of citizens. However, debt is also a means through which Palestinians practice endurance, creatively adapting to life under occupation.

Author: Christopher Harker
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 01/08/2021
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.44d
ISBN13: 9781478010968
ISBN10: 1478010967
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Human Geography
- History | Middle East | Israel & Palestine
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social

About the Author
Christopher Harker is Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London.