Debt as Power

Muzio, Tim Di; Robbins, Richard

doi:10.7765/9781526101013

Cited by 35 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…However, despite multiple innovations and iterations to the configuration of international financial assistance, most of the sub-Saharan African states were overwhelmed by these debts. The conditionalities and constraints imposed by the donor communities underline the chimera of political autonomy and sovereignty of the recipient states, a phenomenon explained by Tim Di Muzio as 'Debt as Power' (Di Muzio and Robbins 2016). At one point in the 2000s, the sub-Saharan African states were running debt levels of about 100% of their gross domestic product (GDP), and in several cases the annual expenditure on debt servicing was greater than their entire foreign aid packages (Coulibaly, Gandhi, and Senbet 2019;Desruelle, Razafimahefa, and Sancak 2019).…”

Section: Africa's Postcolonial Burden and Emerging Economiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘state’ of postcolonial development: China–Rwanda ‘dependency’ in perspective

Lisimba¹,

Parashar

2020

Third World Quarterly

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This paper aims to investigate the impact of China's aid, trade and investments on the development trajectories in postcolonial Africa, focussed on Rwanda. The analytical framework of this study is informed by Helen Milner's observation that 'International political economy is a growth industry'. Furthermore, the study deploys dependency theory and world systems theory to examine how the global economic configuration operates though the hierarchy of core, semi-periphery and periphery among the states. Our focus on Rwanda is based on our observation that this small, landlocked, natural resources-deficient, aid-dependent country is an atypical destination for Chinese patronage and investments. We argue that as a non-resource rich country, Rwanda presents an anomaly, thus, underlining the gap in the existing knowledge on China-Africa engagements. We discuss the inherent dependency in the neoliberal economic structure and present a case for using dependency theory to understand and explain the contemporary globalised economy and emerging South-South cooperation. We conclude with a call for more in-depth cross-comparative research on China-Africa relations to grasp the magnitude of dependencies and economic transformations within postcolonial African states.

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Section: Africa's Postcolonial Burden and Emerging Economiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘state’ of postcolonial development: China–Rwanda ‘dependency’ in perspective

Lisimba¹,

Parashar

2020

Third World Quarterly

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“…6. The counterpart to an investment strike is a debt strike, discussed at length elsewhere (DiMuzio and Robbins, 2016).…”

Section: Fundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capitalized money, austerity and the math of capitalism

DiMuzio

Robbins

2020

Current Sociology

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This article seeks to contribute to the existing critical debates on money and debt by advancing three main arguments. First, largely due to such debates’ tendency for description, the article argues that in in the heterodox literature on money and debt there is no convincing critical theory of money creation. For this reason the authors introduce the theory of capital as power and how it can help us theorize the consequences of present money creation. Second, the authors demonstrate how the capitalization of money creation by a minority of investors not only leads to the political chase for unsustainable economic growth, but also how there is a differential distribution of interest upwards that helps generate greater economic inequality in the United States. Third, they argue that in an era of declining growth, dominant owners of capital seek to recapture their expected return on investments by extracting a greater share of the national income from the vast majority of citizens through a fiscal politics of austerity.

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“…Moreover, as an atomising relation, personal debt, unlike collective employment, fragments borrowers, inhibiting collective negotiation over the terms of repayment. This fragmentary dynamic is but one way in which debt, as a technology of power, has been used historically to discipline labouring populations – from colonial peasantries to industrial working classes (Di Muzio and Robbin 2015). That debt operates in this way – as both a disciplinary and extractive mechanism – sheds light on the current proliferation of non‐normative labour forms, not least in the informal economies of the global South.…”

Section: On the Materiality Of Fictitious Capitalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debt collection as labour discipline: the work of finance in a Myanmar squatter settlement

Campbell

2020

Soc Anthropol

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Critical studies of development in the global South have called attention to the failure of existing modernisation projects to deliver on promises of full employment in well-remunerated wage labour. Despite this shortfall in formal employment, non-normative labour forms have proliferated globally, alongside mass expansion of financial markets since the late 20th century. In the present article, I take up these multiple trends as interrelated phenomena, inquiring into the work of finance in the extraction of value where individuals labour outside of formal employment. The argument, in brief, is that manifold debt relations have facilitated an effective extraction of value from non-normative forms of capitalist labour in the informal economy. This argument contrasts with positions that see informal labour as non-capitalist, or posit such labour as lying outside class relations of exploitation. Ethnographically, I engage these issues through a study of heterogeneous livelihoods among residents of a squatter settlement located in an industrial zone on the outskirts of Myanmar's former capital, Yangon.

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Debt as Power

Cited by 35 publications

References 64 publications

The ‘state’ of postcolonial development: China–Rwanda ‘dependency’ in perspective

The ‘state’ of postcolonial development: China–Rwanda ‘dependency’ in perspective

Capitalized money, austerity and the math of capitalism

Debt collection as labour discipline: the work of finance in a Myanmar squatter settlement

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