Debt

Peter Y. Paik is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is author of From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe and editor (with Marcus Bullock) of Aftermaths: Exile, Migration, and Diaspora Reconsidered.Merry Wiesner-Hanks is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her books include The Renaissance and Reformation: A History in Documents, The Marvelous Hairy Girls: The Gonzales Sisters and Their Worlds, and Religious Transformations in the Early Modern World: A Brief Study with Documents.

"This edited collection adds a welcome range of new perspectives on what has become a central issue for contemporary debate. One strength of the collection is the way in which it draws together research from a very diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, meaning that even a reader who considers themselves to be an expert in this topic within a particular disciplinary field is likely to find something that provokes new questions and insights."—Anthropological Notebooks"A very timely volume, exploring the focal issue of our times through a variety of approaches, including philosophical, political, anthropological and literary. . . . By linking economics and the environment, the volume is a serious attempt to reformulate the significant narrative of our times and its historical emergence, leaving behind so many other issues that were purely a matter of intellectual fashion: this volume tells us of the predicament we have to get to grips with."—Philip Goodchild, University of Nottingham, author of Theology of Money and Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety"Philosophically broad and deep at the same time. . . . [I]t's high time we rethought what we mean when we talk about debt. This is for the simple reason that the warm fuzzy ignorance enforced by neoliberalism has contributed very significantly to the current ecological emergency, while on the other hand monetarism is now eating the societies that spawned it, a classic case of autoimmunity. That the editors think these two facts together is really, really good. . . . [T]he most enjoyable collection of essays I've read in a while."—Timothy Morton, University of California, Davis, author of The Ecological Thought and Ecology without Nature

• Introduction Peter Y. Paik1. Debt Richard D. Wolff2. "I Consider It Un-American Not to Have a Mortgage": Immigrant Homeownership in Chicago Elaine Lewinnek3. Demonizing Debt, Naturalizing Finance Mary Poovey4. On Debt Michael Allen Gillespie5. The Growth Imperative: Prosperity or Poverty Joel Magnuson6. Democracy's Debt: Capitalism and Cultural Revolution Stephen L. Gardner7. Is Debt the New Karma? Why America Finally Fell Apart Morris Berman8. Measures of Time: Exploring Debt, Imagination, and Real Nature Julianne Lutz Warren9. The Time of Living Dead Species: Extinction Debt and Futurity in Madagascar Genese Marie Sodikoff10. Unintended Consequences and the Epistemology of Fraud in Dickens and Hayek Eleanor Courtemanche11. The Resurrection of an Economic God: Keynes Becomes Postmodern Michael Tratner12. China and the United States: The Bonds of Debt Donald D. Hester13. Debt's Moral Kennan Ferguson14. Debt, Theft, Permaculture: Justice and Ecological Scale Gerry Canavan