POLS 4329 Politics of Debt
This course focuses on public and private debt across different historical periods and geographical locations. Starting with the Mexican debt crisis of 1982, the course examines the different ways in which debt has become one of the key social relations of our time. The course covers several sovereign debt crises since 1982 (Mexico, Argentina, European Union, and Puerto Rico, to name a few) as well as the role of debt in our everyday life as citizens/workers (for example: student debt, medical debt, mortgages, credit cards and paycheck loans). Throughout the course, the debt-creditor relations will be considered critically and, therefore, issues of power relations, the financialization of daily life, and the legal aspects of debt will be considered in the course.