Book launch: "Spacing Debt" by Dr Christopher Harker

In Spacing Debt: Obligations, Violence and Endurance in Ramallah, Palestine, Dr Harker demonstrates that financial debt is as much a spatial phenomenon as it is a temporal and social one. He 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. The book 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. Dr Harker 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, the book 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.

To discuss the book, IGP Director Professor Henrietta L. Moore will chair a panel of speakers featuring Professor Deborah James, (Department of Anthropology, LSE), Professor Rema Hammami, (Institute of Women's Studies, Birzeit University) and Professor Kareem Rabie (Department of Anthropology, American University). 

Dr Christopher Harker is Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Prosperity. His research on Debt, Finance and Prosperity spans the UK and the Levant.

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