Consumer credit default and collections: the shifting ontologies of market attachment

Existing accounts of consumer credit market making have done much to explore the business models, technologies and advertising practices of lenders, and the financial circumstances of borrowers. However, the space of interface between consumer credit debtor and debt collector remains underexplored. Drawing on interviews with debtors and an exposition of debt collections technologies, the paper demonstrates how this market domain, in seeking to prompt calculative engagement, depends on its ability to intersect successfully with the everyday lives of economic agents. Critically engaging with key currents emerging out of the “economization” programme, it builds on its attention to the socio-material mechanisms of market making. However, the paper argues that materially sensitive economic sociologies need to account more thoroughly for the place of affect in markets. This is particularly relevant when studying consumer markets, where exchanges routinely centre on intimate and embodied encounters between economic actors.