Financialization meets Flexibilization: Indebtedness and transformations of work and household in Greece

This project studies the parallel and intertwined processes of the financialization of the economy and the flexibilization of production and work by focusing on relations of indebtedness in households and small-scale companies in a Greek city. Taking as its starting point historical processes and political contestations concerning indebtedness, it looks at shifting relations of dependency in domestic and work spaces. In understanding and problematizing indebtedness (a keyword that encompasses multiple economic, moral and legal obligations in both its private and public forms), this ethnographically grounded project will also attend to political debates about justice, blame and guilt. The empirical focus will include legal cases of (over-)indebtedness related to both household insolvency and company bankruptcies. The goal is to explore how indebtedness is linked to legal and moral responsibilities and intersects with class, ethnic, generational and gender relations.