Niamh Mulcahy - Class and Inequality in the Time of Finance: Subject to Terms and Conditions

This book explores the effects of the gradual liberalisation of capital markets and the expansion of consumer credit on poorer households in the United Kingdom, with particular attention to the precariousness caused by a lack of savings and a reliance on debt. Asking what it means for poorer working individuals and households to be subject to the demands of finance, the author draws on Michel Foucaults theory of subjectivation as well as Louis Althussers interest in class, actively theorising the constraints of low-income or precarious work on financial planning, alongside the reorganisation or rollback of government benefits. A contribution to our understanding of the ways in which financial concerns deepen and expand economic inequality, Class and Inequality in the Time of Finance shows how finance stratifies individual subjects rather than simply individualising and separating them. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology with interests in neoliberalism, economic austerity, and consumer credit and debt.

Niamh Mulcahy is Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities at the University of Cambridge, UK.

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511.

The concepts in this book were developed over the course of my doctoral and masters degrees in the Departments of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and the University of Alberta, respectively. I have benefitted immensely from the mentorship of supervisors and conversations with colleagues in that time as a result. I am grateful to Christel Lane, for her careful supervision my PhD, and Ronjon Paul Datta, with whom I worked as an undergraduate and masters student. Each of these relationships influenced the theoretical and substantive development of my thinking in this book. Further comments on the PhD thesis were provided by Dave Elder-Vass and Susan Smith, which helped shape the direction the book has taken. I have also received ongoing academic advice and support from friends and colleagues, including Richard Westerman and Ariane Hanemaayer, who provided feedback and encouragement on proposals and drafts as I began to work on the manuscript. In my current role as Alice Tong Sze Research Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, I would like to acknowledge the productive and collegial research environment facilitated by the fellows of the College and members of the Centre. At CRASSH, thanks are owed to Steven Connor as Director, and Michelle Maciejewska and Mette Rokkum Jamasb for their continuous help. At Lucy Cavendish, I have been supported by Henriette Hendriks and Alison Vinnicombe, as well as Madeleine Atkins who encouraged me in this project.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to my family and friends for their constant reassurance. To my parents, Declan Mulcahy and Bonnie Gray, and my sister Karyn Mulcahy, first and foremost. Thanks also to Keith Bayliss, who has had a substantial interest in my research and its implications, as well as to Andrew Hammond and Richard Lloyd Morgan, as sources of guidance over the years of my doctoral and postdoctoral work. Vicky Few, Caroline Humphrey, Jeremy Morris, Duncan Needham, Bert Vaux and Godela Weiss-Sussex have also lent necessary support in this regard, as well as Michael and Julia Proctor, and Stuart and Sibella Laing, who made great efforts on my behalf. I am grateful to Daniel Unruh, Elizabeth Walsh, Rosalind Franklin, Wei-Yun Chung, Elisabeth Marksteiner and Andrew Fiddian-Green, Anna Bachmann, Toby Houserman, Katie Reinhart, Anjalene Whittier, Maria Fihl, Laura Brassington, Lorena Gazzotti, and many other friends during the course of my ongoing research.