Social reconfigurations of debt-ridden societies

When the social body was still recovering from the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008, in March 2020, the World Health Organization labeled COVID-19 a pandemic. The world went into reclusion without having yet assessed the social reverberations created by the previous financial crisis. What follows is an attempt to unpack some of these recent societal transformations that have weakened this social body in the shadows of our modern indebted economies. By looking into the social forces unleashed by global finance and departing from an interpretation that sees in indebtedness the natural condition for individuals and countries in our developed societies (Lazzarato; Graeber), this article expands on some specific socioeconomic manifestations that are relevant to make sense of recent forms of political conflict and social strife.