Consumer credit borrowing - using credit cards, store cards and personal loans - is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when these everyday forms of borrowing go 'bad', when people cannot, or will not, repay? Drawing on research from the interior of the debt collections industry, it examines precisely how this ever more sophisticated, globally connected market functions. Looking at the issue of consumer credit default from the point of view of the borrower, Joe Deville follows a journey of default, from debtors' accounts of their borrowing practices, to the intrusion of collections technologies into their homes and everyday lives, to debtors' attempts to seek outside help.

Introduction: Lived economies of default 1. 'A Curious and Sort of Subconscious Temptation': The lure of consumer credit 2. In the Fold of Default: Living with market attachments 3. The Discovery and Capture of Affect: A history of debt collection 4. The Strategic Management of Affect: Venturing inside the collections company 5. The Amplification of Calculative Opacity: The creditor, the collector, the collections letter Conclusion: Bringing affect to markets

Joe Deville is a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, based jointly at the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process and the Political Economy Research Centre. He is also the co-founder of the Charisma research network and an editor at Journal of Cultural Economy.