Credit and Consumer Society

The expansion of consumer credit is one of the most interesting features of advanced societies, yet it has attracted relatively little attention from social scientists. The existing discussion has tended to be highly constrained within the disciplines of economics and finance/accounting and has been highly statistical in its approach. An account of the wider social, economic and political context in which the growth of credit has emerged has been absent. This book fills this important and significant gap. It argues that advanced societies have moved towards new modes of sanctioning, delivering and collecting credit that mark the contemporary period as fundamentally different from previous eras.This key text is written in an accessible manner, though not at the expense of detail, coverage and quality. It is a high quality research-led text that is easy to read and includes questions for discussion, references to classic articles, and the latest research in the area as a way of introducing further reading.Burton, Dawn is the author of 'Credit and Consumer Society', published 2007 under ISBN 9780415405218 and ISBN 0415405211.