Doctoral Dissertation Research: Public Debt and Popular Response

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Since the 2008 global economic downturn, debt and credit have emerged globally as central issues of public concern. The research supported by this award seeks to understand why, by looking at the effects of these developments at the local level. The researcher asks: How does public debt become materially connected to local lives? Do these concerns affect local-level experiences of personal and household debt and responsibility? How do these concerns translate into debt politics and public response? Answering these questions will help both policy makers and social scientists to better understand the local effects of national and global economic crisis and the remediating potential of local response. City University of New York (CUNY) anthropology doctoral student, Sarah Molinari, advised by Dr. Ida Susser, will undertake to answer these questions through research in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico's current debt crisis has spurred debate and response at all levels of society, making this a particularly appropriate research site. Molinari will focus on three San Juan-based civil society groups. All three are concerned with the debt crisis but differ in their make-up by age, socio-economic position, politics and ideas about debt. She will gather data through the extended case method, interviews, participant observation, documentary analysis, and archival research. Findings will contribute to understanding diversity in conceptions of "debt" and debtor/creditor relations; how people experience different scales of debt and credit relations; and variations in understanding of and responding to recent events. Research findings will be disseminated by the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and during a public seminar at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey.