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Bankruptcy and Debt Collection in Liberal Capitalism

Switzerland, 1800–1900

Mischa Suter author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:The University of Michigan Press

Published:2nd Jun '21

Should be back in stock very soon

Bankruptcy and Debt Collection in Liberal Capitalism cover

Drawing on perspectives from anthropology and social theory, this book explores the quotidian routines of debt collection in nineteenth-century capitalism. It focuses on Switzerland, an exemplary case of liberal rule. Debt collection and bankruptcy relied on received practices until they were standardized in a Swiss federal law in 1889. The vast array of these practices was summarized by the idiomatic Swiss legal term “Rechtstrieb” (literally, “law drive”). Analyzing these forms of summary justice opens a window to the makeshift economies and the contested political imaginaries of nineteenth-century everyday life. Ultimately, the book advances an empirically grounded and theoretically informed history of quotidian legal practices in the everyday economy; it is an argument for studying capitalism from the bottom up.

ISBN: 9780472132522

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

336 pages