In Dire Straits: Multidimensional Household Debt in the Netherlands

In the wake of the 2007 global financial crisis, household debt and its corrosive effects on everyday life have seen increasing attention from academia, debt counselling, policy makers and the media. Due to subsequent years of economic precarity, household debt continues to negatively affect a substantial number of lives worldwide to this day. The Netherlands has not escaped this development, leaving more than 700,000 Dutch households affected by a problem debt in 2023.

Following a historical lineage of economic anthropology, this study widens the perspective on what constitutes a problem debt in everyday life by assuming a multidimensional point of view that accounts for social, cultural, moral and health-related influences.

The study develops this perspective on the foundation of Bourdieu’s capital theory, which it operationalises as an equation of assets and liabilities. The study plots these assets and liabilities across the debt maelstrom, a visualisation of the interaction between the economic, social, cultural, health and moral dimension of everyday life.

By applying this debt maelstrom to a rich collection of empirically collected debt narratives the study develops a framework of indebtedness which relates the conditions of indebtedness to the restrained agency of people in debt.