Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 2 Issue 1 | Page 63

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years ago debt symbolised poor personal spending habits and frivolity, in the
contemporary age of extreme consumerism it is considered a positive personal
attribute, something that all people should have in order to demonstrate the
successful utilisation of entrepreneurial skill in a recession hit country. Debt is not a
personal failing, but a sign of an intelligent person who recognises there is no need to
wait for objects and experiences as they can access instant money and feel a sense
of immediate gratification. In this ‘new world’ an indebted person is a successful and
law abiding citizen who epitomizes the neoliberal ideology of liberty,44 recognising
that there are no temporal, spatial or financial limitations to the ownership of goods.45
Hence, the older people’s perspective laments a lost world, in which patience
was the virtue and delayed gratification was a sign of fiscal probity that has been
superseded by the easily accessible and free credit younger generations are
encouraged to acquire. Those born during ‘second modernity’46

have become

entrapped within a ‘debt economy’ whereby owing somebody else money is
considered normative and natural, it is part of the social illness of indebtedness.47
Ultimately, an interesting paradox arises in that Giroux’s analysis of young
people as ‘fodder for the human waste-disposable industry’ could equally apply to
older generations.48 This conception of the older body contrasts sharply with the
participants’ views because they perceive themselves as superior to wasteful youths.
This attitude derives from a perceived sense of personal morality concerning what is
right (saving and waiting) and what is wrong (spending and getting into debt) and the
deterrence of reckless behaviours. However, the neoliberal discourse demonizes
these beings because although they are resilient, this resilience is in the wrong form
because it encourages self-discipline and flouts the rules of contemporary living i.e.

imperative for social prosperity. There was a sense of state paternalism and risk was collectivized.
However, due to a multitude of processes, including ‘individualization…globalisation…unemployment
[and]…ecological crisis’ this societal paradigm has altered, initiating a ‘second modernity’.
Consequently, relations between people have been reformulated as fragmentation rather than social
cohesion is experienced and new risks enter the public sphere which are considered an individual
problem, something they alone must seek to overcome . Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim,
Individualization (London: Sage, 2001), 206.
44
Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualised Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 35.
45
Maurizio Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (United States of America: Semiotext, 2011),
112.
46
Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization (London: Sage, 2001), 206.
47
David Chandler, “Resilience and human security: The post-interventionist paradigm,” Security
Dialogue, 43, 3, (2012): 213-229.
48
Giroux, 2009, 28-39.