ABSTRACT
Much has been written on rural indebtedness, usually in relation to particular case studies. The land dispossession and bonded labour effects of debt have been documented extensively by agrarian analysts. However, the broader economic, behavioural and socialenvironmental consequences of debt remain surprisingly under-theorized. Graeber (2009, 107) noted that anthropologists ‘have had especially little to say about the phenomenon of debt’ and Carruthers (2005, 355) wrote that credit is ‘a topic that sociology has mostly ignored’.1 This lack of interest may be explained by the ambivalence and complexity of the credit/debt couple – at times a survival requirement, a source of formidable potential or the cause of great burden.
