ABSTRACT
David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years investigates the history and morality of debt with enormous breadth and detail. Published in 2011, the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, an event caused by the collapse of the American housing bubble which resulted in mass defaults on debts, affecting financial institutions and markets worldwide. While Graeber was a university student, the world saw a debt crisis in the 1980s triggered by unregulated lending from global banks to governments in developing countries that borrowed more money than they could repay. Graeber’s involvement in political activism began in 1999, when he joined protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. Graeber established himself as a vocal figure in the global justice movement, an international network of activist groups opposed to capitalism and globalization.
