ABSTRACT
The introduction starts by elaborating the relevance of debt for our contemporary world as well as for recent protests. Reviewing the (little) literature that exists on debt-based protest, I argue that the book fills empirical as well as theoretical gaps. In order to remedy the lack of theorization of previous work in the field, I suggest turning to both social movement studies and interdisciplinary work on financialization and debt. I then provide an overview over the definition and borders of the field of “contentious debt politics,” the research design and the methods used to generate data. The chapter closes with an outlook on the rest of the book.
