Rechtstrieb : Schulden und Vollstreckung im liberalen Kapitalismus 1800-1900. English

Bankruptcy and debt collection in liberal capitalism : Switzerland, 1800-1900 / Mischa Suter ; translated by Adam Bresnahan.

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2021.

©2021

1 online resource (x, 316 pages)

Access is available to the Yale community.

Description based on information from the publisher.

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

Drawing on perspectives from anthropology and social theory, this book explores the quotidian routines of debt collection in nineteenth-century capitalism. It focuses on Switzerland, an exemplary case of liberal rule. Debt collection and bankruptcy relied on received practices until they were standardized in a Swiss federal law in 1889. The vast array of these practices was summarized by the idiomatic Swiss legal term "Rechtstrieb" (literally, "law drive"). Analyzing these forms of summary justice opens a window to the makeshift economies and the contested political imaginaries of nineteenth-century everyday life. Ultimately, the book advances an empirically grounded and theoretically informed history of quotidian legal practices in the everyday economy; it is an argument for studying capitalism from the bottom up.

UMPEBC 2021.

Books / Online

English

January 27, 2023

Includes bibliographical references (pages 279-316) and index.