Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy
Project Directors: Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Sarah Muir
Graduate Assistant: Laura Charney
Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy raised critical questions about the role of debt in contemporary capitalism; the relationship between debt, migration, and violence; and the emergence of new political and cultural identities, particularly among subordinated groups. The project's members, which included scholars, filmmakers, and journalists, examined the politics of information asymmetry—a lack of data and conceptual tools—and how this might undermine social mobilization in impoverished communities, peoples, and countries.
The interdisciplinary group compared recent and landmark cases such as Puerto Rico, Argentina, Greece, Spain, and U.S. cities like Detroit as well as other spaces that have been historically affected by debt. The project also developed a web platform to disseminate existing information, facilitate public engagement, and increase discussion about the politics of debt.
The project’s directors were Sarah Muir, Term Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University and Frances Negrón Muntaner, Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University.
See the press release for the working group's digital PRSyllabus explaining the Puerto Rican debt crisis.
News
The co-director of the Unpayable Debt working group spoke about the financial future of Puerto Rico.
The journal’s dossier focuses on Professor Frances Negrón-Muntaner's teaching and research told largely through the words of several generations of former students.
The event, themed “Empowered Scholarship: Engaging with the World, Connecting with Each Other,” took place on October 3 and 4.
CSSD Executive Committee member appears on The Takeaway, CNN en Español, and Dissent Magazine.
Frances Negron-Muntaner discusses the recent protests in Puerto Rico in conjunction with her Valor y Cambio project.
Past Events
CSSD working group Unpayable Debt: Capital, Violence, and the New Global Economy presents Frontier of Debt in the Caribbean and Afro-America.
Friday, April 21
Institute for Public Knowledge
New York University
20 Cooper Square, Room 222
New York, NY
Narratives of Debt is a one-day conference presented by CSSD's working group on Unpayable Debt and the Oikos working group at NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. The conference focuses on the ways that people and groups h
Publications
Fellows
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Caribbean Studies, Rutgers University
Yarimar Bonilla is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University.
Master’s student, Human Rights, Columbia University
Laura Charney is a Master’s student in Human Rights at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. She completed her undergraduate degree in Archaeology, Anthropology, and Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.
Graduate Student, Music, Columbia University
César Colón-Montijo is a journalist and doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. He obtained a Master's in anthropology and audiovisual communication from the University of Barcelona, Spain in 2005, and previously completed a B. A. in communications at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus in 2003. César is the editor of the Cocinando Suave: Ensayos de Salsa en Puerto Rico (2015), a landmark collection of scholarly, historical, and journalistic essays, poems, and photo-essays about the histories of salsa.
Fellow, Hispanic Languages and Literature, Stony Brook University
Lena Burgos Lafuente (PhD NYU, 2011) is Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature, Stony Brook University. She specializes in poetry, Latin American essay writing, sound studies, and transatlantic literary crossings in the first half of the twentieth century.
Fellow, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, University of Texas at Austin
Marisol LeBrón is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. An interdisciplinary scholar working across American Studies and Latinx Studies, her research focuses on social inequality, policing, violence, and protest movements in Puerto Rico and its diaspora.
Professor, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University
Ed Morales is an author and journalist who has written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, and City Limits, among many others. He is a former Village Voice staff writer and Newsday columnist and the author of Living in Spanglish (St. Martins) and The Latin Beat (Da Capo Press), as well as the upcoming Raza Matters (Verso Press). He is currently a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and hosts a show on WBAI-FM, 99.5 Pacifica Radio.
Fellow, Linguistic Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Sarah Muir's research is situated at the intersection of linguistic, political-economic, and historical anthropology and grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in Argentina. Thematically, her work examines the practical logics of economic investment, ethical evaluation, and political critique, with a particular focus on financial crisis and social class.
Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar and professor at Columbia University, where she is also the founding curator of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive. Among her books and publications are: Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (CHOICE Award, 2004), The Latino Media Gap (2014), and Sovereign Acts: Contesting Colonialism in Native Nations and Latinx America (2017). Her most recent films include Small City, Big Change (2013), War for Guam (2015) and Life Outside (2016).
Doctoral Student, International Finance and Economic Policy, Columbia University
Giovanni Pagán Vélez is a student from San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is an MPA candidate at Columbia SIPA, concentrating in International Finance and Economic Policy.
Professor, Department of Legal History, Columbia Law School
Christina Duffy Ponsa is the George Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School, where she teaches constitutional law and American legal history. Professor Ponsa is the author of several articles on the constitutional law and history of American territorial expansion and empire, and co-editor of Foreign in a Domestic Sense: Puerto Rico, American Expansion, and the Constitution (Duke U. Press, 2001). Before joining the Columbia faculty in 2007, she served as a law clerk to Judge José A. Cabranes on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and to Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the United States Supreme Court.
Fellow, Photographer, Columbia University
Huáscar Robles is an author and photographer from Caguas, Puerto Rico. He has written about the revitalization of Santurce, Puerto Rico through tax incentives and the impact of the economic crisis on the Island’s middle class.