South Africa was one of the first countries in the Global South that
established a financialized consumer credit market. This market
consolidates rather than alleviates the extreme social inequality within
a country. This book investigates the political reasons for adopting an
allegedly self-regulating market despite its disastrous effects and
identifies the colonialist ideas of property rights as a mainstay of the
existing social order. The book addresses sociologists, political
scientists, anthropologists and legal scholars interested in the
interaction of economy and law in contemporary market societies.