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Cultural-affective process of market violence:
Finnish instant loans in debtors’ online narratives
Ella Lillqvist & Päivi Timonen
To cite this article: Ella Lillqvist & Päivi Timonen (2023): Cultural-affective process of market
violence: Finnish instant loans in debtors’ online narratives, Consumption Markets & Culture,
DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2023.2224230
To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2023.2224230
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 26 Jun 2023.
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Cultural-affective process of market violence: Finnish instant
loans in debtors’ online narratives
Ella Lillqvist a,b and Päivi Timonen a
aCentre for Consumer Society Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; bSchool
of Marketing and Communication, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
ABSTRACT
This paper extends recent theorising on “market violence”, defined here as
a type of structural and cultural violence that takes place through an
assemblage in the market environment. The Finnish “instant loan”
market (similar to payday loans) has been widely criticised, e.g. for
excessively high interest rates; in this paper, debtors’ anonymous
narratives on the discussion forum Suomi24 are used to analyse the
instant loan market as a case of market violence. The study contributes
to a deeper understanding of the role of culture and affect in market
violence and presents a model of cultural market violence showing how
affects (here: hope, shame, despair and sense of urgency) can play a key
role in mediating between cultural ideals (here: those of individual
responsibility and the “good life”) and concrete business practices, thus
enabling market violence.
KEYWORDS
Markets; market violence;
affect; payday loans;
consumer credit;
indebtedness
Introduction
In this article, we extend recent academic discussion on the concept of “market violence” (Fırat
2018; Martin et al. 2021; McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler 2021; Zwick 2018). We define market vio-
lence as structural and cultural violence (Galtung 1969; 1990) taking place as an assemblage
within a market setting. Structural violence is brought about by institutional factors that cause
unequal life chances and potentially lead to poorer health and well-being for certain marginalised
people and groups. We understand culture primarily as the shared values, concepts, images and
ideas which enable a people, community, nation or social group to “think and feel about the
world” (Hall 1997); cultural violence, in turn, refers to ideals, practices, and discourses that legit-
imate violence or themselves lead to suffering (Galtung 1990; see also “symbolic violence” [Bour-
dieu 1991], and “epistemic violence”, [Spivak 1988]). Previous research on market violence that
looks at culture has mainly focused on “cognitive” factors such as how knowledge, framings or
understandings are controlled (Banerjee 2018; Martin et al. 2021). However, we argue that the
cultural side of market violence contains another important facet: the cultural affects involved
in market violence. To avoid any confusion with psychological views on affects, we will refer
to such affects as “cultural”, and to the process as “cultural-affective”, to highlight that, from
our perspective, these are social processes that are intimately connected to the values, ideals
and discourses of a cultural context.
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this
article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
CONTACT Ella Lillqvist ella.lillqvist@helsinki.fi Centre for Consumer Society Research, P.O. Box 24, University of Helsinki
FI-00014, Finland
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE
https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2023.2224230
We analyse market violence in the context of consumer credit markets, more specifically that
of the “instant loan” market in Finland. Consumer indebtedness and consumer credit are central
aspects of current financialised societies, and many studies attest to their negative consequences
for some consumers (e.g. Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin 2015; Richardson, Elliott, and
Roberts 2013; Turunen and Hiilamo 2014). The business practices and legal frameworks (or
lack thereof) that we see as contributing to market violence have been addressed in previous lit-
erature on debt, for example, as “predatory lending” (Gallmeyer and Roberts 2009; Hill and
Kozup 2007). These practices include exceptionally high interest rates (hundreds of percentage
points) and excessive fees, aggressive or misleading marketing, and targeting vulnerable groups
such as elderly or impoverished consumers as well as racial minorities (Hill and Kozup 2007;
Stegman and Faris 2003).
Analysing the consumer credit industry can help shed light on the role of affect in market
violence, because it is already known that there is a strong connection between debt and negative
emotions, such as a sense of powerlessness, inadequacy, and heightened responsibility for failures
(Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin 2015), anxiety and depression (Richardson, Elliott, and
Roberts 2013; Sweet, Kuzawa, and McDade 2018) but also, at least provisionally, optimism
(Davey 2019) and relief (Anderson et al. 2020; Davey 2019). Rather than simply focusing on indi-
viduals’ sentiments, as has most previous debt research, we extend the perspective advocated by
Deville (2014) of affect as a socio-cultural phenomenon and focus on how affective aspects of
debt are utilised on a market level, how “certain markets actually depend on, reshape, and oper-
ate through processes that might variously be understood as private, intimate, and/or ‘affective’”
(470). We argue that credit markets not only bring about affects but are also enabled by affects
and make use of them.
At the same time, this study also sheds light on the cultural meanings of debt and credit in
the Finnish context. It is relevant to note that Finland has developed from a poor, agrarian per-
iphery into a consumer society relatively recently and quickly, largely in the 1960s and 1970s
(Heinonen and Autio 2013). Thus, a traditional mentality of scarcity idealising self-sufficiency,
parsimony, and avoidance of debt, still partly exists together with newer consumer ethoses
(Heinonen and Autio 2013; Huttunen and Autio 2010; on the normalisation of credit and
debt, see also Peñaloza and Barnhart 2011). Furthermore, the Nordic countries, including Fin-
land, are characterised by the values of egalitarianism and conformity, but also individualism
(Askegaard and Östberg 2019), which have a bearing on how debt problems are seen and
addressed.
The Finnish “instant loan” market has provided consumers digitally mediated easy-access,
non-secured credit since 2005 (Makkonen 2014; Määttä 2010). In English-speaking countries,
similar short-term, high-interest loans are usually referred to as payday loans. We analyse anon-
ymous debtors’ personal narratives, using data from a large, long-standing Finnish discussion
forum, Suomi24 (“Finland24”). With the overall purpose of understanding the cultural nature
of market violence, we aim to answer the following research questions: (1) How and why
does market violence unfold as a cultural process in the Finnish instant loan market? (2)
How does affect enable market violence in this context?
This study contributes to a deeper understanding of market violence as a process involving
various interconnected structural and cultural aspects of the market environment. More specifi-
cally, we show how market violence is mediated by cultural affects, such as shame. We argue that
this enables businesses to make use of economic cultural ideals connected to individual respon-
sibility and the “good life” in order to render their products and practices both acceptable and
attractive.
In this article, we first construct the theoretical framework of market violence by discussing pre-
vious research on market violence specifically, approaches to structural and cultural violence more
broadly, as well as the role of affect in consumer debt and market violence. Second, we provide
background information on the instant loan market, with some comparison to payday loans, in
2 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
order to support the starting assumption that market violence is present in this context. Next, we
describe the materials and methods, before moving on to our findings regarding the cultural-affec-
tive process of market violence, including four key affects. A discussion concludes the paper.
Theoretical framework: market violence
Dimensions of market violence
Recently, marketing scholars taking a social perspective have begun to theorise the phenomenon of
violence in and by markets, termed “market violence” (Fırat 2018) or “marketplace violence” (Mar-
tin et al. 2021). So far, much of the literature forms a theoretical discussion on the connection of
market violence to capitalism, neoliberalism, and colonialism (Fırat 2018; Varman 2018; Zwick
2018), while some researchers have begun to empirically study violence in specific markets (Martin
et al. 2021; McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler 2021; Varman and Vijay 2018). It has been argued that it is
the logic and functioning of the market itself that causes harm to people (Fırat 2018). The interests
of the market, in general, “have come to rule contemporary lives” (Fırat 2018, 1017); whether as
workers or as consumers, it is virtually impossible for us to set ourselves outside of markets as
we depend on them for access to necessities such as food and shelter (1016). Markets seem to,
then, have a certain base-level potential for violence, though some are clearly more violent than
others. For example, the tobacco (Martin et al. 2021) and pornography (McVey, Gurrieri, and
Tyler 2021) industries have been found to be characterised by this phenomenon. Relevantly for
our context, it has also been previously argued that there are particular ways in which debt is inher-
ently violent (Graeber 2014; Lazzarato 2012). Furthermore, market violence targets less powerful
actors in the market context (whether workers or consumers), particularly groups that are already
in some way victimised or marginalised, such as women (McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler 2021), the
LGBTQ community (Duncan-Shepherd and Hamilton 2022; Martin et al. 2021), or people in the
Global South (Varman and Vijay 2018).
There is still no agreement on what different forms of market violence exist. To help add con-
ceptual clarity to the discussion on market violence, we draw from Galtung’s typology of violence
(1969; 1990). The first thing to note is that for something to be understood as violence, there must
be harm caused to a victim. According to Galtung’s (1969, 168) basic definition, “violence is present
when human beings are being influenced so that their actual somatic and mental realisations are
below their potential realisations”; meaning that were it not for the negative influence from outside,
people would have lived longer, healthier and/or happier lives. Specifically, violence leads to “avoid-
able insults” to the basic human needs of survival, well-being, identity, and freedom (Galtung 1990).
Galtung goes on to state that the usual understanding of violence needs to be extended, arguing
notably that we cannot always clearly identify an actor that is responsible for violence; violence can
therefore be either personal (performed by a clearly identified subject) or structural (present in
social structures) (Galtung 1969). Structural violence “shows up as unequal power and consequently
as unequal life chances” (Galtung 1969, 171); for instance, if people are starving when it is avoidable,
then violence is present even if no individual party is clearly culpable. Whereas personal violence is
visible as action and usually clearly perceived, structural violence is often invisible because it is
inherent in normality. As McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler (2021) show in their analysis of sexual vio-
lence as a form of market violence, violence can also be at once both structural and personal.
Later, Galtung added to his typology the category of cultural violence (Galtung 1990), which,
similarly to Bourdieu’s (1991) concept of symbolic violence, refers mainly to factors such as religion,
ideology, language, art, and science being used to render personal or structural violence acceptable
in a specific cultural context. In the context of market violence, the cultural or symbolic dimension
has been discussed using several different terms. Similarly to Galtung and Bourdieu, Bouchet (2018)
focuses on the “normalisation of violence” by markets, whereby the symbolic value of violence is
modified. However, there is also direct harm caused by cultural factors, in addition to the kind
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 3
that legitimates other forms of violence. For instance, Banerjee (2018) refers to a type of direct harm
as “epistemic violence” where “language, law and discourse are used to marginalise and disempower
specific groups”. Marginalisation and disempowerment are in and of themselves affronts to the
basic human needs of identity and freedom (Galtung 1990). Martin et al. (2021), in turn, include
in their term “marketplace violence” both the “actions and narratives of powerful market actors
that perpetuate inequalities and/or inequities on less powerful market actors” and note that violence
can be embedded in cultural discourses.
We conclude, then, that market violence appears primarily as structural or cultural violence in a
market setting (although personal violence may be present as well). As argued by Çalışkan and Cal-
lon (2010), a market is an arrangement of heterogeneous constituents that deploys, for example,
rules and conventions, technical devices, discourses and narratives, knowledge, as well as compe-
tencies and skills embodied in living beings. If we apply this perspective, market violence is a com-
plex assemblage that operates through business practices, transactions, legislative frameworks, and
also crucially through other cultural dynamics. In this study, we are particularly interested in the
connections between such factors and in how they dynamically work together.
So far, much of the literature on market violence has been theoretical (e.g. Fırat 2018; Zwick
2018). There are scant empirical studies on how and why market violence actually unfolds in
specific market contexts; more are needed to advance theoretical development. Those empirical
studies that do exist (Martin et al. 2021; McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler 2021) have not yet focused
on tracing the dynamic assemblages of market violence or drawn attention to the ways that struc-
tural and cultural factors are connected. This is the research gap that we aim to remedy as we ask:
(RQ1) How and why does market violence unfold as a cultural process in the Finnish instant loan
market? This question entails an overview of the assemblage, including how and why consumers
come to this market, why they remain on it, and what consequences it holds for them.
The role of affect in debt and market violence
Affect, in socio-cultural studies, is often theorised by drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) and
Massumi’s (2002) work. In this view, affects are not personal feelings but rather intensities that cir-
culate in assemblages (such as the ones responsible for market violence) and augment or diminish a
person’s power to act; affect is the “effectuation of a power of the pack that throws the self into
upheaval” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 240). Affect is often described as preceding thought and dis-
course (Clough and Halley 2007; Massumi 2002); however, as others have argued, in practice, it
becomes difficult to uphold such a division (Wetherell 2012; 2013). In a world that is inherently
social and discursive, affects are entangled in wider practices. Thus, affects are relational and cul-
tural; they constitute subjects rather that originating from or residing within individuals (Bajde
and Rojas-Gaviria 2021). Furthermore, affects have great power and can be used intentionally
and politically (Ahmed 2004); as Deleuze and Guattari (1987, 356) have put it, affects “transpierce
the body like arrows, they are weapons of war”.
Various affective aspects of debt have been discussed from a cultural perspective (e.g. Anderson
et al. 2020; Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin 2015; Deville 2015; Engel and Pedersen 2019). For
example, Dawney, Kirwan, and Walker (2020) argue that debt involves “entanglements of people,
technologies and objects” that produce affective states and that indebtedness involves heightened
anxiety and vigilance. Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin (2015) refer to the lived experience of
indebtedness as “financial melancholia”, referring to a Freudian meaning of melancholia: blaming
the self for loss instead of accepting it through mourning. When people fail to recognise outside
influences on their lives, i.e. the external sources of affect, these become factors that worsen the
situation.
The importance of hope has also been discussed in the context of personal debt (Davey 2019).
One concept that can shed light on how these factors are related to market violence is cruel opti-
mism (Berlant 2011; see also Dawney, Kirwan, and Walker 2020). This is a cultural-affective
4 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
dynamic where suffering ensues due to a mismatch between assumed goals and paths towards a
good life, as it is conventionally understood, and people’s real-life conditions. In this process, the
pursuit of something you desire counter-productively “impedes the aim that brought you to it
initially”, often with tragic consequences (Berlant 2011, 1). Davey (2019) has noted that although
previous literature has pointed out a hope of upward social mobility associated with some forms
of debt (mortgages and consumer credit), hope in the context of subprime debtors has little to
do with this; rather the optimism is related to avoiding immediate negative outcomes, such as
legal enforcement.
Assuming that consumer debt is often connected to credit markets that can be seen as violent,
these cultural studies of affects and debt suggest that the detrimental effects of market violence may
work partly through internalised cultural affects. This, consequently, makes critical assessment or
conscious control particularly difficult for individuals. Market violence theory has, however, so
far ignored this potentially important aspect of cultural violence and instead focused on “cognitive”
factors such as how knowledge, framings or understandings are controlled (Banerjee 2018; Martin
et al. 2021). Therefore, we set out to answer this second research question: (RQ2) How does affect
enable market violence in the Finnish instant loan market?
Context: instant loan and payday loan markets
Since its inception, the many deeply problematic aspects of the Finnish instant loan market have
regularly been raised and decried in public discussion, but it has proved difficult to find effective
solutions to mitigate their impact. We therefore believe that the Finnish instant loan market is a
good example of market violence and that analysing it will help us answer our research questions.
As we have argued above, the presence of market violence in instant/payday loan markets entails an
influence on consumers by the market, leading to significant negative life outcomes. In order to
support this claim and to provide the reader with some context, we will, in this section, summarise
some key characteristics of this and similar markets.
Business practices
Instant loans in Finland are quite similar to payday loans in the US, UK and Australia, among
other countries. One difference between Finland and many other countries is that, in Finland,
the instant loan market sprang up rather late and suddenly in 2005. It has been noted that digi-
tal technologies have the ability to bring about significant changes in credit markets (Carlsson
et al. 2017), and instant loans are an example of this; the instant loan market in Finland was
fully digital from the beginning, operating with SMS and the internet, and using automated
approval processes (Määttä 2010). This allowed for easy application processes as well as quick
decisions, which have been seen as the main selling arguments for these loans (Valkama and
Muttilainen 2008). The companies operating in this market have, thus, never had physical
locations and there is no tradition of similar businesses in an offline context. Therefore, it is
reasonable to assume that Finnish consumers and legislators did not, in the beginning, have
a sufficient understanding of the nature of this market. Awareness has increased over the
years, however, and online discussion boards such as the one we analyse have arguably played
a part in this. This can be seen in the fact that the term “instant loan” is currently viewed
quite negatively, and companies in the field have mostly now switched to other terminology
(Raijas 2019).
Initially, loan periods were short (7–90 days) and the loans were small, €20–300 (Järvelä, Raijas,
and Saastamoinen 2019; Raijas 2019). Therefore, the companies did not need much capital to get
started. In 2008, the average annual percentage rate was 554%, although this was often not stated
as such, but costs were, rather, given in euros (Valkama and Muttilainen 2008). The digital context
also allowed the companies to have low fixed costs and for the market to grow quickly. In the
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 5
autumn of 2005, there were approximately 20 companies in the market, in 2007 there were 50, and
in 2012 already 80 (Government bill HE 78/2012). Subsequent changes in legislation have led to a
decline in their numbers. In 2018, there were 60 registered and licensed instant loan institutions
(Government bill HE 230/ 2018).
Legal framework and regulatory response in Finland
Another difference between the instant loan market in Finland and other similar markets for unse-
cured loans is the regulatory environment. Instant loan providers operate outside the traditional
financial sector and the regulations that apply to that sector do not apply to these companies (Jär-
velä, Raijas, and Saastamoinen 2019). They do, however, benefit from the institutional process for
debt collection: the law enables any creditor to have recourse to legal proceedings in debt collection.
After a court order, creditors may go on to request enforcement from the National Enforcement
Authority.
It is perhaps not an exaggeration to say the early years of the market were a “WildWest”, as legis-
lators were caught off guard by the developments. Since then, legislation pertaining to instant loans
has been modified several times (Raijas 2019). Still, even in recent years, it has been difficult for
legislators to keep up, as the digitalised market has developed and companies have adjusted quickly
(Järvelä, Raijas, and Saastamoinen 2019). A first set of restrictions, which came into effect in 2010,
banned night-time lending and established an obligation to state the effective annual percentage
rate of charge and to reliably identify the consumer (Government bill HE 64/2009; Government
bill HE 24/2010). A turning point occurred in 2013 when parliament set a maximum interest
rate (reference rate plus 50 percentage points) for loans smaller than €2,000, banned paid text mess-
ages used to request instant loans, and mandated more systematic checking of borrowers’ payment
ability (Government bill HE 78/2012). Since 2013, instant loans in their old form have been replaced
by much larger credits with longer maturities (Järvelä, Raijas, and Saastamoinen 2019; Raijas 2019).
A regulation from 2018 (Government bill HE 230/2018) standardises not only interest rates but also
other costs. More recently, maximum interest rates were further temporarily reduced as a reaction
to the COVID-19 crisis.
Targeting vulnerable groups
The business logic of instant loan companies appears to call for attracting as many customers as
possible, with little regard to repayment ability. The exorbitant fees and interest rates charged to
customers, combined with the availability of low-interest money for the companies, undoubtedly
help these companies make a profit despite a relatively large proportion of defaulting loans. The
companies have, thus, traditionally done little to assess the creditworthiness of their clients (Järvelä,
Raijas, and Saastamoinen 2019). This bears some similarity to the US market, where lenders usually
do not verify a borrower’s credit score (Langley et al. 2019). However, in the US, borrowers must at
least show that they have a steady income, for example by providing their most recent pay stub
(Bhutta, Skiba, and Tobacman 2015; Langley et al. 2019); this was, at least early on, not the case
in Finland (Valkama and Muttilainen 2008).
Payday and instant loans seem to respond to a consumer need (Valkama and Muttilainen 2008).
In the UK context, Rowlingson, Appleyard, and Gardner (2016) have pointed out that people’s
reasons for borrowing money are connected to income insecurity and that there is a “fundamental
link between payday lending and changes in the labour market, welfare state and financialisation”
(538–9). Bhutta, Skiba, and Tobacman (2015) found that, in the US, first-time payday borrowers
already seemed to have major financial difficulties. A key point is that these borrowers often do
not have other options for obtaining credit (Bhutta, Skiba, and Tobacman 2015). Due to this,
and the short loan periods, payday loans have been called a subprime substitute for credit cards
(Charron-Chénier 2018).
6 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
In Finland, instant loan companies have also targeted vulnerable groups. Instant loan borrowers
are often young people between the ages of 18–29 (Rantala and Tarkkala 2010). Because of the digi-
tally mediated character of the market, lenders are not more widely present in poorer areas, as is the
case in the US (Gallmeyer and Roberts 2009); nevertheless, Valkama and Muttilainen (2008) found
that borrowers were more likely to live in poorer regions of Finland. The loans are often used for
basic expenses such as food and rent, as well as repaying other debts, while other forms of consumer
credit are typically used for larger purchases (Kaartinen and Lähteenmaa 2006).
Consequences for consumers
As a result of taking out instant loans, consumers can often get caught in a debt spiral (i.e. paying
loans by taking new ones) (Rantala 2012). Furthermore, even though the actual number of people
who apply for and get instant loans is relatively low, the loans have a high tendency to lead to debt
problems, including payment default (Majamaa, Lehtinen, and Rantala 2019). The instant loan
market has, therefore, played an important part in the near doubling of payment defaults in Finland
since 2008 (Asiakastieto 2019; Makkonen 2014). Credit data registers in Finland are exclusively
based on information about payment default, meaning an individual’s credit is good unless they
get a “payment default entry”, which amounts to loss of creditworthiness (Makkonen 2014).
This, in turn, not only limits access to further credit but also, for example, to rental housing or
phone contracts.
A number of studies show a relationship between (unsecured) debt and negative health out-
comes, particularly depression and suicidal ideation (Fitch et al. 2011; Turunen and Hiilamo
2014). This might be due to stress as well as internalised feelings of personal responsibility and fail-
ure, a type of “neoliberal subjectivity” (Sweet 2018; Sweet, DuBois, and Stanley 2018). However,
causality has been difficult to show; debt may induce symptoms of depression and other health pro-
blems, but poor health can also cause debt problems, or the two may both be caused by a third issue,
such as unemployment (Richardson, Elliott, and Roberts 2013; Turunen and Hiilamo 2014). It
seems likely that the causality varies case by case. Although the type of debt is not always specified
in these studies, we do know that this relationship exists in the case of payday loans and other unse-
cured debt (Richardson, Elliott, and Roberts 2013; Sweet, Kuzawa, and McDade 2018).
Materials and methods: personal narratives of instant loans
In this study, we analyse posts related to instant loan use from a very large Finnish discussion
forum, Suomi24 (“Finland24”) (Aller Media Oy 2014; Lagus et al. 2016). Suomi24 is a moderated,
topic-centred discussion forum that was founded in 2001, which thereby allowed us access to data
spanning a significant part of the instant loan market history (2005–2017). The amount and span of
the data thus provide a good overview of how the market has been discussed and experienced by
consumers over the years. Specifically, these consumers have first-hand knowledge about the func-
tioning of the market, including its violent features, and their posts therefore help us answer the
question of how the process of market violence unfolds. They know how and why they themselves
got involved with instant loans and what their affective experience was. This rich data therefore also
allows us to analyse qualitatively how and why the market violence process enfolds, as well as how
affect is involved in enabling it.
A survey from 2016 suggests that a majority of Suomi24 users are middle-aged, and have used
the site for at least ten years; men are over-represented (Harju 2018). However, as the site is well-
known and covers a wide array of topics, it can be assumed to be used by people from a range of
backgrounds. Suomi24 users write under either a registered or a non-registered nickname (Lagus
et al. 2016); the anonymous nature of the site might also attract younger users to discuss stigmatised
topics such as indebtedness. After all, online forums that allow anonymous posting can mitigate the
embarrassment caused by socially shared negative understandings of debtors and debt problems
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 7
(Peltola 2013; Rantala 2012) thus enabling people to describe their experiences relatively openly,
compared to more formal contexts such as interviews. This kind of naturally occurring data
from an anonymous discussion forum consequently provides a good way of accessing personal
accounts of instant loans.
The texts from Suomi24 are available as a searchable corpus by the Language Bank of Finland
(we used the 2017H2 version). In order to locate personal accounts of experiences with instant
loans within this four-billion-word corpus, we started by searching for sentences containing any
verb in the first-person singular, possibly followed by a maximum of three other words, and, in
turn, followed by the Finnish word for or synonym of “instant loan”. The search yielded phrases
such as “I took many instant loans.” The resulting 5,090 sections of text containing the search
results were downloaded and duplicates removed. At this stage, to yield an amount of material
more amenable to qualitative analysis, we took a 10% random sample of the texts separately for
each year. Next, we read this sample of texts and found that, although the search had indeed
helped locate many promising narratives, some of the search results contained only short men-
tions of instant loans or were otherwise irrelevant to our study. Therefore, the next step was to
conduct a qualitative selection process where we looked up the original texts in their full context
and discarded any that did not fulfil our criterion of a detailed personal narrative of instant loan
use. We decided to analyse the full discussion threads, as this provided the context needed to
interpret the narratives; usually, these discussions also included additional personal stories
from other participants. The final data set consists of 97 discussion threads, totalling 689
pages. All texts are in Finnish and examples given in this article have been translated by the pre-
sent authors.
Some of the posts are quite long, consisting of many paragraphs, while others are more succinct
but still contain several sentences and a narrative structure. Certain narratives also develop over
several separate posts as the discussion thread progresses. Some posts were written while the process
was still ongoing, and some tell the “whole” story in retrospect – from the point when a first loan
was taken to, often, the narrator’s decision to swear them off completely. Despite these differences,
there are significant similarities between the narratives. Given that we specifically searched for stor-
ies describing personal experiences with instant loans, and noting these reoccurring characteristics
of the stories, we decided to apply a narrative methodology in order to better understand the type of
texts we had collected.
Non-fictional narratives often recount (part of) an individual’s personal history. Narrative is a
type of language use that provides resources for the cognitive structuring and semiotic represen-
tation of the temporality and perceived causality of events; narratives therefore help people make
sense of past events and actions (Coates and Thornborrow 2005; Czarniawska 2004; Herman
2009; Riessman 2005). Narratives, as any form of language use, are a form of social action and,
therefore, they “do not mirror, they refract the past” (Riessman 2005, 6). We are never the sole
authors of our stories; in addition to the actors in the (market) context that affect our storyline,
there is also a social “repertoire of legitimate stories” (Czarniawska 2004, 5) that we draw from
as we affectively experience and cognitively interpret, for example, the causality and morality of
events and craft our own stories. Thus, narratives and narrative methods provide an entry point
to the cultural structuration of individual experience.
In our analysis, we combined thematic and structural approaches to narrative analysis
(see Riessman 2005). According to Labov and Waletzky’s ([1967] 1997) classical model of nar-
ratives of personal experience, narratives have a typical structure which includes an orientation
(to person, time, place, behavioural situation), a complication or complicating action (event
sequence), a resolution (outcome) and possibly a coda (referring back to the present)
(see also Labov 1997). Identifying the narrative phases, we were able to note which recurring
themes, particularly which affects and characteristics of the market, were referred to in each
stage. This, in turn, helped us start to understand the how different factors of the assemblage
were linked. Labov and Waletzky ([1967] 1997) also distinguish two functions of narrative
8 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
discourse: referential and evaluative. Evaluative sections provide commentary on the events;
identifying them helped us gain an understanding of normative cultural meanings related to
instant loans.
Findings: cultural-affective process of market violence in the instant loan market
In this section, we present our findings based on the consumer narratives in our data, concerning
how market violence unfolds in the instant loan market as a cultural process enabled by affects.
Based on our interpretation of the data, we have constructed a model of the cultural-affective pro-
cess of market violence in the instant loan market, illustrated in Figure 1. This model captures our
central idea that affects can play a key role in mediating between cultural ideals and concrete
business practices, thus enabling market violence. As seen on the left in Figure 1, market violence
is in this context rooted in two key cultural ideals of economic life: the ideal of individual respon-
sibility and the ideal of the “good life”. These ideals, mediated by four key affects – sense of urgency,
shame, hope, and despair – create both attractiveness and acceptability for various practices of the
instant loan companies.
These cultural ideals are powerful, and people therefore hope, and do their best, to comply with
them. Instant loan companies are able to further stoke these hopes through enticing marketing;
their quickly and easily available products promise access to money that would both enable a
good life through consumption, notably easing surprising and difficult life circumstances, and pro-
vide a solution for managing financial responsibilities “independently”. Consumers tend to be
ashamed if they (anticipate they) are not able to act in accordance with the cultural ideals. Instant
loans with their digitally mediated, “anonymous” application process thus also appear attractive
because they enable borrowers to save face.
Figure 1. Model of the cultural-affective process of market violence on the instant loan market.
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 9
Furthermore, when failure to live up to the ideals is anticipated, this can lead to a sense of
urgency, a kind of fearful impatience that promotes rash decisions. Paralysing despair, in turn,
can follow when it becomes clear that failure has occurred and no remedy is in sight. These cultu-
rally inspired affects make it possible for consumers to accept or disregard terms and conditions
that might seem unreasonable while in a different affective state.
Typical business practices (enticing marketing, availability and ease, high costs and unreasonable
conditions) together contribute to debt spirals, which can be thought of as an effect of market vio-
lence. However, the debt spiral also feeds back into the market violence process; in Figure 1, the
arrows pointing from “debt spiral” back to the affects represent the affective vicious circle inherent
to the debt spiral. The debt spiral itself leads to more of the same kind of affects at later stages of the
instant loan narratives and those affects, in turn, contribute in their own ways to keeping consumers
stuck in the spiral.
The rest of this section is organised around the four key affects – a sense of urgency, shame, hope,
and despair – in the debtor narratives.
Sense of urgency
The narratives tend to present an initial reason for taking instant loans by describing a change in life
circumstances leading to a problematic situation. These dramatic and unforeseen events bring about
an affective sense of urgency that could be described as a kind of panic or a mix of fear and desperate
impatience, probably because the crisis threatens the person’s access to what they think are the basics
of a good life, a culturally defined decent minimum standard of living (see Aro and Wilska 2014;
Lehtinen et al. 2011). This creates an intense experience that seems to stand in the way of calmly con-
sidering options and future consequences of actions and is thus conducive to loan taking. Under
these circumstances, instant loans often appear as the only valid option.
In Example 1, indebtedness begins with illness and incapacity to work, and the writer highlights
their lack of options stating that they “definitely couldn’t” save any money and “had to resort to”
borrowing. Many writers emphasise that they did not take loans for frivolous, hedonistic purposes,
but only for necessities such as food (Example 2). Thus, these borrowers draw from a cultural under-
standing of a responsible person that does not waste money, especially not borrowed money, but
does their best at managing life independently. The affective experience of a sense of urgency may
or may not, of course, coincide with any “objective” urgency or lack of options. What matters, how-
ever, is that the options that might exist are not perceived while in such an affective state.
Example 1
As for me, at 23, I already receive a disability pension and housing allowance for pensioners. Before this, sick-
ness allowance, and with that you definitely couldn’t save or, towards the end, even get much from the store
other than tuna and pasta. At that time, I had to resort to instant loans.
Example 2
I have taken instant loans to pay for food, housing (mortgage, electricity, water), insurance, phone bills etc. I
sure haven’t wasted anything on any nonsense.
In many narratives, including Example 1, writers see the country’s welfare system as failing them
because either the level of social assistance is generally insufficient or it does not cover some specific
aspects of life that seem essential in the Finnish context. The welfare system is particularly likely to
fail people in urgent situations, as the processing time of applications tends to be several weeks. Insti-
tutional factors outside the market itself can thus contribute to the process of market violence by clos-
ing off alternative paths that people could possibly have taken, leading them towards instant loans.
The sense of urgency coupled with such other institutional factors enables concrete business
practices by making quick solutions attractive. As seen in Example 3, the digitally mediated instant
loan market, in contrast to the welfare system or even traditional banks, is characterised by a quick
tempo, and it is thus able to “assist” consumers immediately.
10 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
Example 3
There is no bank where you can get a loan in 5 minutes… ! If you have some unforeseen expense (that’s when
people usually take instant loans) it is a very easy solution […] The lenders say and it was on the news as well
that you can’t get a loan at night. But you can, and it is easy to fool young people when they are out partying
and run out of money, then you can take out loans.
This example also points to the ideal of the “good life”. In specific cultures, geographical locations,
and at specific moments in time, people to some extent share a vision of what life should be like in
order to make it liveable and to meet social expectations, instead of merely surviving (Lehtinen et al.
2011). The cultural ideal of the “good life” can run counter to the ideal or personal responsibility.
While it might be irresponsible, spending borrowed money on pursuing the “good life”, for example
while partying, is presented as a sign of being human. In Example 3, there are mitigating circum-
stances as the people mentioned are “young”, suggesting limited life experience, and the “out party-
ing” description implies that they are probably under the influence of alcohol. Factors like these
combined with the instant nature of the loan application process itself allow companies to tempt
consumers into making rash decisions.
Because of this sense of urgency, businesses are able to demand expensive fees, use high interest
rates, and dictate conditions that might otherwise dissuade potential customers. In Example 4, the
writer again describes a sense of urgency and lack of options.
Example 4
These loan companies know how to strike the right chord, they ruthlessly take advantage of the desperation of
the poorest people. I never thought I would support these companies by resorting to instant loans. I thought I
would not be so STUPID, I too believed the idea that people fall in this trap because they are stupid. But only
one washing machine can change the situation, and so I had to resort to an instant loan for the first time. I
tried to think that one €300 loan can’t be the end of the world. But I was wrong.
The writer of Example 4 also points explicitly to the idea that companies in this market make use
of consumers’ affect, described here as desperation. This is, however, a hopeful type of despera-
tion that still believes in at least one solution; we will discuss both hope and despair in sub-
sequent sections. Furthermore, in Example 4, affect is juxtaposed with reasoned thought and
intelligence. The writer laments that knowing better did not help them avoid the “trap”. Based
on our analysis, becoming or not becoming a victim of market violence in the instant loan mar-
ket is, in fact, not a matter of intelligence as much as it is a combination of material circum-
stances, cultural ideals and related affects, such as the sense of urgency that encourages people
to seek “instant” solutions.
It is noteworthy that consumers in our data are not by any means the only ones to think that
instant loans can become a “trap” for vulnerable people, particularly in circumstances where consid-
ering long-term consequences is difficult. This idea has been widely present in public discourse ever
since instant loans first became known in Finland. For exampleHelsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest
newspaper, has called for interventions from lawmakers in several editorials such as “Instant loans
have become a trap for many” (7.12.2006) and “Instant loans can ruin a young person’s life”
(21.6.2011).
Shame
Another central affect that we identified in our data is shame. While there are some examples of
shame relating to an inability to meet the ideal of the “good life”, such as not being able to go
out with friends, which can then lead to borrowing, the dominant cultural ideal here, too, is indi-
vidual responsibility – managing one’s money competently and without help from others. Vari-
ations of this affect are repeated along the narrative journeys; it is present both as a factor that
influences the initial decision to take out an instant loan and one that later prevents debtors
from asking for help with uncontrollable debt.
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 11
Example 5
I don’t judge anyone for borrowing because I have myself borrowed anything and everything I could get, just
because it was easy, whereas if you borrow from a friend and don’t pay, you lose face. Although I had imagined
I would pay everything back, but with what income.
Example 6
Living in a small community, I’m too embarrassed to even go ask my own bank.
The instant loan companies position themselves as a convenient alternative to such “loss of face”. In
addition to the speed of the process, discussed above, further factors that play into the ease and con-
venience of borrowing include availability through numerous lenders as well as lax lending criteria
– in Example 5, the writer had found obtaining loans easy, despite their low income. Another key
aspect that seems to enable the instant loan market to respond to shame-induced demand is simply
its anonymous nature. Asking parents, partners or friends for financial assistance often proves too
great an obstacle in the narratives, and even applying for a loan from the local bank can be associ-
ated with a similar affective disincentive, as seen in Example 6. With instant loan companies, there
is no need to meet with someone and explain your situation face to face. Brookes and Harvey (2017)
discuss this ability of digitally mediated payday lenders to preserve borrowers’ “anonymity and
therefore dignity” as a positive characteristic of the market. We argue, rather, that this is one
way in which the market is able to carve out a “path of least resistance” and direct people towards
their product by utilising the shame associated with failure to meet the cultural ideal of individual
responsibility.
As the narratives develop, another theme related to shame that occurs again and again is that of
losing creditworthiness, that is to say getting a payment default entry in one’s credit data, or, more
specifically, the anticipation of that shame. Losing creditworthiness is seen as a life-changing turn-
ing point that suddenly marks a person as a failure; it is the epitome of failing to meet the ideal of
individual responsibility (note the difference between the Finnish on–off system and more complex
credit score systems such as those in the US, e.g. Fourcade and Healy 2013 and the UK, e.g. Kirwan
2021). Example 7 describes the effects of this “fear-shame” on an individual. Putting “death” in quo-
tation marks, the writer expresses that they are aware it is not actually a matter of life and death but
that it feels as if it were. Here, we also see another recurring theme related to shame, that of keeping
debt problems a secret from even the closest people.
Example 7
I’m in the exact same situation as you, every bang of the door makes me sweat and I feel like I’m choking,
wondering if it’s already the bailiff knocking, that would probably mean “death”. I’m also deathly afraid
that my spouse will find out about my foolishness
Lenders can take advantage of this powerful affect by implicitly or explicitly threatening their cus-
tomers with the possibility of loss of creditworthiness (cf. threats of legal action or enforcement,
Deville 2015). Based on our data, people go to extreme lengths to avoid loss of creditworthiness,
and, therefore, they often end up taking more loans to repay old ones, leading to a debt spiral.
Nevertheless, in the end, debt collection, loss of creditworthiness and even enforcement some-
times present a way out of the debt spiral. Many write that when they finally lost creditworthiness, it
was not as bad as they had expected, or that it was even a relief; at least then they escape the violent
market.
Hope
The cultural-affective process of market violence also involves hope. Hope plays different roles in
different parts of the narratives. In the initial stage, hope is typically entwined with what we have dis-
cussed under sense of urgency; dramatic and unforeseen events evoke both a sense of urgency that
invites immediate action and the hope that such action will lead to some amelioration of the situation
(enabling maintaining a good life). More rarely, no initial shock is described and the loan taking seems
12 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
to simply involve a hope of livingmore comfortably in general (attaining a good life). At the same time,
importantly, loan taking is also coupled with a hope that the person’s financial situation will somehow
improve in the near future, so that paying the loan back will not be a problem.
At later stages, many narratives describe a thought process by which people hoped to find a way
out of the debt spiral by taking more loans. This is also connected to the ideal of individual respon-
sibility, as people refer to the idea that loans must be repaid by any means necessary. Slipping into a
debt spiral, people become trapped and live from one payment to the next, one loan to the next.
However, as demonstrated by Example 8, the hope that everything will work out is persistent.
The feeling of urgency is also evident in the short-term perspective: even next week seems distant
and a few days without a payment due is experienced as a relief.
Example 8
I had an instant loan payment of €700 due tomorrow so I paid it back using another instant loan today,
because I had to. This is what the spiral is like. And of course, like everyone, I have also so-called normal
bills all the time. But now I don’t have any bill due before Friday, so I can breathe for a week […] it’s true
they are a hell of a bad option but this way I get a little time to think about solutions (and to get my bigger
June wages, and maybe tax refunds) but mostly I’m thinking about other options.
Here, we see that this person is, on the one hand, quite aware that repeated loan-taking leads to a
debt spiral, but on the other hand, there is a strong belief that a solution will present itself at some
point. As in this example, the type of hope evident in our data is often “cruel optimism” (Berlant
2011). At a first stage of the debt spiral, which can often last a long time, there is an underlying hope
that better times are ahead and a belief that there is a need to buy more time to figure out a solution.
This makes taking new loans to pay previous ones seem like a viable solution and thus leads to more
problems. As Berlant (2011) argues, cruel optimism is a cultural affect related to a shared belief that
some specific type of “good life” is due to people.
At later stages of the narratives, when some writers have managed to escape the debt spiral,
another type of hope is to remain debt-free. However, the writers now know through experience
that hoping is not enough – in certain circumstances they are defenceless against the market –
and therefore they take concrete defensive measures in advance.
Example 9
I have set a credit ban for myself with every instant loan place I have borrowed from!!! And I have stuck
by my decision. New companies appear all the time, but I don’t even look at the ads. But still, even though
I have the credit ban in place, those companies keep sending messages by SMS and email, ‘apply for a
loan’ etc.!!! Are those bans useful at all, if they keep sending messages all the time!!!??? But I don’t intend
to give in again, I have been so close to ruining my life so many times that I’m not going to do that
anymore!!!!
This writer approached individual lenders with the request to not receive credit from them in the
future but found that this did not stop them from sending enticing marketing messages. Other
protective measures identified in our data include the option of a general voluntary personal
credit lock, available at the credit information company, and even the possibility of blocking ser-
vice phone numbers was useful when many of the lenders were SMS-based (consumers also use
similar self-control strategies in other contexts, for example to restrict gambling, see Flores-Pajot
et al. 2021, or to enable healthy eating, see Krishnamurthy and Prokopec 2010; Nureeva, Brunsø,
and Lähteenmäki 2016). The need to take such measures may point to violent features in the
market, particularly the ways it utilises consumers’ less reasoned thinking.
Despair
The hope that everything will work out is, however, often to no avail, and sometimes the hoped-for
changes even materialise without bringing resolution. This, as well as being trapped in the debt
spiral in general, has, of course, much to do with the burdensome expense of the loans. Finding
the funds to pay back the debt simply becomes less and less likely, as interest and costs start to
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 13
accumulate, leading to feelings of despair. For this reason, the writer in Example 11 finds it necess-
ary to explicitly warn other consumers.
Example 10
I warn everyone not to take instant loans from this company. Their annual rate can be up to 220%, meaning
that you will never get rid of your debt. On a €2,000 loan, I have so far had to pay back €2,300 over a 4-month
period, while the principal has decreased by €140.
Example 10 communicates a sense of entrapment through the idea that the loan can “never” be paid
back in full. While this writer refers to only one specific company, we know from both our data and
previous research that all the companies in the market had similar interest rates before legal restric-
tions were introduced.
The debtors also write for example about crying, not getting sleep, appetite loss and even suicidal
thoughts. These seem to be forms of suffering caused by market violence, but at the same time des-
pair can also work to maintain the spiral. In Example 11, the reference to being “paralyzed” points
to the ability of affect to either move or stop us. The sense of urgency and unrealistic hope tend to
move people to act rashly, and shame can lead to inaction when people fail to consider certain
actions as valid options. Despair, meanwhile, can paralyse those in debt, causing them to give up
any attempts to resolve the situation.
Example 11
There is nowhere I can get help, all options have been used. I’m anxious, depressed, and so paralysed because
of these things that I can’t even manage normal everyday routines, I have lost my will to live and given up
hope.
Another concrete example of this kind of effect is that, at some point, many people stop opening
mail from debt collectors. Paradoxically, then, both hope and despair can lead to prolonging the
time spent in a debt spiral.
In Finland, institutional help for people in excessive debt is available mainly from financial and
debt counselling organised by municipalities and from the Guarantee Foundation, a non-govern-
mental organisation that provides restructuring loans for over-indebted individuals. These options
are widely discussed in our material, with writers usually, however, pointing out difficulties acces-
sing them because wait times for debt counselling are long and conditions for the Guarantee Foun-
dation guarantees are strict; this can be another cause for despair. Although these options do, of
course, still help resolve the situation for many people, what stands out to us particularly is how
often escape from the debt spiral involves help from friends or relatives, as in Example 12. This
is interesting in light of what has been discussed above concerning individual responsibility,
shame and efforts to hide debt from family members.
Example 12
Then one night my mom happened to call me as I was lying on the sofa crying, so I just started sobbing on the
phone and telling her how bad things were. Mom was completely shocked about it but said that everything
would be ok. I couldn’t manage my instant loans and other debts at all anymore, so my parents guaranteed
a bank loan and now I’m repaying that for a couple of years.
This example suggests that despair is not only paralysing but that sometimes it, too, can move
people in unexpected ways. If the debtor’s mother had not happened to call at an opportune
moment, the situation likely would not have been resolved when and how it was. Despair was so
intense in that moment that it could not be ignored or hidden, and, therefore, it prevailed over
shame.
Discussion
In this paper, we have analysed Finnish consumers’ narratives of their experiences with instant loans
to understand how and whymarket violence unfolds as a cultural process in the Finnish instant loan
market, as well as to shed light on how affects enable market violence. In so doing, we extend a
14 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
cultural understanding of market violence, which we see as a combination of structural and cultural
violence taking place as a dynamic assemblage within a market setting. We bring to market violence
theory a new perspective focused on the importance of affects, as opposed to “cognitive” cultural
factors such as knowledge, framings or understandings (see Banerjee 2018; Martin et al. 2021).
More specifically, we have shown that affects – in this case a sense of urgency, shame, hope, and des-
pair – can mediate between cultural ideals and concrete business practices, thus enabling market
violence, and we have created a model to illustrate the various connections between these factors.
In addition, we extend earlier research focusing how cultural meanings drive usage of credit and
debt (e.g. Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria 2021; Peñaloza and Barnhart 2011).
The findings of this study indicate that two key cultural ideals, individual responsibility and a
vision of the “good life”, together with affects stemming from them, enable the instant loan market
and the adverse effects it has on consumers. The ideal of individual responsibility is connected to
the traditional values of self-sufficiency, parsimony, and avoidance of debt (Heinonen and Autio
2013; Huttunen and Autio 2010), as well as shame when one fails to manage one’s finances respon-
sibly and independently. In our data, one key aspect related to shame was, in fact, the extreme reluc-
tance of the debtors to turn to their family in times of economic hardship. This is also connected to
assumptions related to the welfare state and so called “statist individualism” (Berggren and Trä-
gårdh 2015; Ulver 2019) where people are more comfortable relying on the state than on other
people. The debtors in our data often implied that they had primarily expected the state to help
them, but when it had not, they felt that they “had to” turn to the instant loan market instead –
asking loved ones for help was too shameful to be seen as a valid option.
Of course, other cultures also have individualistic features, for example, the desire to be indepen-
dent from family and friends was found in the cultural context of white middle class Americans and
the meanings they connect to credit and debt (Peñaloza and Barnhart 2011). However, in Peñaloza
and Barnhart’s data such independence was not commonly prioritised by individuals with debt pro-
blems in particular; instead, hopes for ever-higher standards of living – or the ideal of the good life –
were more apparent. This is connected to a normalisation of credit and debt as an enabler of con-
sumption (and the aspects of a good life it makes possible) in the American consumer society
(Peñaloza and Barnhart 2011). Finland is also experiencing a gradual shift from a mentality of scar-
city to a mentality of abundance, accompanied by decreasing moralising regarding both consump-
tion and debt (Heinonen and Autio 2013), and thus there are conflicting cultural tendencies that
exist simultaneously. In addition, related to the Nordic welfare state and its egalitarian values
(see also Askegaard and Östberg 2019), Finns tend to think that a good life requires a certain mini-
mum standard of living which, in theory at least, everyone is entitled to. Elements of this constantly
evolving minimum standard are culturally defined as “necessary consumption” (see Aro andWilska
2014; Lehtinen et al. 2011).
When people are not able to access these things that are seen as essential in the cultural context,
our findings indicate that they experience a sense of urgency which is one reason why they end up
taking instant loans. The term “instant loan” is fitting; the market responds to a sense of urgency by
providing a quick and easy solution. This is, therefore, a type of product that takes advantage of
people who are, for one reason or another, so focused on the immediate future that a longer-
term future or the past (such as previous experiences with instant loans) become blurred (on the
time perception of instant loan borrowers, see also Autio et al. 2009, 412). The speed of the process,
in part, may mean that people fail to understand fully what they are committing to. When one is
affectively highly tied to the immediate future, any longer-term future appears further away, and
even exorbitant interest rates may seem acceptable.
The sense of urgency is, then, connected to the hope that, on the one hand, a small loan can alle-
viate a difficult situation and make life better and, on the other hand, finances can improve between
now and the time when loans are due, enabling repayment. In our data, hope is therefore often what
Berlant (2011) calls “cruel optimism”: there is a certain kind of “good life” that people believe
should belong to them, but it never seems to materialise, and simply entertaining this hope actually
CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 15
results in the debtors being worse of, while the lenders profit, of course. Investigating the online
microloan market, Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria (2021) identify a similar dynamic where a hope for a
brighter future and optimistic narratives are utilised by market actors to fuel a credit market; how-
ever, the debtors might not actually gain access to a significantly better life, and may even end up in
worsening debt spirals.
In our material, despair often comes to play with the experience of entrapment in such a debt
spiral. A tendency to cause debt spirals has also been noted in studies on payday loans (e.g. Ander-
son et al. 2020; Langley et al. 2019; Szilagyiova 2015); in fact, this has been called a defining feature
of these markets (Stegman and Faris 2003). Deville (2015) has also argued that consumer credit, in
general, produces sticky attachments – it is a “financial instrument that is designed with attachment
in mind.” Like us, Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin (2015) note that the origin of problem debts
tends to be an external shock, followed by a spiral out of control accompanied by anxiety,
depression and guilt.
Furthermore, the narratives in our material often involved blaming oneself: the self and others
should learn from these stories to act more intelligently and responsibly. Self-blame and learning
lessons have also been discussed by Davies, Montgomerie, and Wallin (2015) as well as Peñaloza
and Barnhart (2011). It seems, then, that the cultural-affective processes of market violence on
credit markets operate partly through consumers themselves, who have internalised cultural ideals.
Therefore, the victims of market violence ostensibly seem responsible for their own problems, even
to themselves. This is obviously connected to the ideal of individual responsibility that we have
highlighted throughout the analysis, and an individualistic, “neoliberal subjectivity” (see also
Sweet 2018; Sweet, DuBois, and Stanley 2018) constituted by market-mediated “affective encoun-
ters” (Bajde and Rojas-Gaviria 2021). The similarities we have noted with studies from other con-
texts might thus stem from a combination of shared “Western” and “neoliberal” cultural features as
well as shared characteristics of the specific credit markets and of capitalism itself.
Reflecting on our findings and previous research on market violence, it seems that culture has at
least two key roles to play in market violence: in cases of market violence that predominantly
involve structural violence and domination, including physical forms of violence (“instrumental
violence”, as Banerjee 2018 puts it), culture mainly works to legitimate or normalise violence (Bou-
chet 2018), for example, through discursive processes that dehumanise victims (Varman and Vijay
2018). At least so far, this first type appears to be found mostly in the Global South (Banerjee 2008;
2018; Varman and Vijay 2018). Culture plays another role when the market violence itself is pri-
marily cultural; the violence is thus “embedded in cultural discourses” (Martin et al. 2021) and
often involves discrimination and psychological suffering more than direct physical injury. This
second role of culture has so far been discussed in markets of the Global North (Martin et al.
2021; McVey, Gurrieri, and Tyler 2021). Our study extends this research by demonstrating how
market violence can be enabled by cultural ideals and affects that are internalised by consumers.
We might hypothesise that a similar process involving ideals and affects is probably present in
other cases where normative ideals (of personal responsibility, for example) are central, such as
weight loss and diet.
Overall, market violence theory helps draw attention to and critique the suffering caused by mar-
kets – as opposed to the neoliberal view where the “normal functioning” of markets is prioritised
and individuals are blamed for problems. From the market violence perspective, the latter is not
only problematic victim-blaming but also politically inefficient as it focuses on fixing the consumer
(e.g. through education) instead of the market in its wider cultural and legislative context. From the
perspective of consumer debt, market violence theory provides a new approach to contrast with the
view that over-indebtedness is due to consumers’ shortcomings – a view also reflected in academic
discussions about inadequate financial literacy (e.g. Bolton, Bloom, and Cohen 2011) and consumer
vulnerability (Baker, Gentry, and Rittenburg 2005; Shultz and Holbrook 2009). Our study has
extended market violence theory to include the importance of cultural ideals and affects connected
to them, and thereby it also has an implication on the role of consumer education; information may
16 E. LILLQVIST AND P. TIMONEN
not help in dealing with intense affects and it is, then, a necessary but wholly insufficient condition
of alleviating market violence. Therefore, the complex assemblages of market violence, including
the cultural-affective processes involved, must also be considered.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the Foundation for Economic Education (Liikesivistysrahasto) [grant number 170240].
Notes on contributors
Ella Lillqvist, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Consumer Society Research, University of Helsinki, and at
the University of Vaasa, School of Marketing and Communication. Her current research interests concern cultural
studies of the economy and include economic discourses and imaginaries, investment cultures and consumer debt.
Päivi Timonen, Research Director at the Centre for Consumer Society Research, University of Helsinki. Her current
research interests relate to politics of consumption, such as democracy of innovations, market violence and consu-
mer-generated data.
ORCID
Ella Lillqvist http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7419-4491
Päivi Timonen http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8166-4578
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