Gambling Debt

E. Paul Durrenberger is emeritus professor of anthropology from the University of Iowa and Penn State University and recipient of the Society for Applied Anthropology's Malinowski Award for 2014. He has done fieldwork in tribal and peasant areas of Thailand, Iceland, and the United States and has published a number of academic papers and books, including The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness and The Anthropology of Labor Unions (both UPC).  Gisli Palsson is professor of anthropology at the University of Iceland and visiting professor at King’s College, London. He is Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland and recipient of the 2000 Rosenstiel Award from the University of Miami. Among his books is Anthropologies of Life: Nature, Culture and Society (forthcoming).

"This unique anthropological collection documents Iceland's recent history as an icon of the global crisis—its spectacular rise and precipitous fall, popular uprising and neoliberal restoration. The story is at once shocking and hilarious, a profound lesson for us all, but also a testament to human resilience, not least the authors'."—Keith Hart, London School of Economics"This work will turn a theoretical corner away from conventional understandings of economic crises and political economy, into new terrain."—David Griffith, East Carolina University"The book is a must read for anyone interested in economics, business, politics, or the worldwide economic stage in general; readers interested in Iceland’s involvement in the crisis and the fallout the country faced as a result will also be intrigued by the book's contents and approach. Taken as a whole, the book is an honest, entertaining, and informative work that explores the changing distribution of wealth and the impact of privatization as well as the historical identity of Iceland and the numerous factors that came together to help produce such an economic meltdown."—CHOICE"​[​​A]n arresting place-based portrait of the financial crisis of 2008. Editors E. Paul Durrenberger and Gísli Pálsson, both eminent anthropologists of Iceland in their own right, bring together a diverse collection that ranges from economics to anthropology; education to sociology, and even a ​'poetic interlude.​' In doing so they offer a broad view of the crisis, a corrective to narrowly economistic accounts. It is this wide range that makes Gambling Debt so lively, while also knotting (not unproductive) tensions throughout. . . . an important contribution: a multi-faceted analysis of Iceland’s recent financial crash, and a toolkit for social scientists considering crisis writ large. ​[The book's] wide range of topics and perspectives make it accessible and applicable across scholarly fields. But the authors’ shared commitments to the Icelandic context make this volume an effective and convincing political statement of a kind not often achieved in a volume of such breadth."—Anthropology News"Gambling Debt is a big study of a small country...that shows how scholars of various disciplines can collaborate to shed more light than any single discipline could. The volume is a success and perhaps a call to other scholars to apply interdisciplinary perspectives to the major issues of the day."-Anthropology Review Database "[A]n empirically and conceptually rich account of the crisis."—American Ethnologist