Financial Literacy Education as Public Pedagogy for the Capitalist Debt Economy

Abstract

Financial literacy education often appears as part of a solution to the individualization of economic risk, growing indebtedness, financialization and ongoing austerity. Using concepts from Marx, Žižek and Foucault, this paper analyses a number of prominent debt and investment television shows, arguing that these forms of entertainment work with financial literacy curriculum documents, editorials and speeches to form a public pedagogic dispositif that supports the creation of subjects ethically disposed to recreate the debt economy’s hierarchical relations and practices. In contrast to those who see financial literacy education as a tool for reducing debt and ameliorating financial and economic insecurity, I argue that financial literacy education is better seen as a technology that supports the production of an economic system that produces debt and financial and economic insecurity. To challenge the capitalist debt economy, the paper ends by calling for a critical public pedagogy to create the conditions in which all can be secure and realize their human capacities free from the constraints imposed by capital–conditions we owe others and ourselves a debt to continually recreate.