Doctoral Dissertation Research: Forgive Us Our Debts: Market Expansion, Ethno-Racial Boundaries, and the Democratization of Bankruptcy

博士论文研究：宽恕我们的债务：市场扩张、民族种族界限和破产民主化

• 批准号: 2017548
• 负责人: Joshua Whitford
• 金额: $ 2.77万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-07-01 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2017548&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Forgive; Us

Bankruptcy has long been a locus of struggle over whom is morally worthy of an economic rebirth. Early twentieth century America, as a key period of expanding credit markets and the institutionalization of bankruptcy, wrestled with these tensions. In particular, the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 unexpectedly resulted in skyrocketing personal bankruptcy filing rates, which helped to solidify the perception of bankruptcy as a means for the working person’s economic rebirth. Concurrent to this transformation, rising Southern and Eastern European immigration and the African American Great Migration led to a reconfiguration of America’s ethno-racial boundaries, including whom was deserving of credit. While prior research investigates these transformations as independent processes, scholarship has not examined disparities in bankruptcy access and outcomes along socio-economic and ethno-racial lines. By examining the expansion of bankruptcy in conjunction with rising non-Anglo migration, this project will shed light on how Americans delineated whom was worthy of a second chance through bankruptcy. This project investigates the transformation in the practice and discursive boundaries of deservingness in bankruptcy in America from 1880 to 1940. Drawing from rarely utilized bankruptcy records, in conjunction with census records, this research will quantitatively examine variation in bankruptcy practice, along the axes of ethnicity and race, socio-economic status, and state credit policy. This project will also engage in qualitative and quantitative discourse analyses of how social actors conceived of bankruptcy. Specifically, this dissertation’s aims are fourfold: to understand how state-level credit policy regimes affected why individuals filed for bankruptcy; to analyze how the socio-economic status and ethno-racial backgrounds of bankrupts changed over time; to examine how recovery from bankruptcy varied by socio-economic status and ethno-racial background; and to probe how these changes in the practice of bankruptcy relates to changing moral conceptions of credit, debt, and bankruptcy in American society. This study has the potential to advance social scientific understanding of how market expansion can coexist with the institutionalization of ethno-racial boundaries of worth.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

长期以来，破产在道德上是经济重生的情况，尤其是与张力的破产，《破产法》。应得的民族界限，奖学金没有检查社会经济和民族种族的统治时期的分配。第二次机会破产。从1880年到1940年，美国破产中的避免的实践和话语界限。很少使用破产记录经济状况和国家信贷政策。 - 经济状况和民族种族背景；反映了NSF值得支持使用基金会评估和更广泛影响审查标准的人。