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，破产一直是围绕谁在道德上值得经济重生而斗争的焦点。世纪初的美国，作为信贷市场扩张和破产制度化的关键时期，与这些紧张局势作斗争。特别是，1898年的破产法意外地导致了个人破产申请率的飙升，这有助于巩固破产作为劳动者经济重生的一种手段的看法。与此同时，南欧和东欧移民的增加以及非裔美国人的大迁徙导致了美国民族种族边界的重新配置，其中包括值得赞扬的人。虽然以前的研究调查这些转变作为独立的过程，奖学金并没有检查破产的访问和结果的差异沿着社会经济和民族种族线。通过研究破产的扩大与非盎格鲁移民的增加，这个项目将揭示美国人如何界定谁值得通过破产获得第二次机会。本研究考察了1880 - 1940年美国破产中应得性的实践转变和话语边界。从很少使用的破产记录，结合人口普查记录，本研究将定量研究破产实践中的变化，沿着民族和种族，社会经济地位和国家信贷政策的轴。该项目还将对社会行为者如何看待破产进行定性和定量的话语分析。具体而言，本论文的目的有四个：了解国家一级的信贷政策制度如何影响个人申请破产的原因;分析破产者的社会经济地位和民族种族背景如何随时间变化;考察破产后的恢复如何因社会经济地位和民族种族背景而变化;并探讨破产实践中的这些变化如何与美国社会中不断变化的信用、债务和破产的道德观念相联系。这项研究有可能促进社会科学的理解，市场扩张如何与民族-种族价值界限的制度化共存。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。