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，破产一直是争论谁在道德上值得经济重生的焦点。二十世纪初的美国，作为信贷市场扩张和破产制度化的关键时期，与这些紧张关系作斗争。特别是1898年的《破产法》出人意料地导致了个人破产申请率的飙升，这有助于巩固破产是劳动者经济重生手段的观念。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-种族界限的重新配置，包括谁值得赞扬。虽然先前的研究将这些转变作为独立的过程进行调查，但学术界并没有研究破产机会和结果在社会经济和种族界线上的差异。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通过破产来划定谁值得获得第二次机会。本项目考察1880年至1940年美国破产中应得性的实践和话语边界的转变。从很少使用的破产记录中提取，结合人口普查记录，本研究将沿着民族和种族、社会经济地位和国家信贷政策的轴线，定量地检查破产实践中的变化。该项目还将对社会行动者如何看待破产进行定性和定量的话语分析。具体而言，本文的目的有四个方面：了解国家一级的信贷政策制度如何影响个人申请破产；分析破产企业的社会经济地位和民族背景如何随时间变化；考察破产后的复苏如何因社会经济地位和种族背景而异；并探讨破产实践中的这些变化与美国社会中信用、债务和破产道德观念的变化之间的关系。这项研究有可能促进对市场扩张如何与民族-种族价值边界制度化共存的社会科学理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。