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

长期以来，破产一直是争论的焦点，争论的焦点是谁在道德上值得经济重生。20世纪初，美国作为信贷市场扩张和破产制度化的关键时期，与这些紧张局势作了斗争。特别是，1898年的《破产法》出人意料地导致个人破产申请率飙升，这有助于巩固破产是劳动者经济重生的手段的看法。在这一转变的同时，南欧和东欧移民的增加以及非裔美国人的大移民导致了美国种族-种族界限的重新配置，包括值得称赞的人。虽然先前的研究将这些转变作为独立的过程进行调查，但学术研究并未审查破产途径和结果在社会经济和种族界限上的差异。通过研究破产的扩大和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界定谁值得第二次机会。本课题考察了1880-1940年间美国破产应然制度在实践中的变迁及其话语边界。根据很少使用的破产记录，结合人口普查记录，这项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心，定量检查破产实践中的变化。该项目还将对社会行为者如何构思破产进行定性和定量的话语分析。具体地说，这篇论文的目的有四个：了解州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种族背景如何随着时间的推移而变化；考察破产恢复如何因社会经济地位和民族种族背景而变化；以及探索破产实践中的这些变化如何与美国社会对信贷、债务和破产的道德观念的变化有关。这项研究有可能促进社会科学对市场扩张如何与种族-种族价值界限的制度化共存的理解。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.