TY - JOUR
T1 - Making markets on the margins
T2 - Housing finance agencies and the racial politics of credit expansion
AU - Robinson, John N.
N1 - Funding Information:
David Cunningham, Spencer Headworth, Patrick LeGales, Ann Orloff, Monica Prasad, Sarah Quinn, Brian Sargent, Josh Whitford, Howard Winant, and other sharp minds at Northwestern University and Washington University in St. Louis. This article also benefited from funding from the Ford Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, and the Paris Institute for Political Studies (Sciences Po). Finally, I thank John N. Robinson Jr. (dad), Helen S. Robinson (mom), and Rhaisa K. Williams (wife) for their boundless love and inspiration. Direct correspondence to John N. Robinson III, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Sociology, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 112, St. Louis, Missouri 63130. E-mail: jnrobinson@wustl.edu
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/1/1
Y1 - 2020/1/1
N2 - Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal initiative in the 1960s and’70s to broaden financial access for poor renters in communities of color, which unintentionally sparked the rise of new state-level credit agencies. Drawing on historical evidence, much of it never used before, the author’s findings reveal the contentious politics at the heart of this policy shift. Doing so highlights the constitutive whiteness of credit and also illuminates how the project of expanding credit to marginalized groups tests the categorical seams of markets in the public imagination: Such initiatives fuel racial contestation around taken for- granted market rules, which draws governing officials toward increasingly speculative and convoluted financial instruments as a means of rule-bending subversion. Ultimately, this article sheds much-needed light on, and encourages further research into, the racial stratification of the state’s market-making power.
AB - Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal initiative in the 1960s and’70s to broaden financial access for poor renters in communities of color, which unintentionally sparked the rise of new state-level credit agencies. Drawing on historical evidence, much of it never used before, the author’s findings reveal the contentious politics at the heart of this policy shift. Doing so highlights the constitutive whiteness of credit and also illuminates how the project of expanding credit to marginalized groups tests the categorical seams of markets in the public imagination: Such initiatives fuel racial contestation around taken for- granted market rules, which draws governing officials toward increasingly speculative and convoluted financial instruments as a means of rule-bending subversion. Ultimately, this article sheds much-needed light on, and encourages further research into, the racial stratification of the state’s market-making power.
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U2 - 10.1086/707927
DO - 10.1086/707927
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85083638904
SN - 0002-9602
VL - 125
SP - 974
EP - 1029
JO - American Journal of Sociology
JF - American Journal of Sociology
IS - 4
ER -