The moral accounting of debts: productivity, deservingness and the consensual creation of Chapter XIII bankruptcy

IF 3.2 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Socio-Economic Review Pub Date : 2024-08-01 DOI:10.1093/ser/mwae047

Nicholas A Pang

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Chapter XIII’s wage-earner payment plans are now the default form of personal bankruptcy in the USA. During the Great Depression, it was created as a voluntary choice and enacted with unanimous legislative support. Absent conflict between creditors and labor and social reformers, legislators agreed that Chapter XIII was for the benefit of both honorable insolvents and their fair creditors. How did wage-earner payment plans emerge out of a consensual legislative process? Employing a computational abductive approach on a wide range of legislative, media and bankruptcy records, I show that Chapter XIII’s creation was facilitated by a ‘moral accounting’ that, based on their race and gender identities, positively evaluated most White men bankruptcy petitioners as ‘deserving’, even as it recognized occupational variations in their economic ‘productivity’. This study highlights how racial discourses of ‘deservingness’ are central to the construction of credit markets as part of America’s submerged welfare state.

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债务的道德核算：生产力、应得性和第 XIII 章破产的合意创建

第 XIII 章的工薪族付款计划现已成为美国默认的个人破产形式。在经济大萧条时期，它是作为一种自愿选择而设立的，并在立法机构的一致支持下颁布实施。在债权人与劳工和社会改革者之间没有冲突的情况下，立法者一致认为第 XIII 章既有利于光荣的破产者，也有利于公平的债权人。工薪族付款计划是如何在协商一致的立法过程中产生的？通过对大量的立法、媒体和破产记录进行计算归纳，我发现第 XIII 章的制定得益于一种 "道德会计"，这种 "道德会计 "基于种族和性别身份，对大多数白人男性破产申请人给予了 "应得 "的积极评价，同时也承认了他们在经济 "生产力 "方面的职业差异。本研究强调了 "应得 "的种族论述如何成为构建信贷市场的核心，成为美国被淹没的福利国家的一部分。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Socio-Economic Review Multiple-

CiteScore

6.80

自引率

10.80%

发文量

期刊介绍： Originating in the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Socio-Economic Review (SER) is part of a broader movement in the social sciences for the rediscovery of the socio-political foundations of the economy. Devoted to the advancement of socio-economics, it deals with the analytical, political and moral questions arising at the intersection between economy and society. Articles in SER explore how the economy is or should be governed by social relations, institutional rules, political decisions, and cultural values. They also consider how the economy in turn affects the society of which it is part, for example by breaking up old institutional forms and giving rise to new ones. The domain of the journal is deliberately broadly conceived, so new variations to its general theme may be discovered and editors can learn from the papers that readers submit. To enhance international dialogue, Socio-Economic Review accepts the submission of translated articles that are simultaneously published in a language other than English. In pursuit of its program, SER is eager to promote interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, economics, political science and moral philosophy, through both empirical and theoretical work. Empirical papers may be qualitative as well as quantitative, and theoretical papers will not be confined to deductive model-building. Papers suggestive of more generalizable insights into the economy as a domain of social action will be preferred over narrowly specialized work. While firmly committed to the highest standards of scholarly excellence, Socio-Economic Review encourages discussion of the practical and ethical dimensions of economic action, with the intention to contribute to both the advancement of social science and the building of a good economy in a good society.