Book Review: Albert S. Fu, Risky Cities: The Physical and Fiscal Nature of Disaster Capitalism
In: City & community: C & C
ISSN: 1540-6040
25 Ergebnisse
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In: City & community: C & C
ISSN: 1540-6040
In: The American journal of sociology, Band 126, Heft 6, S. 1512-1514
ISSN: 1537-5390
In: Political science quarterly: a nonpartisan journal devoted to the study and analysis of government, politics and international affairs ; PSQ, Band 136, Heft 1, S. 201-202
ISSN: 1538-165X
In: Contexts / American Sociological Association: understanding people in their social worlds, Band 18, Heft 1, S. 30-35
ISSN: 1537-6052
Racial discrimination shapes who feels debt as a crushing burden and who experiences debt as an opportunity. U.S. financial products and rules, and the ways they're implemented, amplify this inequality along racial lines.
In: Du bois review: social science research on race, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 295-322
ISSN: 1742-0598
AbstractIn this case study, I look at Benton Harbor, Michigan's tenure under a state-appointed "emergency manager," with extensive local powers replacing all local elected government, and a single imperative to balance the city's budget. The law, ostensibly race-neutral, wound up targeting almost all of Michigan's cities with significant Black population. The law ultimately disenfranchised half the state's Black population but only two percent of Whites. This law invalidates a basic civil right and prerequisite for urban political theory: electoral democracy. Who holds power in the urban regime when the state takes over? Drawing on forty-four interviews, observations and archival research, I argue aWhite urban regimegoverns without elected representation in this majority-Black city. The ideological framing of emergency management as "neutral," and Black politics as "corrupt" or "self-interested," provides the logic to blame Black governance for structural disinvestment and White-led extraction.
In: Contexts / American Sociological Association: understanding people in their social worlds, Band 17, Heft 1, S. 74-75
ISSN: 1537-6052
Louise Seamster on Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed.
In: Sociology compass, Band 9, Heft 12, S. 1049-1065
ISSN: 1751-9020
AbstractUrban regime analysis and growth machine theory offer critical tools to study power and inequality in cities. However, the field of urban politics has moved away from critically addressing race. I discuss these theories' potential contributions before suggesting scholars "bring race back" to urban politics in several key areas: studying "White urban regimes" in addition to Black urban regimes; examining how Whiteness factors into growth (and anti‐growth) coalitions; exploring how racial discourse shapes urban regimes; and accounting for the relationship between suburbs and "fringe cities" and the city, including suburban regimes.
In: Sociology of development, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 61-90
ISSN: 2374-538X
This paper explores the connections between two seemingly disparate cases of socioenvironmental injustice: Flint's water crisis in Michigan, USA, and Union Carbide's toxic chemical release in Bhopal, India. Engaging our empirical and theoretical insights from these two cases, this paper illustrates how marginalized people in distant settings can face similar socioenvironmental struggles. Considering Bhopal and Flint as instances of slow violence and institutional betrayal, the article makes two key arguments. First, treating these crises as discrete events obscures their sustained assault on people deemed expendable by their governments. Second, institutions charged with protecting people in distress can magnify and extend suffering. The paper analyzes institutional betrayal as a mechanism of slow violence: survivors can suffer lingering consequences when seeking restitution from regulatory bodies that may be responsible or complicit. We find that government responses and denials have caused prolonged violence in these regions. The paper concludes by urging scholars to compare socioenvironmental injustice globally, to believe residents, and to reject false end dates for crises.
In: Environmental sociology, Band 7, Heft 2, S. 110-121
ISSN: 2325-1042
In: Critical sociology, Band 43, Heft 2, S. 169-179
ISSN: 1569-1632
The relationship between taxation and structural racism is both understudied and undertheorized. Our article introducing the following symposium is a starting point to address this gap, proposing that "a racial tax state" structures the US tax system. Grounded by contemporary race theory, we show how this seemingly innocuous and bureaucratic procedure is structured by and reproduces racial inequality. Far from a neutral and even-keeled practice, taxation is a political tool imbued with stereotypes, values, and emotions to carry out and justify acts of taking. To suggest future directions for this area of research, we propose five initial mechanisms the racial tax state deploys to codify racialized inequalities of socially-defined rewards and penalties: enfranchisement, hoarding, abatement, extraction, and redistribution. We provide both historical and contemporary examples of these mechanisms, drawing especially on the symposium's contributors, to show patterns in tax contestation and restructuring at moments in which racial justice seemed possible.
In: Humanity & society, Band 39, Heft 4, S. 485-486
ISSN: 2372-9708
In: Humanity & society, Band 39, Heft 4, S. 363-375
ISSN: 2372-9708
In: Critical sociology, Band 47, Heft 6, S. 977-992
ISSN: 1569-1632
Research on debt highlights its use as a tool for investment and a substitute for public welfare programs. Use of debt, however, is not equal across social groups. Black households in particular have lower debt levels than white households. In this paper, we explore the context behind massive racial disparities in household debt. Conceptually, we propose that personal debt is an indicator of integration in the financial system. As such, we argue that black households' lower debt levels can be understood as financial isolation rather than financial health. We support this argument by using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances to estimate racial differences in access to financial tools net of racial differences in socioeconomic status, asset levels, and financial literacy. We also show that black households' financial information networks are different from white households' in ways that suggest restricted access to formal financial institutions.
In: Contexts / American Sociological Association: understanding people in their social worlds, Band 17, Heft 1, S. 88-90
ISSN: 1537-6052
Raphael Charron-Chenier and Louise Seamster on debt and social inequality.
In: Social currents: official journal of the Southern Sociological Society, Band 4, Heft 3, S. 199-207
ISSN: 2329-4973
Analyses of the recent surge in racial wealth inequality have tended to focus on changes in asset holdings. Debt patterns, by contrast, have remained relatively unexplored. Using 2001 to 2013 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, we show that after peaking in 2007, racial inequalities for most debt types returned to prefinancial crisis levels. The exception has been educational debt—on which we focus in this article. Our analyses show that educational debt has increased substantially for blacks relative to whites in the past decade. Notably, this unequal growth is not attributable to differences in educational attainment across racial groups. Rather, and as we argue, this trend reflects a process of predatory inclusion—a process wherein lenders and financial actors offer needed services to black households but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits. Predatory inclusion, we propose, is one of the mechanisms behind the persistence of racial inequality in contemporary markets.