Racial Orders, Market Logics, and American Political Development

• In Event: Linking Racial Capitalism and Urban Politics

Abstract

Political orders are foundational to the study of American political development (APD), and yet the role of markets and market ideas in structuring conflicts between orders has gone under-theorized. This is especially clear when APD scholarship tries to contend with evidence of ascriptive material inequalities more than fifty years after the minority rights revolution. This manuscript makes the case for incorporating market logics – that is, collective beliefs or presentations about how specific markets operate – into orders-based accounts of APD. Market logics matter because they can be wielded as sources of independent authority and because they can imbue market institutions with path-dependent ascriptive qualities, each of which can structure not only ensuing political conflicts but also future patterns of material inequality. These roles are illustrated through case studies tracing efforts to regulate insurance and mortgage discrimination in the 1880s-1890s and 1930s-1940s, respectively.

Author

• Chloe Thurston, Northwestern University