Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-wdhn8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-14T21:42:46.314Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of Mancessions and Hecoveries: Race, Gender, and the Political Construction of Economic Crises and Recoveries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2013

Dara Z. Strolovitch
Dara Z. Strolovitch*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through a discussion of the 2008 mortgage crisis and its similarities to the Great Depression of the 1930's and the Great Recession of 2007–09, I argue that the very notions of economic “crisis” and “recovery” are politically and ideologically constructed, and that conditions of vulnerability, often simply taken for granted as part of the normal social landscape when they affect marginalized populations, become regarded as crises when they affect dominant groups. Each of these crises, I argue, reveals different facets of the ways in which the power, normativity, and privilege of those perceived to be affected by economic hard times serve (1) to construct some economic troubles as “normal” and others as “crises;' (2) to prevent economic problems related to structural inequalities from being treated as crises by dominant political actors and institutions; and (3) to shape ideas about the ostensible solutions and ends to economic crises. By calling attention to these features of economic “crisis,” I aim to demonstrate the relevance of scholarship on race, class, gender, and intersectionality to the understanding of fundamental questions of contemporary political economy not often viewed from this perspective.

Type
Reflections
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 167 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Azoulay, Ariella, and Ophir, Adi. 2009. “The Order of Violence.” In The Power of Inclusive Exclusion, eds. Ophir, Adi, Givoni, Michal, and Hanfi, Sari. New York: Zone Books, 99–140.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry. 2008. Unequal Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, Frank R., and Jones, Bryan D.. 1993. Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? Brooklyn: Verso.Google Scholar
Canaday, Margot. 2009. The Straight State. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Jane L., and Mayer, Victoria. 2010. Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low-Wage Labor Market. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cotterman, Robert F. 2002. “New Evidence on the Relationship Between Race and Mortgage Default: The Importance of Credit History Data.” (http://www.huduser.org/Publications/PDF/crhistory.pdf), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Crump, Jeff, Newman, Kathe, Belsky, Eric, Ashton, Phil, Kaplan, David, Hammel, Daniel, and Wyly, Elvin. 2008. “Cities Destroyed (Again) for Cash: Forum on the U.S. Foreclosure Crisis.” Urban Geography 29(8): 745–784.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawson, Michael C. 2012. “Racial Tragedies, Political Hope, and the Tasks of American Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 10(3): 669–73.Google Scholar
Dudziak, Mary L. 2012. War Time: An Idea, its History, its Consequences. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. 2002. Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Edelman, Murray. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Linda. 1998. Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacker, Jacob S., and Pierson, Paul. 2010. Winner-Take-All Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Donna, and Hamilton, Charles. 1992. “The Dual Agenda of African American Organizations since the New Deal.” Political Science Quarterly 107(3): 435–453.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2010. The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E.J. 1954. “The Crisis of the 17th Century—II.” Past & Present 6: 44–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Lawrence, and King, Desmond. 2009. “America's Political Crisis: The Unsustainable State in a Time of Unraveling.” PS: Political Science & Politics 42(2): 277–285.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Gary C. 2003. “Terror, Terrain, and Turnout: Explaining the 2002 Midterm Elections.” Political Science Quarterly 118(1): 1–22.Google Scholar
Jameson, Fredric 2002. “The Dialectics of Disaster.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101(2): 297–304.Google Scholar
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. 2009. “The State of the Nation's Housing 2009.” (http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/son2009.pdf), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Kessler-Harris, Alice. 1982. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kingdon, John W. 1995. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart, and Richter, Michaela W.. 2006. “Crisis.” Journal of the History of Ideas 67(2): 357–400.Google Scholar
Kushner, Rabbi Harold. 1978. When Bad Things Happen to Good People. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Lieberman, Robert C. 2001. Shifting the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McCall, Leslie. 2001. Complex Inequality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Menzel, Annie. 2010. “Crisis and Epistemologies of Ignorance.” Presented at Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 1–5.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne. 1998. Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mettler, Suzanne. 2007. Soldiers to Citizens. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mink, Gwendolyn. 1990. “The Lady and the Tramp.” In Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Gordon, Linda. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 92–122.Google Scholar
Mishel, Lawrence, Bivens, Josh, Gould, Elise, and Shierholz, Heidi. 2012. The State of Working America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Morin, Edgar. 1976. “Pour une crisologie.” Communications 25: 149–163.Google Scholar
Mulligan, Casey B. 2009. “A Milestone for Working Women?” New York Times Economix Blog (January 14). (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/a-milestone-for-women-workers/), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
National Bureau of Economic Research. 2010. “Business Cycle Dating Committee.” http://www.nber.org/cycles/sept2010.pdf.Google Scholar
Novkov, Julie. 2009. “Sacrifice and Civic Membership: Who Earns Rights, and When?” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, Vancouver, Canada, March 18–20. (http://works.bepress.com/julie_novkov/4), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Perry, Mark J. 2010. “The Great Mancession of 2008–2009.” Statement before the House Ways and Means Committee Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support On “Responsible Fatherhood Programs.” (http://www.aei.org/files/2010/06/17/GreatMancessionTestimony.pdf), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Pitts, Steven. 2011. “Research Brief: Black Workers and the Public Sector.” University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education.Google Scholar
Purdie, Una. 2011. “90% of jobs created in US last year went to men.” Women's View on News. (http://www.womensviewsonnews.org/2011/03/90-of-jobs-created-in-us-last-year-went-to-men/), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Quadagno, Jill. 1996. The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Raboy, Marc, and Degenais, Bernard. 1992. Media, Crisis, and Democracy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Rampell, Catherine. 2009. “The Mancession.” New York Times Economix Blog (August 10). (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/the-mancession/), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Reinhart, Carmen, and Rogoff, Kenneth. 2009. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ritter, Gretchen. 2006. The Constitution as Social Design. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ritter, Gretchen. 2007. “Gender and Politics over Time.” Politics & Gender 3(3): 386–97.Google Scholar
Robin, Corey. 2004. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Lezaun, Javier, eds. 2009. Catastrophe: Law, Politics, and the Humanitarian Impulse. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Anne Larason, and Ingram, Helen. 1997. Policy Design for Democracy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Schuck, Peter. 2009. “Crisis and Catastrophe in Science, Law, and Politics.” In Catastrophe: Law, Politics, and the Humanitarian Impulse, ed. Austin Sarat and Javier Lezaun, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Shank, J. B. 2008. “Crisis: A Useful Category of Post-Social Scientific Historical Analysis?” The American Historical Review 113(4): 1090–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sierminska, Eva, and Takhtamanova, Yelena. 2010. “Job Flows, Demographics, and the Great Recession.” (http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/49449/1/632785233.pdf), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda, and Ritter, Gretchen. 1991. “Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States.” Studies in American Political Development 5: 36–93.Google Scholar
Starn, Randolph. 1971. “Historians and ‘Crisis’.” Past and Present 52: 3–22.Google Scholar
Sterett, Susan. 2007. “New Orleans Everywhere: Bureaucratic Accountability and Housing Policy after Katrina.” In Catastrophe: Law, Politics, and the Humanitarian Impulse, ed. Sarat, Austin and Lezaun, Javier, 83–115. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Stone, Deborah A. 1989. “Causal Stories and the Formation of Policy Agendas.” Political Science Quarterly 104(2): 281–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strach, Patricia, and Sapiro, Virginia. 2011. “Campaigning for Congress in the “9/11” Era.” American Politics Research 39(2): 264–290.Google Scholar
Strolovitch, Dara Z. 2007. Affirmative Advocacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Strolovitch, Dara Z. 2004. “Politics and Federal Policy.” In Poverty in the United States, ed. Mink, Gwendolyn and O'Connor, Alice. 548–52. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio.Google Scholar
Sundstrom, William 1992. “Last Hired, First Fired?” Journal of Economic History 52: 415–29.Google Scholar
Thompson, Derek. 2009. “It's Not Just a Recession. It's a Mancession!” The Atlantic (July 9). http://www.nber.org/papers/w14656.pdf?new_window=1 (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/its-not-just-a-recession-its-a-mancession/20991/), accessed December 12, 2012.Google Scholar
Trevor-Roper, H.R. 1959. “The General Crisis of the 17th Century.” Past & Present 16: 31–64.Google Scholar
Vázquez-Arroyo, Antonio. 2012. “The Antinomies of Violence and Catastrophe: Structures, Orders, and Agents.” New Political Science 34(2): 211–21.Google Scholar
Vázquez-Arroyo, Antonio. Forthcoming 2013. “How Not To Learn From Catastrophe: Jürgen Habermas and the Catastrophization of Political Life.” Political Theory.Google Scholar
Weir, Margaret. 1993. Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Joan, and Tait, Allison Anna. 2011. “‘Mancession’ or ‘Momcession’?: Good Providers, a Bad Economy, and Gender Discrimination.” Chicago Kent Law Review 86(2): 857.Google Scholar
Williams, Linda Faye. 2004. “The Issue of Our Time: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America.” Perspectives on Politics 2(4): 683–689.Google Scholar