Race, Empire, and the Crisis of the Subprime

Predatory lending of subprime mortgages targeting the most economically vulnerable minority communities helped trigger the current global financial crisis. This special issue of the journal American Quarterly explores the ways in which "subprime" becomes a racial signifier in the current debate about the causes and fixes for a capitalism itself in crisis. It signifies both the accumulated dispossession of racial exclusion in the twenty-first century gilded age in the United States and Global North more broadly, as well as the imperial ambitions of three decades of U.S.-led neoliberal rule over the Global South. Essays are divided into sections: debt, discipline, and empire; the pathologies of debt; and security, space, and resistance in the post-racial urban setting. Focusing on race and empire, that is, on racial and global subjugation, the contributors expose the ethical-political underpinnings of the current global financial crisis. Contributors include: Radhika Balakrishnan Jordan T. Camp Paula Chakravartty Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas Sophie Ellen Fung Daniel J. Hammel James Heintz Bosco Ho Zachary Liebowitz Tayyab Mahmud John D. Márquez Pierson Nettling C. S. Ponder Sarita Echavez See Shawn Shimpach Denise Ferreira da Silva Catherine R. Squires Michael J. Watts Elvin Wyly

Author: Paula Chakravartty
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 06/21/2013
Pages: 344
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.10w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781421410012

About the Author

Paula Chakravartty is an associate professor of communications at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Denise Ferreira da Silva is a professor of ethics and director of the Centre for Ethics and Politics at the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary, University of London.