Detroit’s Municipal Bankruptcy: Racialised Geographies of Austerity

ABSTRACT

Urban geographer Jamie Peck theorises austerity urbanism as a dominant state practice of financially ‘restructuring’ the fiscal agendas of local governments in order to reduce government budget deficits in times of economic recessions. This project seeks to investigate the role of race in the context of austerity urbanism in Detroit following the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. What is clear is that subprime lending in Detroit was explicitly a raced event. Analysis of austerity politics in Detroit demonstrates that the city is clearly spatially divided along racialised lines. Black city pensioners, former public sector employees, and ‘deliquent taxpayers’ were blamed for Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy in narratives centering on their bloated and generous benefits during the city’s financial decline. The policy outcomes of austerity programmes during the city’s financial crisis impacted racialised, poor communities, specifically the outcomes of privatising the city’s water services that led to state-sanctioned water shut-offs. This paper explores the ways in which race figures in the causes (race-based credit redlining/subprime super-inclusion lending practices) in the way the crisis was narrated to wrongly apportion blame to the racialised poor and city pensioners, and in the effects of the crisis, where water shut-offs wrought punishment on the racialised poor.     

The Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism Needs Better Categories: Clearing up the Confusions that Result from Blurring Analytic and Lay Concepts

Synopsis It has been difficult to make progress in the study of ethnicity and nationalism because of the multiple confusions of analytic and lay terms, and the sheer lack of terminological standardization (often even within the same article). This makes a conceptual cleaning-up unavoidable, and it is especially salutary to attempt it now that more economists are becoming interested in the effects of identity on behavior, so that they may begin with the best conceptual tools possible. My approach to these questions has been informed by anthropological and evolutionary-psychological questions. I will focus primarily on the terms ‘ethnic group’, ‘nation’, and ‘nationalism’, and I will make the following points: (1) so-called ‘ethnic groups’ are collections of people with a common cultural identity, plus an ideology of membership by descent and normative endogamy; (2) the ‘group’ in ‘ethnic group’ is a misleading misnomer—these are not ‘groups’ but categories, so I propose to call them ‘ethnies’; (3) ‘nationalism’ mostly refers to the recent ideology that ethnies—cultural communities with a self-conscious ideology of self-sufficient reproduction—be made politically sovereign; (4) it is very confusing to use ‘nationalism’ also to stand for ‘loyalty to a multi-ethnic state’ because this is the exact opposite; (5) a ‘nation’ truly exists only in a politician’s imagination, so analysts should not pretend that establishing whether something ‘really’ is or is not ‘a nation’ matters; (6) a big analytic cost is paid every time an ‘ethnie’ is called a ‘nation’ because this mobilizes the intuition that nationalism is indispensable to ethnic organization (not true), which thereby confuses the very historical process—namely, the recent historical emergence of nationalism—that must be explained; (7) another analytical cost is paid when scholars pretend that ethnicity is a form of kinship—it is not.     

How do foundations support (anti-)racism? A critical race theory perspective on philanthropy and racial equity

This research explores how philanthropic foundations responded to the killing of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests through a critical race theory perspective. Using qualitative content analysis of online statements, the study analyzed messages foundations conveyed about racism and anti-racism and what commitments they made to address racial equity. The findings suggest half of foundations communicated racist ideas through assimilationist and non-racist messages, and half expressed anti-racist ideas by addressing systematic racism. Further, corporate, rather than family or community foundations, conveyed more racist messages and committed to providing funds rather than adjusting organizational orientation to address racial inequity.     

城市老年人步行能力与建设其适合的居住区户外环境的研究——以南京市为例

参照国民体质监测方法测试10米步行速度,对调查区域附近部分人、车流量较大道路宽度直接测量和对路口交通信号灯时间值直接观察,调查测定了334名(其中男136名,女198名)60岁以上南京市城市老年人步行速度,了解老年人居住区的住区道路、信号交叉口、住宅建设、公共设施等户外环境的基本情况。结果表明:70岁及以上的老年人即使在健康状况允许快走的前提下仍有一部分无法在绿灯时间里通过街道,与60-69岁组相比呈现急剧上升的趋势。通过分析城市老年人步行能力和居住区户外环境现状,建议优化老年人居住区的交通;完善城市老年人的住宅建设,加强无障碍设计;配齐公共设施,加强社区服务。     

我国高水平竞走运动员不同走速技术特征变化的运动学分析

通过采用250f/s的高速录像分析法分别对三个小组27名国家竞走集训队员在两种不同速度的训练状态下的竞走技术进行详尽的运动学分析与对比,并结合前人的研究成果,认为竞走运动员加快竞走速度的主要手段应该以步长的发展为主,发展步频为辅,同时应该加大摆腿的速度耐力和转髋伸腿的专项训练,才能有效提高比赛成绩。