Seabrooke, Leonard, 1974-. (2010) What do I get? the everyday politics of expectations and the subprime crisis. New Political Economy, Vol.15 (No.1). pp. 51-70. ISSN 1356-3467

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Abstract

Were Americans who agreed to subprime loans stupid? This article suggests not, and that individual choices on home loans reflect a welfare trade-off steeped in social norms. These norms provide a range of choices for individuals' intentional rationality, from which decisions can be legitimated among their social peers. To understand individual choices about taking on a home loan, such actions must be interpreted within the context of the dominant welfare trade-off within a society over how one ensures income over their life cycle. This can be understood comparatively and also over time. This article situates the American experience among other advanced industrialised economies to locate its particular variety of residential capitalism and why their experience is more mild than wild. It then assesses change over time in the US case, arguing that the subprime crisis requires us to consider the everyday politics of expectations. Seen over time, everyday expectations about how the economy works provide constraints on the capacity of economic and political elites to change the system. They also encourage institutional experiments to cope with crises. I discuss this in the context of institutional experiments in response to the 1980s crisis in the US and the role that community activists played in linking credit access to rights discourses from the 1930s and 1960s. I then discuss how this politics has played out in the current crisis, providing a broader perspective on the politics of the subprime crisis and why it's not just the economy, stupid.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Divisions:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies
Journal or Publication Title:	New Political Economy
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	1356-3467
Date:	March 2010
Volume:	Vol.15
Number:	No.1
Number of Pages:	20
Page Range:	pp. 51-70
Identification Number:	10.1080/13563460903553608
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/5886

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