Publications

• Ongoing

Bittmann, S.(2024), “Une terre rouge de coolies. Hiérarchies raciales et rationalisation du travail dans le caoutchouc indochinois, 1918-1939”, Marronnages, special issue on Racial Capitalism, accepted

Bittmann S. and Lojkine, U. (2024), “The Chains of Exploitation: New Directions for an Old Concept”, w. Ulysse Lojkine, revise and resubmit, Theory and Social Inquiry

Bittmann, S. and Menger, P.-M. (2024), “Bypassing the Box-Office? Performance, Risk and Career Inequalities among Women and Men Film Directors in France”, avec Pierre-Michel Menger, revise and resubmit, Sociological Inquiry

 Bittmann, S. and García-Cornejo, S. (2024), “The Pearl of the Empire? Private Capital and Concession Rubber in Indochina, 1910-1945”, under submission

• Livre / Book

 Working for Debt: Banks, Loan Sharks, and the Origins of Financial Exploitation in the United States (à paraître/forthcoming, Columbia University Press).

Summary: 

This book studies the way U.S. workers began using their labor income as collateral to build debt - turning wages into borrowing capital. In the early 1900s, networks of companies started making a profit out of payday and property advances, relying on garnishments to mitigate the risk of default. Far from a marginal economy, wage loans became a major source of cash for workers all over the country, tying credit not to ownership but bodily labor.

  As these practices gained momentum, so did their criticisms: Progressive and later New Deal reformers fought to eradicate these transactions, which threatened to revive a form of “wage slavery”, reminiscent of a dark and recent past. In fighting “loan sharks,” fair credit was thus presented as a universal solution to industrial poverty. Yet in doing so reformers, small lenders and bankers also limited credit access to white, middle-class constituencies, worthy of protection against extortion. Hence, rather than tackling issues inequalities, segregation or poverty, the politics of credit expansion served to obscure the failures of U.S. capitalism, instrumentalizing the “loan shark” as a scapegoat for larger, deeper depredations. 

  By blending economic sociology with business and social history, this book brings together the history of consumer credit with that of labor in the post-abolition era, showing how credit markets shaped social stratification for the decades to come. As credit exploitation became a core feature of U.S. capitalism, consumer citizenship was inextricably tied to financial exclusion, moulding class, race and gender inequalities in an enduring fashion.

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• Articles / Papers

« Turning Wages into Capital. Differentation on the Market for Unsecured Loans in the United States, 1900-1945 », European Journal of Sociology, 2021.

« Comment une entreprise répond à ses critiques ? Une analyse longitudinale du cas Household Finance aux Etats-Unis, 1910-1941 », Revue française de sociologie, vol. 61, n°4, p. 673-700, 2020.

« Le temps du crédit. Dette et stratification sociale en Illinois dans les années 1910 », Annales. Histoire, sciences sociales, vol. 75, n°2, p. 283-319, 2020.

« Une économie raciale de l'obligation : loan sharks et travailleurs afro-américains au début du XXe siècle », Sociologie du travail, vol. 61, n°4 [en ligne], 2019.

« De l' "usure" en Amérique. La transformation des politiques du crédit du Progressisme au New Deal, 1903-1938 », Genèses, vol. 117, n°4, p. 49-73, 2019. 

« Ressources économiques des femmes et travail domestique des conjoints : quels effets pour quelles tâches ? », Economie et statistiques, n°478-479-480, p. 305-338, 2015.

• Autres/Other

« La couleur du capital. Colin Kaepernick, Jay-Z et la NFL : discrimination au travail et militantisme dans le sport américain », Contretemps, 2020.

« Lutte des parquets et lutte politique. La grève des joueurs NBA, une mobilisation inédite », Contretemps, 2020.