Creditworthy : a history of consumer surveillance and financial identity in America / Josh Lauer.
Lauer, Josh (Professor of communication), author.
2017
HG3701 .L35 2017eb
Available Online

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Title Creditworthy : a history of consumer surveillance and financial identity in America / Josh Lauer.
Author Lauer, Josh (Professor of communication), author.
ISBN 9780231544627 (electronic book)
0231544626 (electronic book)
9780231168083
023116808X
DOI https://doi.org/10.7312/laue16808
Published New York : Columbia University Press, [2017]
Language English
Description 1 online resource (ix, 352 pages) : illustrations.
Other Standard Identifiers 10.7312/laue16808 doi
Call Number HG3701 .L35 2017eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 332.70973
Summary "The first consumer credit bureaus appeared in the 1870s and quickly amassed huge archives of deeply personal information. Today, the three leading credit bureaus are among the most powerful institutions in modern life--yet we know almost nothing about them. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion are multi-billion-dollar corporations that track our movements, spending behavior, and financial status. This data is used to predict our riskiness as borrowers and to judge our trustworthiness and value in a broad array of contexts, from insurance and marketing to employment and housing. [This book] explores the evolution of credit reporting from its nineteenth-century origins to the rise of the modern consumer data industry. [The author] highlights the leading role that commercial surveillance has played--ahead of state surveillance systems--in monitoring the economic lives of Americans. [This book] charts how credit reporting grew from an industry that relied on personal knowledge of consumers to one that employs sophisticated algorithms to determine a person's trustworthiness. Ultimately, [the author] argues that by converting individual reputations into brief written reports--and, later, credit ratings and credit scores--credit bureaus did something more profound: they invented the modern concept of financial identity. [This book] reminds us that creditworthiness is never just about economic 'facts'. It is fundamentally concerned with--and determines--our social standing as an honest, reliable, profit-generating person."-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Series Columbia studies in the history of U.S. capitalism.
Available in Other Form Creditworthy
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
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Introduction
"A bureau for the promotion of honesty" : the birth of systematic credit surveillance
Coming to terms with credit : the nineteenth-century origins of consumer credit surveillance
Credit workers unite : professionalization and the rise of a national credit infrastructure
Running the credit gauntlet : extracting, ordering, and communicating consumer information
"You are judged by your credit" : teaching and targeting the consumer
"File clerk's paradise" : postwar credit reporting on the eve of automation
Encoding the consumer : the computerization of credit reporting and credit scoring
Database panic : computerized credit surveillance and its discontents
From debts to data : credit bureaus in the new information economy
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

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