John N Robinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 279975 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John N Robinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | John N |
| FAMILY NAME | Robinson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBINSON J N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1997-5433 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 88 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
From persuasion to evasion: Anti -collective action and the making of affordable housing in suburban Chicago
NIMBY—or “Not in my Back Yard”—opposition against renters has long defined segregation and housing markets in the United States. Recent years, however, have seen the rise of a new phenomenon: YIMBY or “Yes in my Back Yard” efforts, which have aimed to expand affordable housing supply for renters in lower-poverty places that have long restricted it. The clash between NIMBY and YIMBY poses a problem: how do actors effectuate change in markets where…
Beyond “Yimby”: Fixing the Affordable Housing Crisis
John N. Robinson III on reimagining affordable housing production
Pragmatic Knowledge Production: Bringing the Problem of Housing Deterioration into Focus
“Knowledge infrastructures” are critical to producing research and spurring action on policy issues. We argue that the existing infrastructure of knowledge on housing problems in the United States is ill-suited for understanding issues of housing quality and deterioration. Specifically, we argue that the principal national database for understanding housing quality, the American Housing Survey, is seriously flawed. After identifying specific blin…
Performing Social Control: Poverty Governance, Public Finance, and the Politics of Visibility
The visibility of populations, policies, and the state matters greatly for questions of power, inequality, and democratic life. This article builds on existing scholarship by examining how visibility operates as a lever and effect of social control in a racially and economically stratified society. By doing so, the article identifies a paradox. Race- and class-empowered groups often pressure state actors to implement punitive policies or otherwis…
A Sociology of Real Estate: Polanyi, Du Bois, and the Relational Study of Commodified Land in a Climate-Changed Future
Real estate plays an essential part in various sociological theories of political economy, state capacity, racecraft, stratification, and urbanization. However, since foundational insights about the novelty of commodified, emplaced private property from theorists like Du Bois and Polanyi, these disparate threads have not been tied together into a coherent field of study. Here, we review three areas of recent scholarship relevant to understanding …
Racial Capitalism and Social Psychology: A Note for Future Research
In this research note, we describe how theories of racial capitalism offer important insights into social psychological processes of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and more. First, the racial capitalism framework sheds light on the material conditions that shape social psychological aspects of racial domination and oppression, including processes of identity formation. Second, racial capitalism thinkers have emphasized how capitalism instru…
Pocketbook policing: How race shapes municipal reliance on punitive fines and fees in the Chicago suburbs
This article investigates a trend in the Chicago region that defies conventional accounts of municipal politics and revenue-motivated policing: since the Great Recession, higher-income black suburbs have sharply increased collection of legal fines and fees. To explain this, we draw on a study of municipal officials to develop a racialization of municipal opportunity perspective, which highlights how racial segregation in the suburbs intersects wi…
Surviving Capitalism: Affordability as a Racial 'Wage' in Contemporary Housing Markets
In a time of growing inequality, analysts and commentators increasingly highlight the unaffordability of everyday living under capitalism as a convenient language for diagnosing today's problems and devising policy solutions. This article reconsiders the notion of an 'affordability crisis' by drawing on Du Bois' conceptualization of the racial 'wage' to theorize the uneven development of markets: a racial stratification process that renders capit…
Asian Christianities: History, Theology, Practice, written by Peter C. Phan
Capitalizing on Community: Affordable Housing Markets in the Age of Participation
This article examines the affordable housing market to develop a new way to understand the problem of co-optation in participatory urban governance. Through a case study of the Chicago metropolitan area, it uses data from 105 in-depth interviews-supplemented with ethnographic, archival, and secondary data-to shed light on the circumstances in which poverty-managing organizations compete for the resources necessary to house marginalized population…
Making Markets on the Margins: Housing Finance Agencies and the Racial Politics of Credit Expansion
Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal initiative in the 1960s and ’70s to broaden financial access for poor renters in communities of color, which unintentionally sparked the rise of new state-level credit agencies. Drawing on historical evidence, much of it never used before, the author’s fin…
Soteriology and The Use of Non-Christian Philosophy – An Experiment in Dialogical Theology
This article seeks to examine the nature and role of the use of non-Christian philosophy in the formulation of Christian theology specifically in relation to soteriology. The role and limitations of Greco-Roman theology in the traditional formulations are examined along with their reception in today’s global Church. The question of the use of philosophy originating in other religious discourses and its legitimacy is considered and then a soteriol…
Race, poverty, and markets: Urban inequality after the neoliberal turn
Classic scholarship on the problem of urban inequality tends to highlight the absence of “the market” and the correspondingly problematic and inadequate role of the state in poor communities. This article explores how the relationship between markets and urban poverty has shifted in recent decades. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to the growing influence of market logics and privatization—core features of “neoliberal” change—in areas …
Welfare as Wrecking Ball: Constructing Public Responsibility in Legal Encounters Over Public Housing Demolition
Scholarship on welfare privatization illustrates how the process often curtails and undermines public responsibility for the poor. In this article, I examine how recipients, policy makers, and judges participate in the legal process as a means of challenging and defending privatization. I look at cases of litigation initiated by public housing tenants between 1985 and 2012 to fight the demolition of their homes to explore the changing meaning of …
Negotiating the (legal) right to the city: Public housing demolition and the federal courts in two postindustrial U.S. cities
Public housing reform has fostered widespread revitalization in American cities. Courts have been critical to this process, but so far urban scholars have not yet closely analyzed this role. This article illuminates how courts participated in reform, sometimes empowering and at other times disempowering tenants. Looking at litigation filed by tenants to fight demolition, I examine how courts framed disputes in legal terms and how the judicial sta…
"Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society" by Hakan Thorn: Book review
I Is ss su ue e 2 2 w ww ww w. .qqu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .oor rg g
Making Markets on the Margins: Housing Finance Agencies and the Racial Politics of Credit Expansion
Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal initiative in the 1960s and ’70s to broaden financial access for poor renters in communities of color, which unintentionally sparked the rise of new state-level credit agencies. Drawing on historical evidence, much of it never used before, the author’s fin…
Pocketbook policing: How race shapes municipal reliance on punitive fines and fees in the Chicago suburbs
This article investigates a trend in the Chicago region that defies conventional accounts of municipal politics and revenue-motivated policing: since the Great Recession, higher-income black suburbs have sharply increased collection of legal fines and fees. To explain this, we draw on a study of municipal officials to develop a racialization of municipal opportunity perspective, which highlights how racial segregation in the suburbs intersects wi…
A Sociology of Real Estate: Polanyi, Du Bois, and the Relational Study of Commodified Land in a Climate-Changed Future
Real estate plays an essential part in various sociological theories of political economy, state capacity, racecraft, stratification, and urbanization. However, since foundational insights about the novelty of commodified, emplaced private property from theorists like Du Bois and Polanyi, these disparate threads have not been tied together into a coherent field of study. Here, we review three areas of recent scholarship relevant to understanding …
Surviving Capitalism: Affordability as a Racial 'Wage' in Contemporary Housing Markets
In a time of growing inequality, analysts and commentators increasingly highlight the unaffordability of everyday living under capitalism as a convenient language for diagnosing today's problems and devising policy solutions. This article reconsiders the notion of an 'affordability crisis' by drawing on Du Bois' conceptualization of the racial 'wage' to theorize the uneven development of markets: a racial stratification process that renders capit…
Capitalizing on Community: Affordable Housing Markets in the Age of Participation
This article examines the affordable housing market to develop a new way to understand the problem of co-optation in participatory urban governance. Through a case study of the Chicago metropolitan area, it uses data from 105 in-depth interviews-supplemented with ethnographic, archival, and secondary data-to shed light on the circumstances in which poverty-managing organizations compete for the resources necessary to house marginalized population…
Racial Capitalism and Social Psychology: A Note for Future Research
In this research note, we describe how theories of racial capitalism offer important insights into social psychological processes of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and more. First, the racial capitalism framework sheds light on the material conditions that shape social psychological aspects of racial domination and oppression, including processes of identity formation. Second, racial capitalism thinkers have emphasized how capitalism instru…
Race, poverty, and markets: Urban inequality after the neoliberal turn
Classic scholarship on the problem of urban inequality tends to highlight the absence of “the market” and the correspondingly problematic and inadequate role of the state in poor communities. This article explores how the relationship between markets and urban poverty has shifted in recent decades. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to the growing influence of market logics and privatization—core features of “neoliberal” change—in areas …
Negotiating the (legal) right to the city: Public housing demolition and the federal courts in two postindustrial U.S. cities
Public housing reform has fostered widespread revitalization in American cities. Courts have been critical to this process, but so far urban scholars have not yet closely analyzed this role. This article illuminates how courts participated in reform, sometimes empowering and at other times disempowering tenants. Looking at litigation filed by tenants to fight demolition, I examine how courts framed disputes in legal terms and how the judicial sta…
Performing Social Control: Poverty Governance, Public Finance, and the Politics of Visibility
The visibility of populations, policies, and the state matters greatly for questions of power, inequality, and democratic life. This article builds on existing scholarship by examining how visibility operates as a lever and effect of social control in a racially and economically stratified society. By doing so, the article identifies a paradox. Race- and class-empowered groups often pressure state actors to implement punitive policies or otherwis…
"Anti-Apartheid and the Emergence of a Global Civil Society" by Hakan Thorn: Book review
I Is ss su ue e 2 2 w ww ww w. .qqu ua al li it ta at ti iv ve es so oc ci io ol lo og gy yr re ev vi ie ew w. .oor rg g
Race, poverty, and markets: Urban inequality after the neoliberal turn
Classic scholarship on the problem of urban inequality tends to highlight the absence of “the market” and the correspondingly problematic and inadequate role of the state in poor communities. This article explores how the relationship between markets and urban poverty has shifted in recent decades. Scholars have become increasingly attentive to the growing influence of market logics and privatization—core features of “neoliberal” change—in areas …
Welfare as Wrecking Ball: Constructing Public Responsibility in Legal Encounters Over Public Housing Demolition
Scholarship on welfare privatization illustrates how the process often curtails and undermines public responsibility for the poor. In this article, I examine how recipients, policy makers, and judges participate in the legal process as a means of challenging and defending privatization. I look at cases of litigation initiated by public housing tenants between 1985 and 2012 to fight the demolition of their homes to explore the changing meaning of …
Negotiating the (legal) right to the city: Public housing demolition and the federal courts in two postindustrial U.S. cities
Public housing reform has fostered widespread revitalization in American cities. Courts have been critical to this process, but so far urban scholars have not yet closely analyzed this role. This article illuminates how courts participated in reform, sometimes empowering and at other times disempowering tenants. Looking at litigation filed by tenants to fight demolition, I examine how courts framed disputes in legal terms and how the judicial sta…
Soteriology and The Use of Non-Christian Philosophy – An Experiment in Dialogical Theology
This article seeks to examine the nature and role of the use of non-Christian philosophy in the formulation of Christian theology specifically in relation to soteriology. The role and limitations of Greco-Roman theology in the traditional formulations are examined along with their reception in today’s global Church. The question of the use of philosophy originating in other religious discourses and its legitimacy is considered and then a soteriol…
Asian Christianities: History, Theology, Practice, written by Peter C. Phan
Capitalizing on Community: Affordable Housing Markets in the Age of Participation
This article examines the affordable housing market to develop a new way to understand the problem of co-optation in participatory urban governance. Through a case study of the Chicago metropolitan area, it uses data from 105 in-depth interviews-supplemented with ethnographic, archival, and secondary data-to shed light on the circumstances in which poverty-managing organizations compete for the resources necessary to house marginalized population…
Making Markets on the Margins: Housing Finance Agencies and the Racial Politics of Credit Expansion
Widespread reliance on credit increasingly defines realities of economic citizenship in American society. This article theorizes the racial politics of credit expansion. It examines the federal initiative in the 1960s and ’70s to broaden financial access for poor renters in communities of color, which unintentionally sparked the rise of new state-level credit agencies. Drawing on historical evidence, much of it never used before, the author’s fin…
Pocketbook policing: How race shapes municipal reliance on punitive fines and fees in the Chicago suburbs
This article investigates a trend in the Chicago region that defies conventional accounts of municipal politics and revenue-motivated policing: since the Great Recession, higher-income black suburbs have sharply increased collection of legal fines and fees. To explain this, we draw on a study of municipal officials to develop a racialization of municipal opportunity perspective, which highlights how racial segregation in the suburbs intersects wi…
Surviving Capitalism: Affordability as a Racial 'Wage' in Contemporary Housing Markets
In a time of growing inequality, analysts and commentators increasingly highlight the unaffordability of everyday living under capitalism as a convenient language for diagnosing today's problems and devising policy solutions. This article reconsiders the notion of an 'affordability crisis' by drawing on Du Bois' conceptualization of the racial 'wage' to theorize the uneven development of markets: a racial stratification process that renders capit…
Racial Capitalism and Social Psychology: A Note for Future Research
In this research note, we describe how theories of racial capitalism offer important insights into social psychological processes of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and more. First, the racial capitalism framework sheds light on the material conditions that shape social psychological aspects of racial domination and oppression, including processes of identity formation. Second, racial capitalism thinkers have emphasized how capitalism instru…
Beyond “Yimby”: Fixing the Affordable Housing Crisis
John N. Robinson III on reimagining affordable housing production
Pragmatic Knowledge Production: Bringing the Problem of Housing Deterioration into Focus
“Knowledge infrastructures” are critical to producing research and spurring action on policy issues. We argue that the existing infrastructure of knowledge on housing problems in the United States is ill-suited for understanding issues of housing quality and deterioration. Specifically, we argue that the principal national database for understanding housing quality, the American Housing Survey, is seriously flawed. After identifying specific blin…
Performing Social Control: Poverty Governance, Public Finance, and the Politics of Visibility
The visibility of populations, policies, and the state matters greatly for questions of power, inequality, and democratic life. This article builds on existing scholarship by examining how visibility operates as a lever and effect of social control in a racially and economically stratified society. By doing so, the article identifies a paradox. Race- and class-empowered groups often pressure state actors to implement punitive policies or otherwis…
A Sociology of Real Estate: Polanyi, Du Bois, and the Relational Study of Commodified Land in a Climate-Changed Future
Real estate plays an essential part in various sociological theories of political economy, state capacity, racecraft, stratification, and urbanization. However, since foundational insights about the novelty of commodified, emplaced private property from theorists like Du Bois and Polanyi, these disparate threads have not been tied together into a coherent field of study. Here, we review three areas of recent scholarship relevant to understanding …
From persuasion to evasion: Anti -collective action and the making of affordable housing in suburban Chicago
NIMBY—or “Not in my Back Yard”—opposition against renters has long defined segregation and housing markets in the United States. Recent years, however, have seen the rise of a new phenomenon: YIMBY or “Yes in my Back Yard” efforts, which have aimed to expand affordable housing supply for renters in lower-poverty places that have long restricted it. The clash between NIMBY and YIMBY poses a problem: how do actors effectuate change in markets where…
Political science (14 works) · Economics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (8 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (7 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Affordable housing (4 works)