ETHNICITY AND BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: A STUDY OF THE JEWISH MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANIES OF NEW YORK.
Item
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Title
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ETHNICITY AND BUSINESS ENTERPRISE: A STUDY OF THE JEWISH MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANIES OF NEW YORK.
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Identifier
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AAI8312363
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identifier
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8312363
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Creator
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NEWMAN, ARLENE K.
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Contributor
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Benjamin B. Ringer
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies
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Abstract
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This study focuses on a pioneering venture by Jewish landlords into the property/casualty insurance industry in New York City as insurers, a part of the industry where Jews were rarely found. The undertaking was an outgrowth of a landlords' association, formed as a defensive organization to contend with the tenant/landlord conflict on New York City's Lower East Side at the turn of the century. The association made it possible for the landlords to deal with many aspects of the conflict, including increased negligence suits brought by politicized tenants. The increase in the number of these negligence suits was extremely threatening, as during this period legal definitions of responsibility attendant upon the ownership of property became more exacting and juries kept giving larger awards.;Liability insurance emerged at the turn of the century as the means for landlords to protect their financial interests against the onslaught of negligence suits. The established companies were reluctant to provide everyone with this coverage. Among the excluded groups were Jewish landlords who owned tenement houses on the Lower East Side. When the normal channels for obtaining coverage were closed, the landlords took the innovative step of insuring themselves.;The incursion of these landlords into the role of insurer provides an example of triple marginality. These landlords occupied three analytically distinct but interrelated positions of marginality. First, they were marginal culturally as Jews in New York City in the early nineteen hundreds. Second, they were marginal vis-a-vis the real estate industry. And, they were marginal as insurers. The third position of marginality was a function of the intersection of the other two positions.;This pioneering company, as well as similar companies formed by other Jewish businessmen who shared similar problems, struggled for survival in the insurance industry for forty years faced with the continual problem of adjusting to a changing environment in the industry. Gradually, some of the companies moved from a position of marginality to that of legitimacy and respectability and others failed.;The study was based on in-depth interviews with informants who had personal knowledge of the growth birth and development of the organizations. Extensive primary source material was also used, including the Yiddish language press, judicial records, publications of the insurance industry, and the in-house magazine of the association.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Sociology
