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Jeanne Lazarus &#38; Laure Lacan (2018)Socio-Economic Review. Online first.Abstract. This article aims to describe the sociological studies of credit developed in France over the past dozen years. These studies propose a specific method and approach to address credit, primarily understanding it as a result of social interactions embedded in organizational and legal structures, with consequences on inequalities, social stratification, and individuals’ life experiences. The article is divided into four parts: after an introduction presenting what can be called the French school of the sociology of credit, we present the ‘different voice’ of the French school of the sociology of credit, which analyses the credit market according to a relational approach. The third section examines the construction of social domination at the moment of credit assessment. We then focus on the demand side: borrowers are not atomized individuals but part of households and other local communities. Finally, the conclusion discusses how this French approach to credit may be useful outside of France.Excerpt. "Credit assessment is a highly heuristic site of observation, enabling an analysis not only of interactions but also of technical and organisational mechanisms and the way they interface with the social dispositions of actors. In the vein of the pragmatic sociology developed by Luc Boltanski and Laurent The´venot (2006), Lazarus (2009) conceptualized the ‘credit test’. The notion of ‘test’ is key in Boltanski and The´venot’s work on worth—as Boltanski and Chiapello later explained (2005, p. 31), it is the moment when worthiness is revealed: ‘The test is always a test of strength. That is to say, it is an event during which beings (. . .) reveal what they are capable of and, more profoundly, what they are made of’. Describing credit applications as tests is a way to measure their social meaning. Very different actors and objects have to be taken into account: borrowers, bank clerks, lenders’ organizations, software, regulations, social norms, wealth inequality, etc."Link to the review