Disciplining the Poor
Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race
368 pages
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45 line drawings, 1 map, 1 table
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6 x 9
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© 2011
Disciplining the Poor explains the transformation of poverty governance over the past forty years—why it happened, how it works today, and how it affects people. In the process, it clarifies the central role of race in this transformation and develops a more precise account of how race shapes poverty governance in the post–civil rights era. Connecting welfare reform to other policy developments, the authors analyze diverse forms of data to explicate the racialized origins, operations, and consequences of a new mode of poverty governance that is simultaneously neoliberal—grounded in market principles—and paternalist—focused on telling the poor what is best for them. The study traces the process of rolling out the new regime from the federal level, to the state and county level, down to the differences in ways frontline case workers take disciplinary actions in individual cases. The result is a compelling account of how a neoliberal paternalist regime of poverty governance is disciplining the poor today.
“Disciplining the Poor is a landmark book on the governance of poverty in the United States, the most important such work since Piven and Cloward’s Regulating the Poor, written a generation ago, and an exemplar of multi-method social science research.”—Andrea Louise Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Soss, Fording, and Schram have produced an empirically comprehensive and theoretically erudite study not only of welfare in Florida, but across the United States. To my mind, this is the definitive study of the New American Poor Law that we have so far lacked, a study that properly highlights the bearing of welfare policy on labor markets and race relations.”—Frances Fox Piven, Graduate Center, City University of New York
“Although American social policy is famously decentralized, Disciplining the Poor is one of those rare studies that provides both a persuasive overview of the broad social forces that shape the policy and a compelling analysis of how those forces are accommodated and incorporated by individuals and implementing agencies at the street level.”—Michael Lipsky, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Demos
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 INTRODUCTION
2 THE RISE OF NEOLIBERAL PATERNALISM
3 THE COLOR OF NEOLIBERAL PATERNALISM
4 RACE AND SOCIAL CONTROL IN THE STATES, 1960–95
5 RACE AND FEDERALISM IN WELFARE’S DISCIPLINARY TURN
6 STUDYING POVERTY GOVERNANCE IN FLORIDA: WHY AND HOW
7 THE LOCAL POLITICS OF DISCIPLINE
8 THE MARKETIZATION OF POVERTY GOVERNANCE
9 PERFORMANCE, PERVERSITY, AND PUNISHMENT
10 CASEWORKER DISCRETION AND DECISIONS TO DISCIPLINE
11 DOES NEOLIBERAL PATERNALISM MATTER FOR THE POOR?
12 CONCLUSION
REFERENCES
NOTES
INDEX
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