Welfare Discipline: Discourse, Governance and Globalization

by Sanford F. Schram

Overview

For the past decade, political scientist Sanford Schram has led the academic effort to understand how Americans and their political officials talk about poverty and welfare and what impact that discourse has on policy and on the global society.

In Welfare Discipline, Schram argues that it is time to take stock of the new forms of welfare and to develop even better methods to understand them. He argues for a more contextualized approach to examining welfare policy, from the use of the idea of globalization to justify cutbacks, to the increasing employment of U.S. policy discourse overseas, to the development of asset-based approaches to helping the poor.

Stressing the importance of understanding the ways we talk about welfare, how we study it, and, critically, what we do not discuss and why, Schram offers recommendations for making welfare policy both just and effective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592137787
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	08/12/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	205
File size:	461 KB

About the Author

Sanford F. Schram is Visiting Professor and the Director of the Center on Ethnicities, Communities, and Social Policy at Bryn Mawr College. He is the author of three books, including Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty, which won the American Political Science Association's Michael Harrington Award.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Truth of Globalization Discourse: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy 2 Reversed Polarities: The Incomplete Americanization of European Welfare Policy 3 Truth Is a Woman: Care as the Real Absence in the Post-Industrial Welfare State 4 Welfare as Racemaking: Contextualizing Racial Disparities in Welfare Reform 5 Recommodified Discourse: The Limits of the Asset-Building Approach to Fighting Poverty 6 Deconstructing Dependency: Heading Toward a Counter-Discourse 7 Compassionate Liberalism: Harm Reduction as a Postmodern Ethic for the Welfare State Index About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Jamie Peck

There are few, if any, better guides to the tortuous politics of welfare reform than Sanford Schram. His path-breaking contributions bear comparison to those of Piven and Cloward. I can think of no higher recommendation.