1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910808011203321

Autore

Kingfisher Catherine Pélissier

Titolo

Women in the American welfare trap / / Catherine Pélissier Kingfisher

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, : University of Pennsylvania Press, c1996

ISBN

1-283-89021-6

0-8122-0246-5

0-585-12008-0

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (217 p.)

Disciplina

362.83/8/093

Soggetti

Poor women - United States

Welfare recipients - United States

Human services personnel - United States

Public welfare - United States

Aid to families with dependent children programs - United States

Welfare rights movement - United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [195]-201) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1. Producing the World in Everyday Talk -- Chapter 2. The Welfare Trap I: Recipients -- Chapter 3. A Tenuous Advocacy -- Chapter 4. "Us" -- Chapter 5. "Them" -- Chapter 6. The Welfare Trap II: Workers -- Chapter 7. Good and (Mostly) Bad Clients -- Chapter 8. Further Productions: Attitudes and Policy -- Chapter 9. Trapped as They Are -- Chapter 10. Conclusions -- Appendix A: Transcripts -- Appendix B -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In the United States, a majority of the poor and those who work with the poor are women. Recipients of public assistance and the welfare workers who serve them are both trapped at the bottom of the American welfare system. How do they perceive their place in society? How do they assess their self-worth in the hierarchy of a bureaucratic system? In this ethnographic study of a welfare office and two welfare rights groups, Catherine Pelissier Kingfisher addresses these issues in a thought-provoking analysis, based on the women's conversations with



each other. Women in the American Welfare Trap addresses a range of significant issues: policy formation and implementation, the role of men in women's economic lives, low-income women's beliefs and aspirations, and the possibilities for women cooperatively working to change the welfare system. Indeed, Kingfisher demonstrates that women who are often viewed as victims without control actively work within the confines of the system to exert their autonomy.