Category Archives: Recent Publications

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Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance

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Headworth, Spencer. 2021. Policing Welfare: Punitive Adversarialism in Public Assistance. University of Chicago Press.

policing welfare

Means-tested government assistance in the United States requires recipients to meet certain criteria and continue to maintain their eligibility so that benefits are paid to the “truly needy.”  Welfare is regarded with such suspicion in this country that considerable resources are spent policing the boundaries of eligibility, which are delineated by an often confusing and baroque set of rules and regulations.  Even minor infractions of the many rules can cause people to be dropped from these programs, and possibly face criminal prosecution.  In this book, Spencer Headworth offers the first study of the structure of fraud control in the welfare system by examining the relations between different levels of governmental agencies, from federal to local, and their enforcement practices. Policing Welfare shows how the enforcement regime of welfare has been constructed to further stigmatize those already living in poverty and deepens disparities of class, race, and gender in our society.

The End of Illusions: Politics, Economy, and Culture in Late Modernity

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Reckwitz, Andreas. 2021. The End of Illusions: Politics, Economy, and Culture in Late Modernity. Polity Press.

End of Illusions

Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, leading cultural theorist Andreas Reckwitz offers a sociological analysis of the general sense of disillusionment which many are experiencing in the wake of recent events such as the Brexit vote, the election of Trump and the rise of populist leaders elsewhere.

Reckwitz attributes this disillusionment to a profound structural shift over the last 30 years, in the course of which classical industrial society has given way to a new kind of modernity—one that is shaped by the new class society, the characteristics of a post-industrial economy, the conflict between culture and identity, the exhaustion resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfilment, and the crisis of liberalism.

Book Review: First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship

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Please enjoy this review of Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship by Emily Erikson.

First Class Passengers

Throw me a life vest, please!

by Emily Erikson, Yale University 

I think we can all agree that Richard Lachmann’s latest book, First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship, is a masterful work of history and political analysis. The question I want to address is whether this book should be read as an analysis of the current situation of the United States, a work on elite conflict theory, or as a work on imperial decline? Or perhaps this question could be better phrased as whether this work’s greatest contribution is to contemporary analysis of the state of the United States, to the development of elite-conflict theory, or to theories of empire. 

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Social conflict on the front lines of reform: Institutional activism and girls’ education in rural India

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Mangla, Akshay. 2021. “Social conflict on the front lines of reform: Institutional activism and girls’ education in rural India.” Public Administration and Development. https://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1959.

How do states realize social reforms for marginalized groups in settings of entrenched inequality? This article argues that reform implementation is a conflict-ridden process driven by the institutional activism of street-level bureaucrats. Through an ethnographic case study of Mahila Samakhya, a novel government program for women’s empowerment in Uttar Pradesh, India, I find that local fieldworkers committed to reform promoted girls’ education by mobilizing marginalized citizens and mediating local conflicts. Organizational processes of gender-based training and deliberation enabled fieldworkers to challenge village patriarchy and exclusion and forge programmatic ties with lower caste women. By altering rules to address the practical needs of households, fieldworkers effectively integrated disadvantaged girls into the education system. Institutional activism also engendered conflicts over rules within the bureaucracy, prompting senior officials to advocate for marginalized groups. The findings suggest that institutional commitment to activism is critical for agencies working on the front lines of reform.

Tokens of Power: Rethinking War

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Hironaka, Ann. 2017. Tokens of Power: Rethinking War. Cambridge University Press.

Tokens of Power

War presents a curious paradox. Interstate war is arguably the most carefully planned endeavor by states, yet military history is filled with disasters and blunders of monumental proportions. These anomalies happen because most military history presumes that states are pursuing optimal strategies in a competitive environment. This book offers an alternative narrative in which the pillars of military planning – evaluations of power, strategy, and interests – are theorized as social constructions rather than simple material realities. States may be fighting wars primarily to gain or maintain power, yet in any given historical era such pursuits serve only to propel competition; they do not ensure military success in subsequent generations. Allowing states to embark on hapless military ventures is fraught with risks, while the rewards are few.