Deserving and Entitled

Anne L. Schneider And Helen M. Ingram - Editors

Description

Public policy in the United States is marked by a contradiction between the American ideal of equality and the reality of an underclass of marginalized and disadvantaged people who are widely viewed as undeserving and incapable. Deserving and Entitled provides a close inspection of many different policy arenas, showing how the use of power and the manipulation of images have made it appear both natural and appropriate that some target populations benefit from policy, while others do not. These social constructions of deservedness and entitlement, unless challenged, become amplified over time and institutionalized into permanent lines of social, economic, and political cleavage. The contributors here express concern that too often public policy sends messages harmful to democracy and contributes significantly to the pattern of uneven political participation in the United States.

Foreword by Deborah Stone

Introduction: Public Policy and the Social Construction of Deservedness
HELEN M. INGRAM AND ANNE L. SCHNEIDER

PART I: Historical Roots of Constructions of Deservedness and Entitlement

1. Constructing and Entitling America's Original Veterans
LAURA S. JENSEN

2. Constructing the Democratic Citizen: Idiocy and Insanity in American Suffrage Law
KAY SCHRINER

3. From "Problem Minority" to "Model Minority": The Changing Social Construction of Japanese Americans
STEPHANIE DIALTO

PART II: Congressional Discourse: Forging Lines of Division between Deserving and Undeserving

4. Contested Images of Race and Place: The Politics of Housing Discrimination
MARA S. SIDNEY

5. "It Is Not a Question of Being Anti-immigration": Categories of Deservedness in Immigration Policy Making
LINA NEWTON

PART III: Nonprofits, Neighborhood Organizations, and the Social Construction of Deservedness

6. The Construction of Client Identities in a Post-welfare Social Service Program: The Double Bind of Microenterprise Development
NANCY JURIK AND JULIE COWGILL

7. Deservedness in Poor Neighborhoods: A Morality Struggle
MICHELLE CAMOU

Part IV: Constructions by Moral Entrepreneurs and Policy Analysts

8. From Perception to Public Policy: Translating Social Constructions into Policy Designs
SEAN NICHOLSON-CROTTY AND KENNETH J. MEIER

9. Jezebels, Matriarchs, and Welfare Queens: The Moynihan Report of 1965 and the Social Construction of African-American Women in Welfare Policy
DIONNE BENSONSMITH

10. Putting a Black Face on Welfare: The Good and the Bad
SANFORD F. SCHRAM

PART V: Social Constructions, Identity, Citizenship, and Participation

11. Making Clients and Citizens: Welfare Policy as a Source of Status, Belief, and Action
JOE SOSS

References

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Central
• National

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791483831
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Deserving and Entitled

SUNY series in Public Policy

Anne L. Schneider/Helen M. Ingram, editors

Deserving and Entitled

Social Constructions and Public Policy

Edited by Anne L. Schneider and Helen M. Ingram

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2005 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

Production by Judith Block Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Deserving and entitled : social constructions and public policy / edited by Anne L. Schneider & Helen M. Ingram. p. cm. — (SUNY series in public policy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6341-9 (alk. paper) — (ISBN 0-7914-6342-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Social groups—Political aspects—United States. 2. United States—Politics and government. I. Schneider, Anne L. II. Ingram, Helen M., 1937– III. Series.

HN90.S6D47 2004 320.6'0973—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2004044245

Contents

Foreword by Deborah Stone

Introduction: Public Policy and the Social Construction of Deservedness Helen M. Ingram and Anne L. Schneider

P ART I Historical Roots of Constructions of Deservedness and Entitlement

1.America’s Original VeteransConstructing and Entitling Laura S. Jensen

2.Idiocy and InsanityConstructing the Democratic Citizen: in American Suffrage Law Kay Schriner

3.From “Problem Minority” to “Model Minority”: The Changing Social Construction of Japanese Americans Stephanie J. DiAlto

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Deserving and Entitled

P ART II Congressional Discourse: Forging Lines of Division between Deserving and Undeserving

Contested Images of Race and Place:The Politics of Housing Discrimination Mara S. Sidney

“It Is Not a Question of Being Anti-immigration”: Categories of Deservedness in Immigration Policy Making Lina Newton

P ART III Nonprofits, Neighborhood Organizations, and the Social Construction of Deservedness

The Construction of Client Identities in a Post-welfare Social Service Program:The Double Bind of Microenterprise Development Nancy Jurik and Julie Cowgill

Deservedness in Poor Neighborhoods: A Morality Struggle Michelle Camou

P ART IV Constructions by Moral Entrepreneurs and Policy Analysts

From Perception to Public Policy:Translating Social Constructions into Policy Designs Sean Nicholson-Crotty and Kenneth J. Meier

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Contents

Jezebels, Matriarchs, and Welfare Queens:The Moynihan Report of 1965 and the Social Construction of African-American Women in Welfare Policy Dionne Bensonsmith

Putting a Black Face on Welfare:The Good and the Bad Sanford F. Schram

P ART V Social Constructions, Identity, Citizenship, and Participation

Making Clients and Citizens:Welfare Policy as a Source of Status, Belief, and Action Joe Soss

References

Contributors

Index

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Foreword

Deborah Stone

If social scientists ever discover the molecule of governance, surely it will be the category.The vote may be the smallest indivisible bit of governmentformation, although chads—the pieces of cardboard that are meant to be removed to indi- cate a voter’s preference—make even that proposition debatable. But if we care aboutgovernance—what government does and what kind of society it makes— then we need to attend to the social construction of categories. Governance is conducted through rules, and rules are composed of cate- gories. Every rule divides people by their identity, their behavior, or their situa- tions, and then specifies how members of different categories are treated differ- ently. In some deep sense, what we mean by “policy” is precisely this deliberate ordering of the world according to the principle of “different treatment for dif- ferent categories.”This is the idea behind the notion of target groups. Helen Ingram and Anne Schneider are now the foremost theorists of tar- get groups. In their earlier work, they explored and mapped this essential aspect of public policy, and they provided a framework the richness of which is proven by the chapters in this new book.With their concept of target populations, they have hit on the essence of policy making and policy politics. Rules and laws necessarily treat people differently. Such differences aren’t troubling in and of themselves. In fact, “different treatment for different cate- gories” might be the very definition of intelligent behavior. Any creature, human or legal, that doesn’t make distinctions and act on them is an automa- ton, a prisoner of instinct. But in a society founded on the right of all citizens to equal treatment under the law, different treatment for different categories can be troubling to say the least. The essays inDeserving and Entitledall grapple with this fundamental para- dox of democratic governance: How to reconcile the equality and universalism of democratic ideals with the differentiation required by policy practice? The U.S. Supreme Court has formulated one shaky answer to this question. So long as a categorical distinction embodied in a rule bears a rational relationship to the government’s purpose for making the rule, all is fair.The categories behind

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