From Slavery to Poverty ：The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840-1918

Publication subTitle ：The Racial Origins of Welfare in New York, 1840-1918

Publication year： 2009

E-ISBN: 9780814708866

P-ISBN(Paperback): 9780814741078

Subject： C91 Sociology;C913 Social Life and Social Problems;K101 Revolutionary History;K15 contemporary history (1917 ~);K7 Americas History;Q98 Anthropology

Keyword：美洲史,现代史（1917年~）,革命史,社会学,人类学,社会生活与社会问题

Language： ENG

Access to resources Favorite

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Description

The racially charged stereotype of "welfare queen"-an allegedly promiscuous waster who uses her children as meal tickets funded by tax-payers-is a familiar icon in modern America, but as Gunja SenGupta reveals in From Slavery to Poverty, her historical roots run deep. For, SenGupta argues, the language and institutions of poor relief and reform have historically served as forums for inventing and negotiating identity.Mining a broad array of sources on nineteenth-century New York City's interlocking network of private benevolence and municipal relief, SenGupta shows that these institutions promoted a racialized definition of poverty and citizenship. But they also offered a framework within which working poor New Yorkers-recently freed slaves and disfranchised free blacks, Afro-Caribbean sojourners and Irish immigrants, sex workers and unemployed laborers, and mothers and children-could challenge stereotypes and offer alternative visions of community. Thus, SenGupta argues, long before the advent of the twentieth-century welfare state, the discourse of welfare in its nineteenth-century incarnation created a space to talk about community, race, and nation; about what it meant to be "e;American,"e; who belonged, and who did not. Her work provides historical context for understanding why today the notion of "e;welfare"e;-with all its derogatory "e;un-American"e; connotations-is associated not with middle-class entitlements like Social Security an