The Battle for Welfare Rights chronicles an American war on poverty fought first and foremost by poor people themselves. It tells the fascinating story of the National Welfare Rights Organization, the largest membership organization of low-income people in U.S. history. It sets that story in the context of its turbulent times, the 1960s and early 1970s, and shows how closely tied that story was to changes in mainstream politics, both nationally and locally in New York City.Welfare was one of the most hotly contested issues in postwar America. Bolstered by the accomplishments of the civil rights movement, NWRO members succeeded in focusing national attention on the needs of welfare recipients, especially single mothers. At its height, the NWRO had over 20,000 members, most of whom were African American women and Latinas, organized into more than 500 local chapters. These women transformed the agenda of the civil rights movement and forged new coalitions with middleclass and white allies. To press their case for reform, they used tactics that ranged from demonstrations, sit-ins, and other forms of civil disobedience to legislative lobbying and lawsuits against government officials.Historian Felicia Kornbluh illuminates the ideas of poor women and men as well as their actions. One of the primary goals of the NWRO was a guaranteed income for every adult American. In part because of their advocacy, this idea had a surprising range of supporters, from conservative economist Milton Friedman to liberal presidential candidate George McGovern. However, by the middle 1970s, as Kornbluh shows, Republicans and conservative Democrats had turned the proposal and its proponents into laughingstocks.The Battle for Welfare Rights offers new insight into women's activism, poverty policy, civil rights, urban politics, law, consumerism, social work, and the rise of modern conservatism. It tells, for the first time, the complete story of a movement that profoundly affected the meaning of citizenship and the social contract in the United States.

Hancock argues that beliefs about poor African American mothers were the foundation for the contentious 1996 welfare reform debate that effectively 'ended welfare as we know it.' She shows how stereotypes and misperceptions about race, class and gender were used to instigate a politics of disgust.

. . . the book focuses on a very interesting and important. . . dimension of welfare analysis. . . the book provides a very rich and interesting range of analyses of the complex links between culture and welfare state. It deserves to be read both by advanced undergraduates and academics working in this area, and perhaps should also be read by policy-makers and politicians as a useful corrective to an overly economistic approach to welfare in the straitened years ahead. Rob Sykes, Social Policy and Administration The essays in this collection advance cultural analysis of the welfare state by describing the experiences of a large array of developed nations. . . Highly recommended. D. Stoesz, Choice Culture and Welfare State provides comparative studies on the interplay between cultural factors and welfare policies. Starting with an analysis of the historical and cultural foundations of Western European welfare states, reflected in the competing ideologies of liberalism, conservatism and socialism, the book goes on to compare the Western European welfare model to those in North America, Asia and Central and Eastern Europe. Comprehensive and engaging, this volume examines not only the relationships between cultural change and welfare restructuring, taking empirical evidence from policy reforms in contemporary Europe, but also the popular legitimacy of welfare, focusing particularly on the underlying values, beliefs and attitudes of people in European countries. This book will be of great interest to sociologists and political scientists, as well as social policy experts interested in a cultural perspective on the welfare state.

This open access book shows how the politics of migration affect community building in the 21st century, drawing on both retrogressive and progressive forms of mobilization. It elaborates theoretically and shows empirically how the two master frames of nostalgia and hope are used in local, national and transnational settings, in and outside conventional forms of doing politics. It expands on polarized societal processes and external events relevant for the transformation of European welfare systems and the reproduction of national identities today. It evidences the importance of gender in the narrative use of the master frames of nostalgia and hope, either as an ideological tool for right-wing populist and extreme right retrogressive mobilization or as an essential element of progressive intersectional politics of hope. It uses both comparative and single case studies to address different perspectives, and by means of various methodological approaches, the manner in which the master frames of nostalgia and hope are articulated in the politics of culture, welfare, and migration. The book is organized around three thematic sections whereby the first section deals with right-wing populist party politics across Europe, the second section deals with an articulation of politics beyond party politics by means of retrogressive mobilization, and the third and last section deals with emancipatory initiatives beyond party politics as well.

The first study to explore the origins of welfare in the context of local politics, this book examines the first public welfare policy created specifically for mother-only families. Chicago initiated the largest mothers' pension program in the United States in 1911. Evolving alongside movements for industrial justice and women's suffrage, the mothers' pension movement hoped to provide "justice for mothers" and protection from life's insecurities. However, local politics and public finance derailed the policy, and most women were required to earn. Widows were more likely to receive pensions than deserted women and unwed mothers. And African-American mothers were routinely excluded because they were proven breadwinners yet did not compete with white men for jobs. Ultimately, the once-uniform commitment to protect motherhood faltered on the criteria of individual support, and wage-earning became a major component of the policy. This revealing study shows how assumptions about women's roles have historically shaped public policy and sheds new light on the ongoing controversy of welfare reform.

“Peter J. Li’s pathbreaking new book, Animal Welfare in China, is timely and valuable.” ANTHROZOÖS The plight of animals in China has attracted intense interest in recent times. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, speculation about the origins of the virus have sparked global curiosity Speculation about the origins of COVID-19 has sparked curiosity about how animals are treated, traded and consumed in China today. In Animal Welfare in China, Peter Li explores the key animal welfare challenges facing China now, including animal agriculture, bear farming, and the trade and consumption of exotic wildlife, dog meat, and other controversial products. He considers how Chinese policymakers have approached these issues and speaks with activists from China’s growing animal rights movement. Li also offers an overview of the history of animal welfare in China, from ancient times through the enormous changes of the 20th and 21st centuries. Some practices that are today described as “traditional,” he argues, are in fact quite recent developments, reflecting the contemporary pursuit of economic growth rather than long-standing cultural traditions. Based on years of fieldwork and analysis, Animal Welfare in China makes a compelling case for a more nuanced and evidence-based approach to these complex issues.

Why did the War on Poverty give way to the war on welfare? Many in the United States saw the welfare reforms of 1996 as the inevitable result of twelve years of conservative retrenchment in American social policy, but there is evidence that the seeds of this change were sown long before the Reagan Revolution—and not necessarily by the Right. The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America traces what Bill Clinton famously called "the end of welfare as we know it" to the grassroots of the War on Poverty thirty years earlier. Marshaling a broad variety of sources, historian Marisa Chappell provides a fresh look at the national debate about poverty, welfare, and economic rights from the 1960s through the mid-1990s. In Chappell's telling, we experience the debate over welfare from multiple perspectives, including those of conservatives of several types, liberal antipoverty experts, national liberal organizations, labor, government officials, feminists of various persuasions, and poor women themselves. During the Johnson and Nixon administrations, deindustrialization, stagnating wages, and widening economic inequality pushed growing numbers of wives and mothers into the workforce. Yet labor unions, antipoverty activists, and moderate liberal groups fought to extend the fading promise of the family wage to poor African Americans families through massive federal investment in full employment and income support for male breadwinners. In doing so, however, these organizations condemned programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) for supposedly discouraging marriage and breaking up families. Ironically their arguments paved the way for increasingly successful right-wing attacks on both "welfare" and the War on Poverty itself.