Description: The class is organized as a seminar around the issues of social change and social policy. Its specific focus is on how citizenship gets constructed in ways that affect people's ability to achieve social justice through the development of a social welfare state. The seminar examines issues of citizenship and democracy as vehicles for creating empowerment for and by a just form of social provision. A key focus of the seminar is on citizen rights and obligations, as well as entitlements and opportunities to exercise political influence especially as they pertain to affecting and being affected by social welfare policy. An important theme for the seminar is the neglected role of social work theory and practice in the making of citizens who can practice democracy and exercise power in the name of realizing social justice.
 

Objectives: The objectives of this seminar include:

(1) familiarizing seminar participants with the major theories of the welfare state as well as citizenship rights and entitlements;

(2) facilitating the development of critical thinking and analysis by seminar participants regarding the development of the contemporary welfare state; and

(3) providing opportunities for seminar participants to write with increasing sophistication regarding the issues of citizens rights and social justice in the welfare state.
 

Texts Available in the College Bookstore:
(Also on Reserve at the Canaday Library)

Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (Macmillan 1911)
John Ehrenreich, The Altruistic Imagination (Cornell 1985)
Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor (Vintage 1992)
Martha Davis, Brutal Need (Yale 1993)
Charles Noble, Welfare As We Knew it (Oxford 1997)
Michael Brown, Race, Money and the American Welfare State (Cornell 1999)
Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower (Cornell 1999)
Sanford Schram, After Welfare (New York University Press, 1999)
 

Assignments:

--3 6-7 page essays analyzing, synthesizing and critiquing conceptual and theoretical issues, perspectives and positions expressed in the assigned readings;

--leadership of class discussion for half of one class session; and

--weekly participation in class discussions.
 

Course Outline: (*=on reserve in Canaday and Woerishoffer)

 Electronic Reserves

9/1 Introduction: Social Change and Social Policy
 

9/8 The Social Work of Politics:  Rethinking Citizenship and Democracy, Social Justice and Empowerment

Readings:

Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1911).

*Charlene Haddock Seigfried, "Socializing Democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey,"(A Paper Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, April 17, 1999).

*Wendy Sarvasy, "Transnational Citizenship Through Daily Life," (A Paper Presented at the Western Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington, March 26, 1999).
 

9/15 The Politics of Social Work: Just as Politics Needs Social Work, Social Work Needs Politics

Readings:

John Ehrenreich, The Altruistic Imagination: A History of Social Work and Social Policy in the United States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
 

9/22 Citizenship I: Welfare State: Rights and Obligations

Readings:

*T. H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," Citizenship and Social Class and Other Essays (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1950), pp. 1-85.

*Lawrence Mead, "Citizenship and Social Policy: T.H. Marshall and Poverty," Social Philosophy and Policy, 14, 2 (Summer 1997): 197-230.

*Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "Contract Versus Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship In The United States?" Socialist Review, 92/3, 22, 3 (July-September 1992): 45-67.
 

9/29 Citizenship II: Social Welfare--Cause and Effect

Readings:

*Joe Soss, "Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action," American Political Science Review, 93, 2 (June 1999): 363-80.

*Joe Soss, "Welfare Provision, Civil Society, and Democracy in the United States," (A Paper prepared for The World Project on Civil Society Authors Conference, Center for the Study of Voluntary Organizations and Service, Washington, DC, June 3-4, 1999).

*Barbara J. Nelson, "Women's Poverty and Women's Citizenship: Some Political Consequences of Economic Marginality," Signs: Journal of Women's Culture and Society, 10, 2 (1984): 209-231.

Recommended:

*Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, "Social Construction of Target Populations," American Political Science Review, 87, 2 (June, 1993): 334-347.
 

10/6 Citizenship III: Inclusion and Exclusion

Readings:

*Gershon Safir, "Introduction: The Evolving Tradition of Citizenship," in Gershon Shafir, ed., The Citizenship Debates: A Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 1-31.

*Iris Marion Young, "Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship," in Gershon Shafir, ed., The Citizenship Debates: A Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), pp. 263-91.

*Hugh Heclo, "The Social Question," in K. McFate, R. Lawson, and W.J. Wilson, eds., Poverty, Inequality, and the Future of Social Policy (New York: Russell Sage, 1995), pp. 655-91.
 

10/13 FALL BREAK

FIRST ESSAY DUE
 

10/20 Political Economy and Social Policy Change

Readings:

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (New York: Vintage, 1992).
 

10/27 Law and Social Policy Change

Readings:

Martha Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
 

11/3 Race and Social Policy Change

Readings:

Michael K. Brown, Race Money and the American Welfare State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
 

11/10 Gender and Social Policy Change

Readings:

*Nancy Fraser, "After the Family Wage: A Postindustrial Thought Experiment," in Justice Interruptus : Critical Reflections on the "Postsocialist" Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 41-68.
 

11/17 Structure vs. Agency in Social Policy Change

Readings:

Charles Noble, Welfare As We Knew It: A Political History of the American Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

SECOND ESSAY DUE
 

11/24 Discourse vs. Structure in Social Policy Change

Readings:

Sanford F. Schram, After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy (New York: New York University Press, 1999), chapters 1-3.
 

12/1

Readings:

Sanford F. Schram, After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy (New York: New York University Press, 1999), chapters 4-9.

 Notes on After Welfare Discussion

12/8 Rethinking Empowerment: Citizenship, Democracy and Social Justice

Readings:

Barbara Cruikshank, The Will to Empower: Democratic Citizens and Other Subjects (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

*Wahneema Lubiano, "Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means," in Toni Morrison, ed., Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Social Construction of Reality (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), pp. 232-63.

*Nancy Fraser, "The Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late-Capitalist Political Culture," in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), pp. 161-90.

*Joshua Gamson, "Silence, Death, and the Invisible Enemy:  AIDS Activism and Social Movement 'Newness'," Social Problems, 36 (1989): 351-67.
 

12/15

THIRD ESSAY DUE