Disciplining the Poor

Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race

Soss Joe, Fording Richard C., Schram Sanford F.

"Disciplining the Poor" lays out the underlying logic of contemporary poverty governance in the United States. The authors argue that poverty governance – how social welfare policy choices get made, how authority gets exercised, and how collective pursuits get organized – has been transformed in the United States by two significant developments. The rise of paternalism has promoted a more directive and supervisory approach to managing the poor. This has intersected with a second development: the rise of neoliberalism as an organizing principle of governance. Neoliberals have redesigned state operations around market principles; to impose market discipline, core state functions – from war to welfare – have been contracted out to private providers. The authors seek to clarify the origins, operations, and consequences of neoliberal paternalism as a mode of poverty governance, tracing its impact from the federal level, to the state and county level, down to the differences in ways frontline case workers take disciplinary actions in individual cases. The book also addresses the complex role race has come to play in contemporary poverty governance.

Reviews

"'Disciplining the Poor' is a landmark book on the governance of poverty in the United States, the most important such work since Piven and Cloward's 'Regulating the Poor', written a generation ago, and an exemplar of multi-method social science research" – Andrea Louise Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"Soss, Fording, and Schram have produced an empirically comprehensive and theoretically erudite study not only of welfare in Florida, but across the United States. To my mind, this is the definitive study of the New American Poor Law that we have so far lacked, a study that properly highlights the bearing of welfare policy on labor markets and race relations" – Frances Fox Piven, Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Although American social policy is famously decentralized, 'Disciplining the Poor' is one of those rare studies that provides both a persuasive overview of the broad social forces that shape the policy and a compelling analysis of how those forces are accommodated and incorporated by individuals and implementing agencies at the street level" – Michael Lipsky, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Demos

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