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DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE @430 61995 e i"? 1 MSU Is An Affirmative ActiorVEqueI Opportunity Institution 6W ”3-9.1 ACCOMMODATION AND RESISTANCE AMONG RECIPIENTS AND WORKERS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF WOMEN AND WELFARE BY Catherine Elizabeth Pelissier vounm I A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Anthropology 1992 Copyright by CATHERINE E. PELISSIER 1992 ABSTRACT ACCOMMODATION AND RESISTANCE AMONG RECIPIENTS AND WORKERS: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALYSIS OF WOMEN AND WELFARE BY Catherine E. Pelissier In the United States, where poverty is often viewed as the outcome of character deficits, what is the significance of participation in the welfare system? How do the women who comprise the majority of both adult recipients and low-echelon workers make sense of their places in the welfare bureaucracy, of each other, and of prevailing ideologies of poverty and gender? This dissertation addresses these questions by examining the experiences of welfare recipients and workers as they are constructed and expressed in talk and conversation. Emphasis is placed on the extent to which the women's discourse was constrained by, and served to perpetuate or challenge the cultural and social systems within which they live day-to-day. The study is based on seventeen months' investigation of two welfare rights groups located in a small city in Michigan, and of daily life in a rural county welfare office. Data were gathered by means of participant observation, tape recordings of naturally occurring conversation, and interviews conducted with both workers and recipients. The study focuses on recipients' and workers' accommodation and resistance to received stereotypes and ideologies, and on the nature of the relationship between the two groups of women. The study found that recipients and workers did not blindly reproduce received stereotypes and ideologies, but rather invoked or challenged them for their own purposes at hand, purposes that were often resistant to the welfare system. In addition, the women often drew on ideologies prevalent in the wider society in their constructions and critiques. Despite fundamental similarities in the women's backgrounds, recognition of commonalities and expressions of comembership between workers and recipients was rare. Current economic differences between the two groups of women overshadowed commonalities based on gender and economic vulnerability. While their critiques of the welfare system had no discernible impact on the welfare bureaucracy, both recipients and workers were constructing identities and interpretations of the system that were in opposition to received views. Insofar as the women were engaged in counter-hegemonic projects, possibilities for structural change in the future remain open. r 'C’ 1.7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people I would like to thank for their contributions to this study. First and foremost, I thank the welfare recipients and Assistance Payments Workers who gave life to the study. They were dedicated and valuable teachers, and demonstrated considerable tolerance of my intrusions and naivete. Their willingness to trust me, and, on occasion, to discuss activities that could have caused them considerable harm had they been revealed to others in the welfare system, speaks to their desire to contribute to.efforts to better their situations. I hope that this study is of value to them. My debt to the participants in this study is matched by my debt to my committee members. Ann Millard, chair, mentor, and friend, was simultaneously my harshest critic and most steadfast supporter. I thank her for her persistent insight. Frederick Erickson has had a major impact on my thinking since I began graduate studies; my emphasis on talk and conversation speaks to his continuing influence on my approach to both theory and methods. I thank him for introducing me to the phenomenon of social construction in action, and for providing me with the tools to investigate it. Rita Gallin's expertise on gender and economics is hopefully evident throughout the 1 (J r ii dissertation. I thank her for her numerous and invaluable leads, insights, and challenges. Harry Raulet has been a major contributor to my understanding of anthropological theory, and I am grateful for his persistence in the face of my stubbornness. Finally, Lou Snow, a late addition to my committee, and Margaret Nielson, the Dean's Representative for my defense, contributed a number of valuable insights and criticisms for which I am thankful. In addition to their substantive contributions, I am indebted to all my committee members for their good humor. Two friends -- Eufracio Abaya, and especially A. R. Vasavi -- contributed to this endeavor through their comments on earlier drafts. I thank them for their candor. Betsy Koole, a tireless and dedicated transcriber, produced the initial drafts of all the transcripts used in this dissertation. I thank her for her patience in the face of tedium. Finally, my husband and family contributed humor, as well as various forms of material and symbolic support. I owe a very special thanks to Marguerite Pelissier for her time and generosity. My gratitude to her, as to everyone involved in this study, is immeasurable. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF TABLES. O C O O O O O O O OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Vii Chapter 1. OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND......... ................ 1 Introduction.............. ................... 1 Organization of Dissertation ................. 3 Theoretical Issues........ ................... 4 The Production and Reproduction of Culture and Society. ...... . ......... 5 Accommodation and Resistance.... ....... 8 Agency and Self-Identity ............ 10 Everyday and "Hidden" Forms of Resistance.............. 11 The Nature of Political Activity.... ..... ................ 13 Women Together, Women Apart............... 15 A Focus on Talk: Contested Definitions and Symbolic Power..................... 17 Continua and Contextualities....... ...... . 19 Summary................. ..... ..... ....... . 20 Women and Welfare... ........................ 21 Historical Background and General Overview................ ............... 21 The Functions of Welfare...... ........... . 26 Shrinking Support for Public Assistance... .......................... 32 2. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS ........................ 34 Participants.................... ...... ....... 34 Assistance Payments Workers.... .......... . 34 Welfare Recipients........................ 37 Representativeness of Samples............. 39 Data Collection.............................. 44 Research Sites............................ 44 Access.................................... 44 Access to Welfare Workers.............. 45 Access to Welfare Recipients........... 46 Continuing Access...................... 47 Methods of Data Collection....... ...... ... 47 Conversations.......................... 48 Interviews...... ..... . .............. ... 49 iii iv Data Analysis.............. .................. 50 Notes on Partisanship ........................ 52 3. WELFARE RECIPIENTS AND WELFARE RIGHTS GROUPS. . . 57 Themes in Recipients' Welfare Biographies.... 59 ThewomenOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO......OOOOOOOOOOO 60 ThemeSOOOOOOOOOOOOO............OOOOOOOO0.0 64 Working is Expensive.......... ......... 64 Education is the Way Out.... ........... 7O Welfare Inadequacies and Weighty Symbols...................... ....... 73 Milk........................ ........ 74 Christmas.................... ...... . 75 StigmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.00.0.0000...00 77 The Requirements of Structural Constraint: Manipulation versus Hyper-Truth......... ...... .......... 82 Manipulation........................ 82 Lying............. ..... . ..... .... 83 Impression Management.. ....... ... 87 Hyper-Truth. ........................ 88 Welfare Rights Groups: The Joint Construction of "Us" versus "Them"........ 93 Overview of Welfare Rights Groups......... 93 Madrid Welfare Rights Group (MWRO)..... 93 Low Income People for Equality (LIFE).. 96 Overlapping Membership, the Demise of LIFE, and Issues of Recruitment..... 98 Conduct of Meetings: The Establishment of Comembership....... 101 Manual Training Sessions ...... ...... 106 Resistance.......................... 110 Constructions of "Us" ...... . ...... ........ 111 Definitions of "Us".................... 112 Negative Stereotypes of Recipients..... 113 Women's Responses to Negative Stereotypes......................... 115 Denial: The Convenient Ideologies Argument......................... 115 The Bad-PeOple-Exist-But-I'm-Not- One-Of-Them Argument............. 121 The Welfare-Made-Me-Do-It Argument.. 129 Positive Constructions................. 135 Hard Workers........................ 136 Just Ordinary People/Women.......... 140 Constructions of "Them"................... 144 Workers................................ 145 Politicians, the Rich, and Men ...... ... 149 Discussion: Empowerment and Welfare Rights Groups.................................... 157 4. 5. V WELFARE WORKERS.............. ............. Themes in Assistance Payments Work...... Background........................... Spatial and Social Organization of Workers........................ Economic and Social Imperatives: Workers' Educational and Employment HistorieSOOOOOOOOOOOO 0000000000 ThemeSOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0.0.0000... ”Trapped" in Assistance Payments Work.. Powerlessness.... ................. Work Loads...... ............... Policy: Knowledge, Input, and Appropriateness............. Managers and Clients........... The Day-to-Day ..... . ........... Constructions of Clients.......... ...... ..... Negative Constructions............. ....... Clients as Dishonest, Suspicious, and Manipulative.................... Clients as Lazy ......... . ..... . ........ Clients as Unclean ........... .......... Positive Constructions .................... The Social Construction of Clients' Characters: Two Examples.............. A General Case: Clients as Criminals.. A Specific Case: Client as Child AbuserCOOOOOOOOOOOOO0.0.0....0...... ..... Accommodation, Resistance, and the Exercise of Power.................. ...... .......... ”Positive” and "Negative" Attitudes....... The "Pollyanna" Perspective ...... ...... The View from "Blues Boulevard" ........ The Exercise of Power ..................... Discussion...... ............... . .......... COMEMBERSHIP............... ....... . ............ Issues Working Against Comembership. ..... .... Contrasting Views.............. ......... .. Structural Locations and Personalized Relationships....... ..... . Legitimizing the Other's View: Towards Comembership.............................. Potential Bases for Comembership... ...... . Shared Backgrounds, Shared Constraints.................... Issues of Control: Shared Relationships to the Welfare System........................ Taking the Other's View... ..... . ..... 166 169 169 169 171 175 175 184 186 188 194 206 208 210 210 215 221 222 229 230 235 245 246 247 253 257 265 270 271 273 274 286 286 287 295 298 vi Gender, Difference, and Comembership ........ . 306 Discussion........... ........................ 309 6. CONCLUSIONS: REPRODUCTION AND CHANGE .......... 315 Accommodation and Resistance.......... ...... . 316 Grounds for Resistance.............. ...... 316 Limits to Resistance: Grounds for Accommodation and the Production of ”Hidden Transcripts" ........ . ....... 319 ”Hidden Transcripts"...... ............ . 322 Ranges of Accommodation and Resistance.... 325 The Relation of Accommodation and Resistance to Reproduction and Change ..... 330 Lack of Comembership Among Workers and Recipients: Accommodation and Reproduction. .................... ...... 330 The Appropriation of Dominant Views: Reproduction or Change?....... ........ . 332 Summary and Conclusions ...................... 338 Appendix A. TRANSCRIPT CONVENTIONS... ...................... 341 B. NOTES ON RESEARCHER PARTICIPATION IN PARTICIPANTS' CONSTRUCTIONS: EVIDENCE FROM THE TRANSCRIPTS....... .................. 342 Bibliography...... .................................... 345 LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Recipients Interviewed... ................... 62 Table 2: Assistance Payments Workers. ................ 174 Table 3: Workers' and Recipients' Employment Histories............. ..... .... .......... 289 vii CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW AND BACKGROUND Introduction In contemporary Western culture, poverty is often viewed as the outcome of individual deficits rather than of economic or supernatural forces. This view is particularly the case in the United States, with its Horatio Alger stories and ideologies of opportunity. In addition, government programs designed to address poverty, known collectively as the welfare system, have "become critical in determining the lives and livelihood of women" (Piven 1984:15). Women, in other words, are the principal subjects of the welfare system; they comprise the majority of the adult poor and the majority of welfare workers in the United States. Little is known, however, of the day- to-day experiences and views of the women who work for and receive welfare, specifically with regard to how they interpret and construct their positions in the welfare system, each other, and received ideologies of poverty and gender. While feelings of degradation associated with being on welfare are often alluded to in the literature (e.g., Piven and Cloward 1971; Sidel 1986; Wineman 1984), the nuances of such feelings are not explored; nor are the rr (D 2 ways in which recipients express their feelings in conversation with each other addressed. A similar criticism may be made of the literature on welfare workers: while it is common knowledge that workers are overburdened (Prottas 1979; Wertkin 1990), and that, like many women in "women's“ occupations, they suffer from low pay and status (Ehrenreich and Piven 1984; Wineman 1984), we know little of how workers express or construct their experiences as workers. A second gap in our knowledge concerns the commonalities among workers and recipients. In focusing on either workers or recipients, much of the literature on welfare seems to mirror the institutionalized divisions between them; with the exception of commentaries pointing out that women are indeed the principal subjects of the welfare system (Fraser 1989), and that they have a potential for establishing comembership and solidarity (Piven 1984; Withorn 1984), little effort has been made to compare the experiences of workers and recipients and to explore commonalities as well as differences among and between them. Finally, recipients and workers are often portrayed as powerless, and are given little credit as active agents engaged in creating meaning and struggling to improve their worlds. Indeed, there is ample evidence that "disempowerment remains intrinsic to centralized £2 CC In 1.\ 3 bureaucratic assistance" (Wineman 1984). However, I will argue that workers' and recipients' actions, as embodied in their conversational interchanges, do not arise from "a mere suffering of, but from a creative response to" (Willis 1977:132) the exigencies of the welfare system. This dissertation addresses the gaps and shortcomings in our knowledge of women and welfare by examining the experiences of welfare recipients and workers as they are constructed and expressed in talk and conversation. The analysis of talk, as it occurs both naturally and in the context of interviews, allows for detailed explorations of how women who receive welfare and women who work for welfare participate in constructing meaning and identity in their worlds. In situating workers and recipients together in the welfare system, this dissertation additionally explores their commonalities and differences. Organization of Dissertation In this chapter, I discuss the theoretical issues which inform my endeavor, and describe the social and historical context of welfare in the United States. Chapter 2 includes a description of the populations included in the study and the methods used to gather and analyze data. My focus in Chapters 3 and 4 is on the views and perspectives of recipients and workers, following which, in Chapter 5, I discuss possibilities for 4 comembership between workers and recipients, two groups who are considered -- and who often consider themselves -- to be in an antagonistic relationship to each other. Finally, in Chapter 6, I explore some implications of this study for both theory and practice. Theoretical Issues A great deal of contemporary social theory is concerned with the relationship between human action and structural constraint (Bourdieu 1977, 1990; Giddens 1984; Ortner 1984). This dissertation speaks to that relationship by exploring both the ranges of and limits to women's creative participation, as workers and recipients, in the U.S. welfare system. In their introduction to Women and Social Protest, West and Blumberg (1990:4) take as a working assumption that, "throughout the ages and cross-culturally, women of different classes and races have acted on their felt concerns whenever and however they were able." This assumption recognizes both sides of an agency-structure dialectic. 0n the one hand, it recognizes that social construction "is not carried out in a social vacuum" (Bourdieu 1990:131); thus the interpretive and constructive work that welfare workers and recipients engage in must be viewed within the context of powerful and dominating ideologies that in many ways erect IECI 11;": I4 cu" U as' ”\I‘ 5 ‘yif boundaries to interpretive and constructive possibilities. )f7.yh. A dominant system, in other words, contains the power to ”impose the principles of the construction of reality" (Bourdieu 1977:165; see also Gramsci 1971), thus placing limits on what is available for women to think with (Smith 1987). On the other hand, West and Blumberg's assumption recognizes agency, the power of human beings to create and impose meaning, and to act in the world. As Alverson (1978:6) has stated: The gel; must exist in part by virtue of the freedom or power of the individual to create meaning in the world. And it is this ability to bestow meaning and hence to help constitute the nature of the environment that is the privilege of consciousness and distinguishes it from a mere thing. My goal in this dissertation is to recognize the °lim ... power of structural and social constraints, while 4 ~ underscoring the creative and active engagement of women as participants in the welfare system. Specifically, women's active engagement in constructing their world and its meanings will be examined in the context of the social and cultural constraints to which they are subject. The Production and Reproduction of Culture and Society A second major issue in anthropology to which this , r\ Q} (1' (9 -n +7 dissertation speaks concerns the production and A , f) A. r_‘ \z" I . 4 i > [A ' 7 'l / y ’ . ‘ u’ I i‘f“ reproduction of culture and society. The most recent 6 approaches to this enduring concern in anthropology have been characterized by Ortner (1984) as "practice" approaches, the central problem of which is "that of trying to understand how the system constructs actresses Ii'; and actors and how these agents realize and transform the A system" (Collier and Yanagisako 1989:29). At the most f abstract theoretical level, my focus is on how MM part1°ipant5 1“ a Particular "system," the welfare system,_hi reproduce or transform some of its key features, namely, stereotypes and ideologies concerning recipients, workers, and the place of welfare in society. As I am using them here, the concepts of production and reproduction refer to a single social process: I am not using them in what are taken to be typically Marxist senses,11but rather am using them to refer to the ongoing production (creation, transmission, transformation) of culture and society, or, more specifically, of institutional arrangements and systems of meaning. The concern with ongoing production and reproduction is based on the claim of social construction theorists and students of interaction that phenomena such as gender, class, inequality, or values and ideologies, are socially constructed, maintained and changed (e.g., Berger and Luckmann 1966; Erickson 1975a, 1986; Erickson and Shultz 1 Yanagisako and Collier (1987) point out, however, that Engels, not Marx, treated the two as separate phenomena. 7 1982; McDermott and Roth 1978). Such phenomena must, first of all, be located in their doing; they are not given, and people do not simply enact them; rather, they are accomplished or occasioned by participants interacting in particular contexts (Erickson 1975; Erickson and Shultz 1982; Moerman 1988).2 The analytic focus of this dissertation, then, is on both the content of women's interpretations and the processes of constructing interpretations in conversation. Again, however, while a practice approach focuses on _ real life activities and on the agents doing those 1" activities, it also recognizes that "'the system} does in fact have [a] very powerful, even 'determining'effect upon human action and the shape of events;" the emphasis ...—“...- 1__ _____,_L_‘.. f on "action and interaction is thus not a matter of denying or minimizing this point, but expresses rather an urgent need to understand where 'the system' comes from" (Ortner 1984:146). Participants in interaction are thus not free to construct anything they want -- society is not "the 2 The ways of phrasing this connection are as numerous as the debates concerning its nature. For my purposes, Giddens (1984), who focuses on "structuration" and structure as "virtual," and Mehan (1979), who focuses on the "structuring of structures" and "constitutive" ethnography, provide useful frameworks for thinking about this connection. Despite ongoing debates —- most of which point to either the neglect of "micro" studies to connect to ”macro" phenomena, or the neglect of "macro" studies to illustrate what the "macro" phenomena look like at the ground level -- most scholars would agree that what are considered "micro" and "macro" mutually implicate and constitute each other. 8 plastic creation of human subjects" (Giddens 1984:26) —— but are often constrained by the system and by what is culturally available for them to think with. My emphasis on the interpretive and constructive accomplishments of participants in conversation does not therefore imply that actors are free from all constraints; rather, I take cultural systems to be simultaneously constraining and enabling (Collier and Yanagisako 1989; Giddens 1984). Accommodation and Resistance One element of the concern with the production and reproduction of culture and society is the concern with the reproduction over time of systems of inequalit . In L,/“ 72‘“ (on! their relationships to one another, the welfare system, ' and to society at large, women workers and women recipients are situated in hierarchical and oppressed social spaces. According to Collier and Yanagisako (1989:34-35), practice approaches, "in viewing cultural systems as simultaneously censtraining people and enabling them to resist and shape the system...substitute a dynamic instability of struggle and resistance for a static, Durkheimian equilibrium." This formulation allows for a connection between accommodation and resistance and production and reproduction, providing a useful framework for an analysis of recipients' and workers' talk and conversation. Accommodation and resistance, then, are SIE «L St 51:6 1"" BB ii, i 9 here seen as key means whereby production and reproduction are accomplished. In examining how women jointly invoke or produce stereotypes and interpretations in their talk with each other, my concern is to explore the ways in which these stereotypes and interpretations represent gradients of émktfnfig Cf~ accommodation and resistance to prevailing ideologies. The emphasis on gradients is crucial here because, as Bookman and Morgen (1988:viii) discovered with working- class women, the women in my study were neither full-time zealous radicals nor full-time "downtrodden poor folk trapped in 'worlds of pain'." Rather, their talk was sometimes resistant, sometimes accommodating, and often a little bit of both as they drew on one prevailing ideology in order to resist another, or vacillated between different positions in different contexts. Like ideologies and stereotypes, then, accommodation and resistance are accomplishments and occasions, being both patterned yet unique in each instance. What at an ab§E£§g§_le1el may look like contragigtign_may at the greggg_le¥el be seen as reasoned participation with specific others in particular contexts. 3f)\zi ‘7 Inequality and the varieties of accommodation and resistance associated with it have served as the focus of many discussions of colonialism, class, and gender. In M this section, I briefly outline key works and approaches (.) 10 that have informed the approach I take in this dissertation. Agency and Self-identity In his study of the Tswana of Botswana, who have been subject to colonial rule for over 100 years, Alverson (1978:7) works to "interpret the correspondences between the material incorporation of the individual into society's institutions and the content of his [sic] conscious self-identity." Contrary to the "scars of / ...“st bondage1fithe§is, which argues that forces of oppression, such as colonialism, intrude on meaning and self-identity in the same way that they intrude on material conditions, Alverson argues that people have the power to create meaning, self-identity, and life projects which resist those imposed by external forces. Following Alverson, I will demonstrate that welfare pgg{.€, ’"M—- workers and recipients are actively engaged in ;Tfi‘ ‘, #1,, .3. "i M: ... constructingtheir meaning-worlds. The evidence for such LQAR {_ (I n ".-‘t' ds'.‘$".‘.\ '. a claim, as with Alverson's, is provided b workers' and ”i-€$.vm Y :i “ e. y [A "if- ,1 " 3“ ... recipients' talk. Recipients, it will be argued, do not {j;,r, ‘Z (' ‘ l‘ ;f" 'I 1' simply internalize the views of the welfare system or J $~§7. _ ‘~ ~——__-‘__« ’19 4,71. 3",“: '. I... .1 ~ 1 £,! f , fl ' I" .l‘tt ’9 society at large concerning their self:wgrth or place in 3 t society; rather, they interpret these views, and in so doing create and impose their own meanings, some of which M may in certain ways accommodate those external images, and 11 “shank/Q others of which resist them. This is accomplished, // moreover, within the context of severe material cgnstraints. Workers also struggle with externally imposed definitions, particularly in terms of their relatively powerless position in the bureaucratic hierarchy of the welfare system. Like recipients, ., however, they interpret their situation and actively 15~Y- construct their own meanings within it. Everyday and "Hidden" Forms of Resistance In his work on peasant resistance in Southeast Asia, Scott (1986) emphasizes what he calls "everyday forms of resistance," meaning resistance in the mundane, day-to-day process of living. While examinations of peasant resistance have traditionally focused on organized uprisings and insurrections, Scott (1986:1) calls for an exploration of "less obvious and non-confrontational forms of resistance," including "symbolic or ideological resistance,” for example, "gossip, slander, rejecting imposed categories, [and] the withdrawal of deference" (ibid.:22). In addition to "everyday forms of resistance," Scott (1990) discusses "hidden transcripts," forms of resistance that people engage in "backstage," away from the view and hearing of the dominant group, or that are disguised so that members of the dominant group may only suspect their '1') p..- _ n: T“! 12 true meaning. Together with "everyday forms of resistance,“ the notion of "hidden transcripts" provides the means to explore and characterize the activities of people who, for reasons of safety (ranging from the preservation of one's employment to the preservation of one's life), are dissuaded from outright rebellion. As Moore (1988:180) has pointed out, "knowing when to give in is an integral part of knowing how and when to resist, if you happen to be poor and weak." In addition, Cloward and Piven (1979:656) claim that forms of resistance (what they call ”deviance") are constrained both by material options, and by what is considered to be "'sex appropriate,‘ 'age appropriate,‘ [and] 'social-class appropriate'" (see also West and Blumberg 1990). Scott's (1986) emphasis on everyday resistance provides the means to circumvent dichotomies between intentions and consequences of resistance, or, in feminist parlance, between the personal and the political: It is no coincidence that the cries of "bread," "land," and ”no taxes" that so often lie at the core of peasant rebellion are each joined to the basic material survival needs of the peasant household. Nor should it be anything more than a commonplace that everyday peasant politics and everyday peasant resistance (and also, of course, everyday compliance) flows from these same fundamental material needs. We need assume no more than an understandable desire on the part of the peasant household to survive--to ensure its physical safety, to ensure its food supply, to ensure its necessary cash income--to identify the source of its resistance to the claims of press gangs, tax collectors, landlords, and employers (Scott 1986:26). w. h. 4‘; h‘ .t.‘ 13 It is precisely the fusion of self-interest and resistance that is the vital force animating the resistance of peasants and proletarians (ibid.). In what follows I take up Scott's emphasis on the everyday, with the goal of looking at forms of both accommodation and resistance. I am also primarily concerned with symbolic or ideological resistance; although recipients' and workers' descriptions of instrumental actions are alluded to, the overall emphasis is on accommodation and resistance as discussed and accomplished through talk and conversation. Scott's interpretive framework for peasant resistance is a materialist one. While the material constraints suffered by recipients are more severe than those experienced by workers, when placed in a broader context, the economic vulnerabilities of both groups of women reflect the economic marginalization of women in U.S. society. Both, moreover, suffer similar ideological constraints having to do with prestige and self-worth. The Nature of Political Activity Scott's (1986, 1990) criticism of the traditional emphasis on organizedwinsurrection to the neglect of less dramatic, everyday, and sometimes hidden forms of resistance resonates with feminist critiques of what may be grouped under the rubric of "male bias" in the social sciences. In taking as basic the notion that the personal '.‘| CV re 14 is political,3 feminist scholarship has provided great impetus for a focus on the everyday, and has additionally made a strong case for a concomitant reexamination of many taken-for-granted assumptions, such as what constitutes political activity. The invisibility of women in many studies of f * ~1 . ,- “A political activity has prompted feminist scholars to Fj£h§ff”i) " Jr vat -‘. b". (1" question standard definitions of politics and to call for a broadening of such definitions to include "the everyday struggle to survive and to change power relations in our society" (Morgen and Bookman 1988:8; see also Moore 1988). The edited volume, Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Morgen and Bookman 1988), includes many examples of activities that fall outside the realm of electoral- Eta/4‘;5LI3 W 32.3, '13.... “9:1...- ' representative politics but which may nevertheless be (giflvnvri .‘e considered "political." Of particular relevance here is Thornton Dill's article on African American domestic workers, in which she refers to women's stories of using "confrontation, chicanery, or cajolery to establish their own limits within a particular household" as "stories of resistance" (1984:37). In another context, Nelson (1984:217) argues that, "claiming benefits from public 3 "The personal is political." characterized by Philipson and Hansen (1990:6) as the "revolutionary battle cry of the women's liberation movement" of the 19605, points to the connections between personal and everyday issues, such as sexuality and domestic arrangements, and politics and social structure (see also Morgen and Bookman 1988). 15 social programs is a political as well as an administrative act" (see also Gordon 1988). Works such as these provide both theoretical and methodological contributions to the framing of phenomena of interest, and thus to what is visible and what is not (see also West and Blumberg 1990). Morgen and Bookman (1988:4) define political activities as those that are carried on in the daily lives of ordinary people and are enmeshed in the social institutions and political—economic processes of their society. When there is an attempt to change the social and economic institutions that embody the basic power relations in our society -- that is politics. In this dissertation, I consider ideologies, perceptions, __- and stereotypes as key features of social institutions, M- and, in addition, consider conversation as one location for attempts to change the world -— i.e., politics. Women Together, Women Apart ...knowledge in everyday life [is] socially distributed, that is, [it is] possessed differently by different individuals and types of individuals (Berger and Luckmann 1966:46). In Feminism and Anthropology, Moore (1988:11) calls for a "deconstruction of the category 'woman'," for a movement beyond the assumption of shared biology and Oppression to a consideration of both difference and similarity (see also Ramazanoglu 1989). Recent works in feminist anthropology and sociology have taken up this () 16 call, and have examined the intersections of, for example, gender, class, ethnicity, culture, and religion, among others. The collection of articles in figmen and the Politics of Empowerment, for instance, provides numerous examples of how women's experiences of gender oppression are "structured by class, ethnic, and racially specific experiences" (Morgen and Bookman 1988:11). In her study of pro-choice and pro-life women, Ginsburg (1989:6) points to the ways in which an issue (in this case, abortion) can separate women -- a reminder that "women, even with similar class and cultural backgrounds, rarely experience themselves or act as a homogeneous social group with a universal set of interests." The point is that women are not homogeneous, and that feminist scholarship, in order to accommodate all women, must recognize and explore difference. The focus on both women workers gag women recipients, rather than on either one or the other, allows for an exploration of both what it is that welfare recipients and workers share, and what it is that they do not share. I will argue that there are both fundamental similarities and fundamental differences in the women's situations, experiences, and interpretations. In addition, I will explore the conditions under which women recognize their commonalities and those under which they stress their 17 differences, with the goal of gaining insight into both the constraints to and the possibilities of comembership. A Focus on Talk: Contested Definitions and Symbolic Power Language is a primary means by which we share our lives with others, providing the means to typify and categorize experiences in ways that have meaning for ourselves subjectively, and objectively for others in the same category of experience (Berger and Luckmann 1966). The use of language in interaction -— talk, or conversation -- is a significant and fundamental means by which humans experience and construct their worlds, and create meaning (Giddens 1987). As Bourdieu (1990:54) has claimed, "politics is, essentially, a matter of words." In this dissertation, I focus on the spoken word, and view talk and conversation as a key location for the ongoing interpretation and construction of the social world. Accordingly, I examine talk and conversation among (and on occasion between) welfare workers and recipients. Although some talk between myself (as an interviewer or participant) and workers and recipients is included, the bulk of my data consists of what is referred to as naturally occurring talk, talk produced for reasons other than that there was 18 a researcher present (see Chapter 2 for further discussion of this issue). In the analyses to follow, I focus on talk as a way of interpreting and constructing characterizations or classifications that help participants "place" themselves and others in particular social spaces. These spaces are contested and disputed. Recipients and workers are in continual struggles with themselves, one another, and the welfare system in their attempts to impose their view of reality; in other words, particular interpretations, stereotypes, and ideologies are the targets and means of accommodation and resistance. The power to construct groups or categories is the power of what Bourdieu (1990:137) refers to as "worldmaking," the struggle over which is part and parcel of an ongoing struggle over the perception of the social world. Workers' and recipients' struggles over the perception of the social world may thus be seen as bids for the power of "worldmaking." Workers' and recipients' talk, then, is taken to be constitutiveroftheir accommodation or resistance: the \ .- E ‘- -_ ,_.. ”discourse of the hidden transcript,; according to Scott (1990:189), "does not merely shed light on behavior or explain it; it helps constitute that behavior." Again, although I will on occasion make reference to what may be called "practical" acts of resistance, such as avoiding certain tasks at work or not reporting other able-bodied / , ~/ if. 19 i- 2 adults living in the household, my main emphasis is on the I work that people do in talking with each other to make sense of what is going on in their lives. I take this talk to be in itself accommodating or resistant activity. The symbolic power of "worldmaking," however, is not removed from the "everyday." Recipients' and workers' classifications of themselves and each other are both accomplished in the course of and are directly implicated in the day-to-day activities of their lives as recipients and workers.‘ In the end, whgseryiewwpreyails has serious implications for the daily lives of both workers and recipients -- e.g., for how long a recipient has to wait for her food stamps, or for how often a worker is officially challenged by her clients. Continua and Contextualities In this study, I do not take accommodation and resistance to be mutually exclusive, but rather consider them as opposite ends of a continuum, within which there o..__ is a range of variation, and within which "mixed forms"‘ - - partaking of both accommodation and resistance -- may be considered. The following statement by Bookman and ‘ I borrow the phrase "mixed forms" from Erickson and Mohatt (1982), who use it to refer to the communication practices of communities in interethnic contact. 20 Morgen (1988:viii) with regard to working class women holds as well with the women in this study: Their consciousness and their actions contain elements of both consent and resistance, and embody contradictory ideas about their place as women, as minorities, and as members of the working class. Furthermore, it is often the context, rather than the .l_ _l,_-—"‘7 K as: itself, which determines the dividing line between accommodation and resistance. The stories or characterizations of workers and recipients, while resistant in the immediate context of their relationship to the welfare system or each other, often appear accommodating when examined in the context of the larger culture, and in terms of mainstream ideologies and values. For example, in resisting the welfare system's wgrkl requirements, recipients often invoked ideals of family and motherhood that have been identified by feminists as patriarchal ideologies inimical to the interests of women (Ramazanoglu 1989:148-149). Summary The theoretical issues of concern in this dissertation include the ongoing production and reproduction of the hierarchical relationships between recipients and workers and between each group and the welfare system. The production and reproduction of these often taken-for-granted hierarchical relationships is 21 accomplished, at least partly, through_accommodation and resistance to received ideologies; accommodation and resistance, in turn, are often located in talk and conversation. In what follows, then, I explore the work that women in the welfare system do to recreate or transform what is taken to be given. Women and Welfare Historical Background and General Overview Piven and Cloward (1971) have outlined the historical roots of the U.S. welfare system, connecting it with relief measures enacted in sixteenth century Europe to cope with population change and the evolving market economy. In this section, I provide a brief outline of the history and substance of welfare, with an emphasis on Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and feed 15 stamps, the major welfare programs of concern in this study. The immediate forerunner to AFDC was Mother's Pensions, a state-level, "outdoor relief" program5 providing cash to women bereft of male breadwinners to enable them to stay home with their children. This form of relief was to be provided specifically to morally 5 Outdoor relief consists of money, subsidies, and other benefits given to recipients in their own communities and homes, as opposed to indoor relief, best known as the poor house. 22 upright families; the majority of recipients, according to Abramovitz (1988:193), "turned out to be both widowed and (9“ white." The program was started in 1911 and continued until 1935, but it was never instituted in all states, and included at its maximum only 50 percent of the counties in the nation (ibid.; see also Piven and Cloward 1988). This situation changed in 1935 with passage of the Social Security Act, which required all states to implement a new program called Aid to Dependent Children "« (ADC). As its name indicates, however, ADC did not provide provisions for mothers directly, but only for their children; it was also initially limited to single- parent families. Coverage for mothers was introduced in .f' M3. 1950, and in 1961 the program expanded to included_ gfi‘. unemployed parents, thus providing aid to intact families with an unemployed male head (Abramovitz 1988:317; Piven and Cloward 1988). Finally, in 1962, Aid to Dependent Children was renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to reflect a targeting of families rather ‘Tigfl’ than of individual children. Aid to Families with Dependent Children is a "means- testedf program, meaning that indiyiggalsgmustwmeet were» no. 3 x . 1 . criteriawregardingmigcome and assets in order to qualify 5XT=LJ for assistance. The goal of the program is to provide forquwflwp / pa l“.‘ “7‘" shelter and other needs of destitute families, such as electricity and heat. Families that qualify for AFDC 23 automatically qualify for Medicaid, which covers health cargflgggts. Food costs are covered by food stamps, a separate program enacted in 1964 and administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The food stamp program provides recipients with coupons (as opposed to cash) that may be used to purchase food items only. In addition to ostensibly providing for families' basic needs, welfare departments also have Workfare programs, which require iii. that recipients with children over a certain age (the age varies by state) attend school or other job training programs, or find employment. Although the Michigan Department of Social Services (DSS) was established in 1939, Michigan has a long history of welfare programs. Poor laws were enacted as early as i”' 1790, and poor houses were established in the early 18303, even before Michigan was admitted to statehood in 1837. The Department of Social Services that was established in 1939 had its origins in the State Welfare DePSFFmgpt, Rmsng established in 1921, and its predecessors, the State Board of Corrections and Charities, established in 1879, and the Board of State Commissioners for the General Supervision pg, of Charitable, Penal, Pauper and Reformatory Institutions, established in 1871 (Office of Communications, Michigan \- 3’ Department of Social Services 1989). 24 The Michigan Department of Social Services is i). ’’’’ programs in the state. These programs are part of what the Department classifies as Figancial Support Programs. The remaining programs are divided into Health Care'{- Services and Social Services?"r All programs are i~;n.; administered through county offices, to which potential recipients must apply. The funds for AFDC come from both N federal and state sources. In fiscal year 1990, 46.2 >31;?{ifii percent of the DSS budget came from federal funds, while ~‘"’““ 48.2 percent came from state funds (the remaining 5.2 percent came from "other" funds). The federal funding for AFDC was 55 percent and the state funding, 45 percent. Of the Department's entire budget, the greatest single portion, 39 percent, was spent on the Financial Support Programs. Although the state shares administrative costs' of food stamps with the federal government, funding for the actual food obtained through the program is 100 M “...-«cw. percent federal, through the Department of Agriculture. W (All of the above is from the Michigan Department of Social Services Biennial Report 1989- 1990. ) ‘ The division between financial, heaIth, and social services in Michigan is reflected in the division of labor 5 In Michigan, AFDC is often referred to as ADC, in both state publications and by recipients and workers. I use AFDC here because it is the correct acronym for the jprogram, and because it is common usage in the literature. 25 among workers in the Department. Most notable is the division between those in the Social Programs, who typically hold degrees in social work or psychology, and those in Financial Support Programs, who are not designated as "professionals" and usually do not have college degrees. The non-professional workers are referred to by the welfare department as Assistance PQZEEEEE_EE£EE£§' and are the focus in this dissertation. Their job is to interxiewflprospectiverecipients, process the paper work involved in applications, and monitor cases .F— ”WM °2~212992i9a .2391 S . Potential recipients must meet two criteria of eligibility in order to receive welfare benefits. First, a potential recipient must have at least one child. Poor adults without children are not eligible for AFDC.7 Second, applicants' income and assets must fall below a cartaigwlimit established by the state. Once applicants have met the eligibility criteria, they receive bi-weekly checks (referred to as "grants") to cover rent, electricity, and personal needs.8 The amount of the grant varies for different areas of the state, called zones, in 7 Prior to fall 1991, when the program was terminated, single adults could apply for General Assistance, a solely state-funded and -administered program. 3 "Personal needs" refers to items other than basic shelter needs, including, for example, clothes and toiletries. 26 order to reflect differences in the cost of housing; ii '%.i \ m. ‘n__ -..» 7 (“'.~. . i additionally, individual grant levels fluctuate to reflect J i 1 ‘ er , ...._‘_ _ changes in recipients' other sources of income. As ) V ‘ . 4 [A }-. » L .‘ '3. )h . stated, AFDC recipients are automatically eligible for ... iv 3:; t' lrn¢ixagwffi Medicaid, and many also receive food stamps.9 To qualify for and continue to receive welfare, ’ recipients must enroll in the Michigan Opportunity and ifi“ Skills Training (MOST) Program; only women who are three or more months pregnant or who hays a child less than one ‘agew-v-‘T’dfi hi 2 year old are exempt. The MOST program requires recipients 1_\‘.**mddwllswwi o artici ate in some form of education or ob i , t p p \N‘ j ”inching to aWeLssLef hold 9e19, empleymentr or to was; asla‘zglunteer in various forms of community work (including work for the welfare office). fkéfif‘ The Functions of Welfare In 1971, Piven and Cloward pUblished the now famous Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, in which they describe how public assistance programs serve to regulate the labor force in capitalist economies. They claim that public welfare programs expand during times of economic contraction in order to quelllcivil_protest, and contract during periods of economic expansion in order to 9 Although most recipients receive both AFDC and food stamps, applicants may choose not to apply for food stamps, or, conversely, may receive food stamps but not AFDC. 27 force people into low-wage labor. Public assistance thus serves as a mechanism of both social and economic control. More recently -- and more optimistically -- Piven and Cloward (1982) claim that the expansion of public assistance in the 19605 and 1970s has changed the nature '4 of the relationship between the welfare system and the " economy. In their view, because poor people consider welfare a "right" rather than a privilege, and because it offers a viable alternative to lowewage employment, welfare now poses a threat to capitalism. Wineman (1984) disagrees with this optimistic assessment, claiming that, regardless of the nature of its relationship to corporate capitalism, the welfare system remains, at base, a degrading and disgmpgwgripgflsystem. This sentiment was clearly shared by the women who participated in this study. In addition to the debates concerning the functions of public assistance in general are analyses of the Q§\' particularly gendered nature of the welfare system. From \>” g“ In a feminist perspective, the welfare system serves to regulate not only the economic behavior of women, but also their social -- and particularly sexual -- behavior (Abramovitz 1988; Gordon 1988). While there is considerable debate in the literature over what may be called "economic” versus "feminist" approaches to understanding the functions of welfare, the two need not 28 be seen as mutually exclusive: the welfare system can be analyzed in terms of its regulation of women's social and sexual behavior, and of their economic behavior (see Abramovitz 1988).” The distinction between "deserving" and "undeserving" L poor -- an integral distinction in public assistance policy throughout its history -- has very specific and gendered features. The key attribute of a "deserving" male has been his willingness to labor. Able-bodied men unwilling to labor due to alcoholism or some other moral failing were -- and continue to be -- categorized as ”undeserving." The case with women is different. Willingness to labor has been only one criterion in determining a woman's status as ”deserving" or "undeserving;" the other has been her general moral stature, more specifically, her sexual behayigr, which has usually been discussed in terms of_her%&,,V ._ h, "fitness" to raise children.11 Indeed, until 1968,{i31 , x \2\ welfare departments held a mandate to raid women's homes in the middle of the night in order to determine if they m In terms of government expenditures on welfare programs (as opposed to discussions concerning the fundamental need of capitalism for access to cheap labor), Neubeck and Roach 1981:316) argue that, "the ideological preoccupation with the morality of the poor is strongly shaped by a concern for holding down economic costs." u The notion of moral "fitness" harks back to Mother's Pensions (Nelson 1990). 29 were engaging in illicit sexual affairs. Called "man in the house” rules, such policies were ostensibly designed to ensure that women be supported by the men in their lives rather than by the welfare department; however, they are clearly part and parcel of society's view of poor women as promiscuous. Indeed, if such couples were w ‘4 5......” caught, it was the woman who was punished by losing her welfare grant, rather than the man being punished by being legally forced to provide financial support for his partner and her children.12 The "suitable home" rules enacted in the southern states, which penalized women with illegitimate children, reflected similar sentiments, and served the additional function of providing a way to coerce women into low-paid labor (Piven and Cloward 1971, 1988). According to Abramovitz (1988:315), "tensions between the need to reproduce the labor force and to assure a supply of low-paid female labor along with general disregard for single mothers and racist attitudes shaped .r-o-a M #v- \‘h ‘HH ”I” _ the ADC program from the start and help explain the program's stigma and low status." The need to reprcduce the labormfgrce through women's unpaid labor was evident in frequent policy statements to the effect that women's ” As Piven and Cloward (1988:642) have pointed out, however, such rules were also "almost surely intended to prevent nonmarket income from reaching men in the low-wage labor pool." 30 "natural" role was to raise children; as such, Abramovitz (ibid.:315) claims, ADC "institutionalized the state's role in subsidizing the reproduction of the labor force." In addition, along with Piven and Cloward (1971), Abramovitz (1988) has pointed out that the refusal to provide aid to "undeserving" women effectively provided for workers to meet the demands of the low-paid market. Indeed, Piven and Cloward (1988:643) have claimed that "the preoccupation with family mcrality was deceptive" -- },=;' that market forces have always been at the heart of welfare policy. This is evidenced, for example, by "workfare" programs which do not confine women to family roles, but rather force them into low-paid employment. Nevertheless, the issue of morality remains a powerful one in the discourse of welfare, and although official refusals to help women on the basis of their sexual behavior no longer exist,13 the provisioning of aid continues to have moral overtones. At a more subtle level than official policy, workers' perceptions of potential recipients' moral characters have an impact, ranging from whether or not applicants receive welfare, to how quickly their applications are processed, to the amount of ” This situation may be changing, insofar as several states, including Michigan, are considering instituting policies that would penalize women who give birth to additional children while receiving welfare. 31 information they receive on other assistance programs for which they might be eligible. The distinction between the "deserving" and "undeserving” poor points to fundamental beliefs about poverty, wealth, and adulthood in the United States. Parker (1973) has pointed out that Western views of poverty and wealth were transformed during the Industrial Revolution from phenomena associated with the workings of God to phenomena reflective of personal and moral character. These views were part and parcel of the European poor laws that formed the basis of relief measures instituted in the United States. As Polanyi (1989:153) claims in her "grammar" of American culture, "proper people" (adults) should be able to take care of themselves; those who cannot are less than "proper people.” Other authors have pointed to the importance in the United States of beliefs in the work ethic and in 'r .2 economic opportunity (e.g., Horatio Algerjrags—to-riches \ stories) (Abramovitz 1988; Hertz 1981). Welfare, however, is not only a demeaning and ‘\__'J’ punitive form of public assistance; in providing for at least some financial needs, welfare also provides women with an alternative -— albeit an unattractive one -- to dependence on men or abusive relationships (Abramovitz 1988; Piven 1984; Piven and Cloward 1988). As such, it challenges society's view of women's "place." Pearce and 32 McAdoo (1983:170) have claimed that, "inconsistencies in social welfare policy may reflect the general ambivalence in American society about the role and status of women. Enabling women to become 'primary' earners is not yet a N...» \ societalmgoal." As already pointed out, however, women's association with the welfare system includes not only receiving welfare, but also working for welfare (Ehrenreich and Piven 1984; Fraser 1989; Gordon 1990; Withorn 1984). Mink (1990), for example, demonstrates that middle—class women reformers were instrumental in the construction of the American welfare system. Women's continued role as workers in the welfare system reflects both occupational segregation and cultural views concerning women's roles as caregivers (Ehrenreich and Piven 1984; Fraser 1989) —- views that, as Abramovitz (1988) has pointed out, have often been applied differently to women in different classes. Shrinking Support for Public Assistance Aid to Families with Dependent Children and food stamps combined failed to provide income equal to the federal poverty level in all but one state (Alaska) even pgigg to the federal cuts instituted by the Reagan administration's Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. The 1981 cuts, combined with the 1983 cuts, made 33 significant reductions in both AFDC and food stamp ....»— benefits (Joe 1983:181-2). Financial incentives to work M were also reduced, rendering low-wage work even less profitable than before the cuts (ibid.:183). Writing in 1983, Pearce and McAdoo pointed out that, "the real value of the average welfare payment, accounting for inflation and the declining size of recipient households, has E decreased by approximately 20 percent in the last decade" (1983:165). ”f States have also been making cuts in their welfare programs. In Michigan, as a result of both budget reductions and inflation, the purchasing power of AFDC grants was reduced by 21 percent between 1981 and 1991 (Michigan DSS Information Packet 1991). ‘Governor John Engler, elected in 1990, has proposed severe cuts in both grant levels and department staff; as of this writing, however, many of the proposed cuts are being forestalled ‘f by the courts (with the exception of General Assistance, {T‘fijvfx which was eliminated in fall 1991). CHAPTER 2 PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS In this chapter I describe the participants in the study and the methods of data collection and analysis. Following Briggs (1986), I take theory and methods to be inextricably tied; particular theoretical perspectives entail particular methodological approaches, and methodological questions have issues of theoretical import embedded in them. My division between the theoretical framework outlined in Chapter 1 and the discussion of methods presented in this chapter is thus somewhat inappropriate. The discussion of talk and conversation in Chapter 1, for instance, points to a methodological emphasis on conversational exchanges. The phenomena of interest, and the ways in which we go about exploring them, then, are considered separately here only for purposes of discussion. Participants1 Assistance Payments Workers The main group of Assistance Payments Workers (hereafter referred to as AP workers, or simply workers) 1 Initial and continuing access to participants is discussed in the section on data collection. 34 35 included in this study was comprised of 17 women ranging from 24 to 59 years of age, with an average age of 40. This group made up the entire work force of AP workers in Kenyon County, a rural county in central Michigan.2 The women had been involved in AP work from one to 18 years, with an average of 11.5 years. In addition to participant observation at the welfare office, I attended a three-day training session for new workers. Thirty workers who had been in the welfare department for six months or less participated in the training. On occasion, I draw on data from the training session. Assistance Payments workers are concerned with administering the Financial Support Programs of the Department of Social Services (including AFDC and food stamps). In Kenyon County, AP workers are responsible for interviewing potential recipients, processing their applications, opening, closing and maintaining cases, and conducting yearly reviews.3 Workers are organized in units, each of which is headed by an AP Supervisor, who often has been an AP worker herself. Workers consult their supervisors when 2 With the exception of the State Governor, all personal and place names have been changed to maintain confidentiality. 3 In other counties in Michigan, these duties are divided among different categories of AP workers. 36 they have specific questions concerning departmental procedures, or when they wish to pursue "exceptions," which entail receiving departmental approval to bend the rules. In all cases, AP supervisors have the final decision-making power. In the Department hierarchy, AP workers are one level above clerical workers. Unlike workers in the other units of the Department (e.g., Social Services), AP workers, as noted above, are not classified as "professionals." Only 18 percent of the AP workers in Kenyon County had completed their BA degrees. All of the AP workers included in this study are white, partly as a result of the population composition of Kenyon county. The absence of diversity was recognized by the workers, who felt that minority workers would be uncomfortable in a white rural setting and thus would not stay in the position for long (field notes 8/1/90).‘ There are no statistics available on the ethnicity of AP workers throughout Michigan; thus there is no way to evaluate the representativeness of my sample for the state. I am aware, however, that there are other counties in Michigan with more ethnic variation among AP workers than the county in this study. ‘ Nevertheless, the county did hire an African American worker several months after this study was completed. As of this writing, eight months later, she is still there. 37 Welfare Recipients The group of welfare recipients included in this study was comprised of 79 women that I encountered in welfare rights groups and at the welfare office. My ‘h’H’W primary focus was on six women who were currently or had been core members in one of two welfare rights groups, the Madrid Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO), and Low-Income People for Equality (LIFE); core members were defined as continually active participants. Both groups were located in Madrid, a small city in central Michigan. Of the six. women, one was no longer receiving welfare at the time of the study, and one had recently moved from the AFDC program to General Assistance (GA, welfare for adults not living with children?); both were included in the study, however, because they were core members in MWRO or LIFE. The remaining four women were enrolled in either or both AFDC and food stamps. They ranged in age from 24 to 48. Tenflother women whom I interviewed or who attended welfare rights meetings on a more or less regular basis are also included in the study. Of these ten, one was no longer receiving welfare, and one had received welfare in the past but was currently on $81 (disability). Finally, 24 women who attended welfare rights group meetings only once 5 This program was eliminated in fall 1991. t” 38 or twice, and 39 women I encountered at the welfare office in Kenyon County are occasionally referred to in the following chapters. The group of welfare recipients was legswstable over time than the group of AP workers. With the exception of the AP workers I encountered at the training session, the 12139F39¥S in Kenyon County remained in one geographic area (the welfareoffice) for a set period of time each day. This was not the case with welfare recipients, despite the fact that my overall focus was on welfare rights groups! which one would consider to be relatively neatly bounded. Participants came and went, and even the core membership was not stable over long periods of time. My attempts to interyiew individual recipients encountered numerous barriers, ranging from sudden moves to work «IA schedules that fluctuated frequently and did not allow for. time to Just ”sit around." In some cases, women expressed a willingness to talk to me, but we just "never got around to it” -- every time I called or came by wasn't a ”good time,” and a "good time" never presented itself. With one exception (an African American woman), the welfare recipients with whom I worked are Anglo. In Michigan, 50.5 percent of AFDC recipients are Anglo, while 45.7 percent are African American; the remaining 3.8 percent fall into the category "Other" (DSS Information ;. Packet, March 1991). More people of color were not I” in .\ r" 39 included as participants in this study because they by and large did not participate in either of the two welfare rights groups in Madrid.6 Members of both welfare rights groups expressed a considerable amount of racist sentiment, usually focused on claims that minorities (and {Q 13~ sometimes "foreigners") received special treatment not firuV‘i' accorded to Anglos. Although such claims were often M‘ an ‘ contested, I would speculate that the existence of such sentiments rendered the groups inhospitable for members of ethnic minority groups. Representativeness of Samples The sample of AP workers included in this study is too small to warrant claims that it is representative of AP workers in Michigan or the United States. Accordingly, this study can only be said to be representative of one group of workers in one county in rural Michigan. Several characteristics common to AP workers in general, however, indicate that the patterns exhibited by this group of workers may be similar to those exhibited by workers in other welfare offices -- although such a claim could only ~- ”"’- be substantiated through further study, w -- 5 There was one African American woman present at the first two Madrid Welfare Rights Organization meetings I attended, and the one African American woman I interviewed was on the MWRO mailing list, although she was not an active participant. 40 There are structural similarities in AP work throughout Michigan, and to a lesser degree, throughout the United States. All AP workers in Michigan deal with the same state welfare policy, and all workers throughout the nation deal with the same federal welfare policy. Assistance Payments workers in Michigan, moreover, have similar responsibilities and working conditions, even though these are divided along lines of specialization. In terms of work structure and organization, then, the Kenyon County office was not unique, but was in many ways similar to other welfare offices in Michigan, and perhaps in the United States. As a group, the workers included in this study were also exposed to some of the same social phenomena that other workers are exposed to. Several workers in Kenyon County had previously worked in other counties, both rural A.) and urban, and all the workers attended state-wide conferences and training sessions. As a group, then, the women in this study were not isolated from other AP workers in Michigan; they were given opportunities to exchange experiences and views with other workers, and were exposed to official departmental views concerning both their work and the populations whom they served. Assistance Payments workers, throughout Michigan and the United States, serve a population with similar needs (shelter, food, medical care) and characteristics (the .4 \ ‘ ‘ :r\“ I J 1 . . \j { " O [A I, ‘f ,. . 9' 41 majority are women with children). In addition, the AP population itself in Michigan is relatively uniform with regard to gender (87 percent female) and education (less than 20 percent college educated) (Wertkin 1990). As members of American society, AP workers are also exposed to society-wide stereotypes of poor people in general, and of poor women in particular. Although the extent to which women believe these stereotypes prior to becoming AP workers no doubt varies, it is reasonable to assume that all AP workers enter the welfare system with some familiarity with such stereotypes. Given the similarities in work structure, content, and organization; contact among workers throughout Michigan; shared characteristics of both AP workers and of the population they serve; and the society-wide nature of stereotypes of poor people, workers in the Kenyon County office may produce constructions that have characteristics in common with those produced by other workers in other welfare offices in Michigan, and perhaps in other areas of the United States. As with AP workers, the sample of welfare recipients 33>~f included in this study is small, and thus cannot be said 2“ to be representative of welfare recipients in either Michigan or the United States. In addition, the recipients on whom I place the strongest focus were involved, to one degree or another, in welfare rights K *'~ 42 groups. The vast majority of welfare recipients in Golden County, in which the two welfare rights groups were based did not participate in either group. I would speculate that many women on welfare are isolated, and suffer from fear of confronting the welfare system (a fear that was often expressed even by the women most involved in welfare rights), lack of knowledge of how to go about confronting , the syatem, or embarrassment over receiving welfare. In this sense, then, if I were to claim representativeness, it would be to claim that the women are representative of the type of welfare recipient who tends to get involved in welfare rights groups -- in other words, of women tending toward activism. As with the AP workers, however, the welfare recipients in this study share a number of characteristics \1:' with welfare recipients both state- and nation-wide. The majority of AFDC recipients, as indicated above, are women V with ch dren. They all must contend with a welfare buraagggacy that, because of federal mandates, shares certain features across states; and they all have to contend with poverty as it is shaped in the United States. —/ 4 I AS pggripeople and as poor women, they are subject to the p«g* stareotypes,attached to these groups in the United States. In addition, as with AP workers, the recipients in this study -- as I suspect may be the case with a segment of the welfare population in general -- were geographically 43 mobile; they moved across both state and county lines, interacting with a number of welfare offices, and drew on these varied experiences in their constructionsagf, (1' themselves and of the welfare system. On the basis of these common characteristics, then, it is possible that the constructions produced by the women in this study share certain features with those of women in other welfare rights groups in other counties and states, and perhaps with those of women on welfare in general, when they have the opportunity to disaass welfare with each other. PW For my purposes, then, I am assuming that it is reasonable to view the particular group of workers I worked with in Kenyon County as workers in the geaagic sense, and to View the recipients I worked with in Golden County as recipients in the generic sense. Certainly, workers and recipients themselves talked of each other more often than not in generic terms, drawing, in their constructions, on their various experiences with each other over time. In sum, I d9 not claim that my sample is repgaaagtativa_of either workers or recipients in general. As a result of the shared characteristics outlined above, however, the constructions explored in the following chapters may have some currency among workers and recipients in other settings. The extent to which the . ,1 r ' 44 description and analysis presented here characterizes the issues surrounding women and the welfare system in the late 19803 and early 19908 in the U.S. remains to be refined by further studies. Data Collection Research Sites Research with welfare workers was conducted at the welfare office, in both private and shared spaces. I also encountered workers at one three—day training session and at a conference. Work with welfare recipients was conducted primarily at the meeting places of the two welfare rights groups and at women's homes and in restaurants.7 In addition, I attended legislative hearings and participated in several public deaaaaafatians in front of the state capitol and at the welfare office. ACCBSS Welfare workers and recipients differed in terms of accessibility. In the welfare office, I had daily access to the same group of women over an extended period of 7 Some of the women preferred to meet in restaurants for interviews. Perhaps they did not want me to see their homes, or perhaps they were interested in my invitations to lunch. ,7 ! 45 time. My access to welfare recipients was more sporadic, often not occurring on a daily basis, and usually lasting only several hours at a time. Access to Welfare Workers Initial access to welfare workers was granted by state and county officials. Although I had initially requested permission to work with AP workers in Madrid (where the two welfare rights groups were based), I was refused access by the county director. An official at the state welfare office correctly predicted that the director of the Kenyon County office would be more interested in my study, and thus I sought, and received, her permission to conduct the study in her office. Prior to beginning participant observation in the welfare office, I met with two workers and their supervisor to negotiate the conditions of my presence: I was not to interfere, and I was to help (e.g., run errands) when warranted and possible. Following this negotiation, I attended a staff meeting at which I introduced myself to the entire group of workers. Finally, once I began participant observation at the welfare office, I solicited workers' permission to observe and discuss their work on an individual basis. By the end of my three months at the office, only two women had refused to let me observe their interviews with f- “'— 46 recipients; one of them also declined to be interviewed.8 Access to workers' interviews with recipients was also M subject to the permission of recipients. \_/-\ Acce§§,to Welfare Recipients I learned of the Madrid Welfare Rights Organization (MWRO) through the telephone directory, and after speaking with one of its members, was invited to attend a meeting. In contrast, one of the members of Low-Income People for Equality (LIFE) heard of my study through a nutrition counselor at the county health department, and called to invite me to attend one of their meetings. Permission to regularly attend the meetings of both groups was subsequently granted by the core members of each group. Since the participants varied from meeting to meeting, however, I sought permission to tape record meetings at each event. Interviews with recipients were requested on an individual basis. In addition, my initial contact with some recipients occurred over the phone. This usually occurred when they called for advice on welfare (during the three months when I volunteered for this duty with MWRO); in a few cases, I 8 These refusals were not outright, but rather took the form of delays and other evasions. Once I got the feeling that the two workers were not comfortable with my presence, I stopped pursuing them. 47 used MWRO's phone list, for which I had received permission of the group. Continuing Access With both groups of women, access was repeatedly negotiated across time. I had to have something to offer the women in exchange for their time, energy, and confidences. Although a sympathetic ear often seemed rewarding to the women -- especially to recipients who found little sympathy for their plight among the general public -- the sheer weight of praatical and matarial conaaraiats suffered by both groups of women warranted additional contributions on my part. These contributions took the form of work at the welfare office (xeroxing, running errands), and providing transportation, computer work (for MWRO and LIFE), and occasionally food for recipients. Methods of Data Collection Methods of data collection for this study included participant observation and interviewing. In keeping with the goal of the ethnographic enterprise, emphasis was placed on gaining access to the meanings held by participants (Erickson 1979; 1986). My focus throughout the study was on talk, particularly that occurring among 48 welfare recipients and among welfare workers, although some talk occurring between the two groups of women was also included. A second focus was on interviews with the women; these were most often conducted with the women on an individual basis, although on occasion they occurred with two or more individuals. Conversations As outlined in Chapter 1, talk is an important vehicle for the construction and expression of world views, identities, and meanings. Conversational exchanges among workers and among recipients, then, as they occurred naturally (as opposed to being orchestrated by an outside researcher), provide key data for this dissertation. Accordingly, whenever possible I kept a tape recorder running when I interacted with either recipients or workers. A constantly running tape recorder allowed me to be opportunistic and to avoid imposing my own definitions of what was important onto the event (by turning the recorder on and off when something I deemed "important" was happening -- an action that no doubt would have been noted by participants) (Erickson 1986). Since a running tape recorder was a feature of my presence, participants were able to get used to the recorder as they got used to me. 49 Interviews Although there are numerous problems with interviews, including both issues of validity and power, they are nevertheless very valuable sources of data on the ways in which people experience and interpret their worlds. In this study, I followed two approaches to interviewing. One was to schedule events called "interviews" with individual women, for the purpose of discussing their experiences with the welfare system. Although I orchestrated these events, I made every effort to follow Briggs's (1986:93) admonition to "listen before you leap" -- in other words, to conduct interviews in ways that capitalized on, rather than vialated, received ways of communicating. Although I had sets of questions in mind, the order in which questions were answered, and how participants chose to answer them, were unspecified. In addition, other topics or approaches to topics introduced by the women were not glossed over but rather pursued. Mishler (1986) has claimed that respondents will often prodace stories when they aren't prevented from doing so by the asymmetries of power so often evident in traditional approaches to interviewing; along with numerous other scholars, he claims that staries and other narraaiyas are ”one of the natural cognitive and linguistic forms through which individuals attempt to order, organize, and express meaning" (1986:106). The 50 workers and recipients who participated in this study often did respond to my inquiries with staries. My second approach to interviewing also followed Briggs's (1986:121) call to avoid what he calls ”commgnicative_hegemony," or the impositiQn,Qf particular forms of communication. As Briggs outlines, standard interviews impose not only the classic question-answer format, but also may violate norms of who gets to ask questions of whom, under what circumstances, and concerning which topics. In addition to my approach to interviews discussed above, then, I made every effort to ask quaaaians informally, when the topic was already being discussed. By attending closely to naturally occurring conversation, I was able, on occasion, to insert my research questions when they were topically and contextually appropriate. Data Analysis Data analysis had two foci: the content of what was said (e.g., the stereotypes of workers and recipients held by the two groups of women), and the process by means of which the content was produced (e.g., how the stereotypes were jointly constructed or expressed by women talking with each other). In what follows, I draw primarily on content analysis, but make use of the tools provided by various approaches to the analysis of conversational 51 interaction (most notably sociolinguistics and conversation analysis) where appropriate. Analysis was conducted in two steps: audia tapes were indexed, and then segments of tape were transcribed. The segments chosen for transcription were those that seemed representative of a particular theme that emerged when I listened to the tapes, or those containing a unique occurrence that nevertheless, by virtue of the animation in participants' voices or by their comments on the event afterwards, seemed important. Transcripts of segments of talk were then subject to content analysis, and, in some cases, to an analysis of how participants jointly produced the content. As Mishler (1984:34) has pointed out, investigators with different interests emphasize different features of talk in their transcripts: "the notational system defines what is relevant and how it is to be presented." In accordance with my analytical foci, then, I draw on two sets of transcript conventions. When discussing cqatapt, the transcripts focus on words; accordingly, the details ._/ - ‘ ' . - ._). a. . u . of turn—taking and other extralinguistic features are \deA;h omitted from the transcripts. This is not the case where I am concerned with process as well as content. When exploring talk as jointly produced, overlaps, pauses, stress, and so on may convey as much meaning as do actual 52 words -- or at least help to convey the meaning intended by the actual words. Analyzing talk as a jointly accomplished phenomenon underscores the socially constructed nature of the meanings and interpretations expressed through talk. Participants in interaction alternately help one another tell their stories or make their points (by, for example, a strategically placed "uh huh" or expression of surprise), or challenge or reinforce certain constructions. When the analysis is focused on process as well as content, I will use a different set of transcript conventions that are designed to accommodate and represent what, upon repeated listenings to audio tapes, seem to be the most significant and prevalent features of talk among welfare recipients and workers. This set of transcript conventions is included in Appendix A. Notes on Partisanship Poverty and welfare are not neutral phenomena in American culture. Nor is the relationship between women on welfare and AP workers particularly cordial. Being a member of this culture, I could neither feign ignorance of issues surrounding public assistance, nor claim outsider status. This situation presented me with a number of dilemmas that I would like to briefly explore before presenting the analysis of my data. 53 Throughout the course of fieldwork, I made no attempts to be "objective" -- to remain uninvolved in the political aspects of women's lives, or to avoid "taking sides" with them on important issues. There were two aspects to my "place" in the field that I want to discuss here: my place as a member of the same culture as the women I was working with, and my partisan position with each group of women. Renato Rosaldo (1989) discusses at length Dorinne Kondo's fieldwork experience in Japan. As a Japanese- American, Kondo was subject to her hosts' cultural expectations about someone who looked Japanese. The experience was not as extreme for me, because I was not, in fact, in another culture, but in my own. I was nevertheless crossing class lines, and found it curious that, because we were all American and all women, I was expected to share certain assumptions about the world held by workers and recipients, and to know about things that they considered obvious, such as the nature of certain kinds of relationship problems, or feelings of pride or humiliation. Like Kondo, moreover, I had trouble with "indelicate" questions, such as, for instance, those pertaining to workers' incomes.9 9 While income was not a taboo topic for welfare recipients -- indeed, income insufficiency was a standard conversational topic -- workers followed the more middle- class notion that income is a more or less private affair. In the end, I gained access to information concerning (continued...) 54 The second aspect of my relationship with the women concerns my partisaa positions, positions that I took as an active member of my own culture, and that were expected of me by the study participants. I began the study more ”dwelfare recipients Eaaavarkers, since recipients are the poorer of the two groups, and since they fit into the category of the oppressed more than do workers (at least in the popular left). This did not mean that I took sides against workers. Workers, like recipients, are women who suffer from both economic and social inequalities in U.S. society; moreover, both are ”victims” of the welfare system: while women on welfare are subject to both insufficient funds and stigma, workers are ovarworked and have low status in the welfare bureaucracy. I was able to avoid some of the potential conflicts of my partisan positions by working with workers and recipiaats in separate counties. Although each group of women was aware that I was working with the other, I was not working with someone's particular worker, or with 9(...continued) workers' incomes by means of a confidential questionnaire. Although I wondered if my hesitancy to query workers about their incomes was simply a projection of my own middle- class values, rather than a reflection of norms which they shared, I find it significant that I did not experience this hesitancy with recipients. Was this, however, because poor people don't have the same social standing as members of the middle class? 55 someone's particular client. The impact that working with recipients and their own AP workers might have had on my relationship with each group was quickly made evident to me through the attempts made by both workers and recipients to recruit me to their points of view. I was surprised at the degree to which I was expected and recruited to be partisan. This, I think, reflects a very important commonality among the two groups of women: their powerlaaaness and their politigization of their respective situations. Both groups of women wanted me to share their respective points of view, as when I was invited by a worker to agree with her characterization of a recipient as a chila abuser, or when I was invited by a recipient to agree with her that politicians realize the ramifications of cats in the welfare budget and yet pursue them-§azway. As part and parcel of this recruitment, both groups of women had high expectations of the results of my research. Since they themselves were relatively powerless, they expected me to express their coagerns, to legitimize their cages. This was particularly so with the AP workers, who felt that they had no voice with administration and management. I, on the other hand, could document their plight and thus force management to 56 make long-needed changes. Workers assumed, of course, that management wouldn't like my report.10 As stated, although I "took sides" with both groups of women, I was more sympathetic to the plight of recipients than to that of workers. I sympathized with the demands placed on workers, and with their low status in the welfare bureaucracy, but was more touched and outraged by the plight of the recipients, who, in addition to being ovarwgrked and suffering from the stigma associated with being poor, also had to contend with not always having enough food to eat. In either case, however, my participation in the women's constructions was minimal. Although in individual interviews I often supported, or at least did not challenge, the women's views, when with more than one worker or recipient, I became, for the most part, a peripheral_participant, making few substantive “” contributions to the topic at hand. In Appendix B, I draw on evidence from the transcripts to illustrate my point that the kinds of contributions that I made to participants' constructions were minor when compared with the constructive work that they accomplished with one another. m The expectation that my study would vindicate the workers, or demonstrate to the world that recipients were victims and not villains, seems to indicate that the women did not consider me so much as "one of them" as an outsider who could verify and legitimize their perceptions of reality. CHAPTER 3 WELFARE RECIPIENTS AND WELFARE RIGHTS GROUPS In this chapter, I explore the views of women on welfare about (1) their identities as welfare recipients and as women; (2) key others that feature in their lives as welfare recipients; and (3) the workings of the welfare system. Specifically, I focus on the women's views as they are constructed or expressed in discourse, and on how particular ways of making sense reflect accommodation or resistance to received welfare and gender ideologies. The analysis focuses on women's life stories and on naturally occurring conversation in welfare rights group meetings. The chapter is divided into two sections. In the first, I explore five prevalent themes in recipients' welfare biographies. These themes concern views of employment and education, the weight of material absences and of social stigma, and perceptions of the structural constraints of the welfare system and of how best to deal with them. The themes reflect varying degrees of accommodation and resistance to mainstream U.S. ideologies concerning women, welfare, and the nature of economic success. In second section, I focus on welfare recipients interacting with each other in the context of welfare 57 58 rights groups. My emphasis in this section is on the work that the women do together to construct palatable images of themselves as welfare recipients, and to construct images of key others in their lives, most notably, welfare workers, politicians, rich peeple, and men. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of the differences between talk produced in my interviews with recipients and that produced in welfare rights group meetings. I argue that participants in welfare rights meetings accomplished constructions that were either absent or only nascent in the interviews, and fully developed or altered those that were present. Thus, although elements of resistance were clearly evident in the welfare biographies, the comembership established at welfare rights meetings both strengthened the resistance and provided grounds for the development of new perceptions. The welfare rights meetings also provided greater opportunity for participants to explore and either appropriate or dismiss mainstream models of women's roles and the nature of economic success and security. My argument is not that women were transformed by their participation in welfare rights groups as in a before- after sequence, but that the meetings provided a context conducive to expressions and constructions that differed in both content and tone from those found in the interview data. 59 Themes in Recipients' Welfare Biographies Recipients' stories and comments portray the experience of being poor, female, and on welfare, and provide insight into how women make sense of the welfare system and their place in it. The five themes described here emerged naturally from the women's narratives; they represent patterns in how this particular collection of women on welfare interpreted the welfare system and their relationships to it. The themes also represent what the women believed was most important for me, as an outsider, to know. Throughout discussion of the themes, I will point to elements of accommodation and resistance. In so doing, I draw on three narrative types outlined by the Personal Narrative Groups (PNG) in their book, Interpreting Women's Liyeg (1989). The first type of narrative "reveal[s] that the narrators do not think, feel, or act as they are 'supposed to.‘ Such narratives can serve to unmask claims that form the basis of domination...or to provide an alternative understanding of the situation" (PNG l989:7). A second type of narrative ”unfold[s] within the framework of an apparent acceptance of social norms and expectations but nevertheless describe[s] strategies and activities that challenge those same norms" (ibid.). Finally, a third type of narrative is produced by "women who 60 apparently thrive within the established norms and parameters or even assertively contribute to the maintenance of prevailing systems of gender domination" (ibid.). I will refer to these three types as counter- narratives, mixed narratives, and status quo narratives. Note that both talk itself and the activities described in talk may be viewed in terms of accommodation or resistance. The Women The twelve women interviewed ranged in age from 19 to 48, and had at least one child each (see Table 1). Eight of the women had been married at least once, three of whom had been married more than once. Three of the women were presently living with men who contributed to household expenses. The women's reasons for their initial contact with the welfare department included divorce, having a baby, husband's unemployment, husband being placed in jail, and being kicked out of a parent's home. Half of the 12 women had received welfare continuously for 18 months to 10 years. Maggie, for instance, received welfare for three years prior to entering graduate school. Jody, on the other hand, had remained on the welfare rolls for the nine years since her divorce. The remaining six women had been on and off of the welfare rolls a number of times; they 61 had been connected to the welfare department intermittently for an average of 12 years. Pat, for example, had been on and off welfare for 25 years, with each episode as a welfare recipient lasting anywhere from nine months to several years. Mary received welfare for one to two years, was out of the welfare system for two years, and then got back on the rolls for another five. Their relationships with the welfare department were interrupted by periods of employment providing sufficient wages for survival, or by support from men.1 The majority of the other women I encountered through telephone conversations, at welfare rights groups meetings, and in the welfare office (either directly or via their files) also had sporadic relationships with the welfare department. Only three of the 12 women had relatives other than their own children who had ever received welfare.2 All twelve women had been employed for pay. Many of them had worked numerous jobs, and many had worked while on welfare. As with the sporadic nature of many women's interactions with the welfare system, this finding is supported by the literature (Zopf 1989:4). 1 Women can, and often do, work while receiving welfare, and also often live with men who contribute financially to the household. 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