Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U.S. History

by Alice O'Connor

Progressive-era "poverty warriors" cast poverty in America as a problem of unemployment, low wages, labor exploitation, and political disfranchisement. In the 1990s, policy specialists made "dependency" the issue and crafted incentives to get people off welfare. Poverty Knowledge gives the first comprehensive historical account of the thinking behind these very different views of "the poverty problem," in a century-spanning inquiry into the politics, institutions, ideologies, and social science that shaped poverty research and policy.


Alice O'Connor chronicles a transformation in the study of poverty, from a reform-minded inquiry into the political economy of industrial capitalism to a detached, highly technical analysis of the demographic and behavioral characteristics of the poor. Along the way, she uncovers the origins of several controversial concepts, including the "culture of poverty" and the "underclass." She shows how such notions emerged not only from trends within the social sciences, but from the central preoccupations of twentieth-century American economic growth, the Cold War against communism, the changing fortunes of the welfare state, and the enduring racial divide.


The book details important changes in the politics and organization as well as the substance of poverty knowledge. Tracing the genesis of a still-thriving poverty research industry from its roots in the War on Poverty, it demonstrates how research agendas were subsequently influenced by an emerging obsession with welfare reform. Over the course of the twentieth century, O'Connor shows, the study of poverty became more about altering individual behavior and less about addressing structural inequality. The consequences of this steady narrowing of focus came to the fore in the 1990s, when the nation's leading poverty experts helped to end "welfare as we know it." O'Connor shows just how far they had traveled from their field's original aims.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Economics, Poverty, Politics, American History, Sociology

392 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Andrew Yoder]

I've just begun this book. It's incredibly dense, but also seems to be highly valuable as a history of poverty policy and poverty attitudes historically.

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic intellectual and political history of social scientific studies of poverty and of the poor and of their incredibly fraught and complex political mobilization. O'Connor hones in on the central flaw of decades of social scientific poverty research: looking through the wrong end of the telescope by assuming that studying poverty meant studying *the poor* in search of the factors that made them Other, rather than analyzing the political-economic structures that perpetuate class, racial and gender inequality. Speaking of gender, O'Connor also brings a keen feminist eye to both the gendered assumptions of poverty research and the gender dynamics of the academic and government institutions in which it is produced.

*I haven't read the entire book because I'm reading it for thesis research rather than pure interest; but I would be very surprised if some glaring flaw appeared in the few chapters I didn't read.

[Michael Skora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an excellent book on what government officials, academics, and other “poverty knowledge” experts got wrong about poverty in the United States throughout the 20th century. O’Connor delves into the nuances of this history with so much incredibly granular—yet still engrossing—detail, but, in general, government agencies and academic/foundation institutions paternalistically understood poverty as a pathological culture reformable through changes in individual behavior rather than a matter of class, race, and gender exploitation and inequality only redressable through transformation to the political economy.

[meowdeleine · Rating 4 out of 5]

really thorough (and fun!) explanation of poverty-related policy in America. attached are my notes for anyone interested.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l...