The end of welfare as we know it: re-envisioning welfare as democratic empowerment Public Deposited
- Last Modified
- March 21, 2019
- Creator
-
Grigg, Amanda
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science
- Abstract
- This work evaluates welfare through the lens of democratic empowerment by exploring how programs of state support encourage or discourage active political participation in recipients. The author argues that this view offers both a valuable and previously overlooked position from which to evaluate welfare and a means by which to adjudicate between competing conceptions of the state. Under this view, the most empirically accurate and politically fruitful conceptualizations of the state are those which chart a middle course between absolute rejection of the liberating potential of the state and wholehearted embrace of state power. In the case of welfare, this more complex view of the state allows us to recognize that the design of welfare programs has profound democratic implications. This understanding of welfare is valuable for feminists who hope to intervene meaningfully in welfare discourse and design and vital for anyone concerned with the future of democracy in America.
- Date of publication
- August 2011
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- "... in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Political Science."
- Advisor
- Bickford, Susan
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Language
- Publisher
- Place of publication
- Chapel Hill, NC
- Access
- Open access