Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T13:42:15.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

35 - Social Welfare

from PART IV - SOCIAL SCIENCE AS DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LIFE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Ellen Fitzpatrick
Edited by
Theodore M. Porter  and
Dorothy Ross
Theodore M. Porter
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Dorothy Ross
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Get access

Summary

The persistence of poverty amid economic growth has provoked debate about the state’s responsibility for social welfare since the beginnings of industrialization. Claiming that empirical study was a sine qua non for effective reform, social investigators played a leading role in formulating policies toward the poor. Later, academic social scientists developed theoretical models, statistical data, and a language for defining social problems that were placed in the service of the state and of social and political movements. For better or worse, the ideas of modern social scientists have helped to write the history of twentieth century social welfare policy and affected the life fortunes of millions of people.

SYSTEMATIZING SOCIAL INQUIRY

The relationship between social inquiry and social welfare policy is as old as efforts to redress human misery. In both Europe and America, notions of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor surfaced in some of the earliest measures devised to lessen the scourge of indigence, such as the Elizabethan poor laws and early American strategies for “bidding out” and “warning out” the poor. Data collection, analysis, and the regulation of those who received assistance were mandated by the logic of policies that distinguished between those who truly needed help and malingerers, and by a desire always to minimize the burden of dependency on the state.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Science , pp. 608 - 620
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Addams, JaneTwenty Years at Hull House (New York: New American Library, 1981)Google Scholar
Berkowitz, EdwardMr. Social Security: The Life of Wilbur J. Cohen (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), chap. 1.Google Scholar
Berlin, IraFields, Barbara J., Miller, Steven F., Reidy, Joseph P., and Rowland, Leslie S., Free at Last (New York: New Press, 1992)Google Scholar
Bulmer, MartinBales, Kevin, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish, “The Social Survey in Historical Perspective,” in The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–1940, ed. Bulmer, Martin, Bales, Kevin, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Bulmer, Martin “National Contexts for the Development of Social Policy Research: British and American Research on Poverty and Social Welfare Compared,” in Social Sciences and Modern States, ed. Wagner, Peter, Weiss, Carol Hirschon, Wittrock, Björn, and Wollman, Helmut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Coll, BlancheSafety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929–1979 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995)Google Scholar
Davis, AllenSpearheads for Social Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967)Google Scholar
Day, PhyllisA New History of Social Welfare (New York: Prentice Hall, 1989), chap. 7Google Scholar
Derthick, MarthaPolicymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1979)Google Scholar
Dietrich, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol, Theda, eds., States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar
Diner, Steven J. “Scholarship in Quest of Social Welfare,” Social Service Review, 51 (March 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diner, Steven “Department and Discipline,” Minerva, 13, no. 4 (Winter 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fine, SidneyLaissez Faire and the General Welfare State (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967).Google Scholar
Fink, LeonWorkingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, EllenEndless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Furner, MaryAdvocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865–1905 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1975)Google Scholar
Goodwin, JoanneGender and the Politics of Welfare Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, LindaPitied but Not Entitled (New York: Free Press, 1994)Google Scholar
Haskell, ThomasThe Emergence of American Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977)Google Scholar
Julius Wilson, William, The Truly Disadvantaged (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar
Julius Wilson, William, When Work Disappears (New York: Knopf, 1996).Google Scholar
Katz, MichaelThe Undeserving Poor (New York: Pantheon, 1989).Google Scholar
Katz, Michael, Poverty and Policy in American History (New York: Academic Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Kish Sklar, Kathryn “The Historical Foundations of Women’s Power in the Creation of the American Welfare State, 1830–1930,” in Mothers of a New World, ed. Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya (New York: Routledge, 1993)Google Scholar
Kloppenberg, James T., Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar
Ladd-Taylor, Molly, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Leiby, JamesA History of Social Welfare and Social Work in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978)Google Scholar
Montgomery, DavidThe Fall of the House of Labor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muncy, RobynCreating a Female Dominion in American Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar
Nieman, DonaldTo Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865 to 1868 (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1979).Google Scholar
Oberschall, AnthonyEmpirical Social Research in Germany, 1848–1914, (The Hague: Mouton, 1965).Google Scholar
O’Connor, AlicePoverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth-Century U. S. History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, JamesAmerica’s Struggle against Poverty, 1900–1980 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981)Google Scholar
Peter, Flora and Arnold, Heidenheimer eds., The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1981).Google Scholar
Ross, DorothyOrigins of American Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), chap. 6Google Scholar
Skocpol, Theda “Government Structures, Social Science, and the Development of Economic and Social Policies,” in Social Science Research and Government, ed. Bulmer, Martin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Skocpol, ThedaProtecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar
Thane, PatMaternity and Gender Policies, ed. Bock, Gisela and Thane, Pat (New York: Routledge, 1991)Google Scholar
Thomas, John L.Alternative America (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1983)Google Scholar
Trattner, WalterFrom Poor Law to Welfare State (New York: Free Press, 1984)Google Scholar
Wikander, UllaKessler-Harris, Alice, and Lewis, Jane, Protecting Women: Labor Legislation in Europe, the United States, and Australia, 1880–1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×