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Criticism of the invisibility of women in many studies of political resistance has engendered a broadening of traditional conceptions to include not only overt protest, but also everyday and hidden forms of dissent. Different theories of resistance, however, make different claims about the nature of personhood, power and discourse. In this paper, I explore resistance and its opposite, accommodation, within a poststructuralist problematic. I draw on a 17-month study with two welfare rights groups, during which I tape-recorded, transcribed and then analyzed everyday conversation for expressions of complicity and contestation. Foucault's concept of “reverse” discourse proved particularly useful in analyzing talk that deploys dominant ideologies for subversive purposes. I argue that, while not undermining the value of structuralist analyses of discourse, a poststructuralist approach provides useful insights into the relationship between acquiescence and dissent, as well as into the implications of this relationship for conceptualizations of human agency and intentionality.

Historically, the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand symbolize opposite poles of an individualist‐collectivist welfare state continuum. Until recently, Aotearoa/New Zealand was known as a "cradle‐to‐grave" welfare state, with "universal" employment and coverage in health and education. U.S. history, in contrast, is marked by an unabashed individualism and a residualist approach to welfare. Recent neoliberal reforms, however, have engendered a convergence between the two countries in the conceptualization and organization of assistance for poor single mothers. Most notable are the "workfare" provisions of legislative changes made in 1996 in the two countries, which work to reconstitute poor mothers as potential able‐bodied workers. In this article we analyze welfare reform in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand, with particular reference to how poor single mothers respond to, comply and cope with, or resist neoliberal strategies. Analysis is based on participant‐observation, interviews, and focus groups conducted between 1989 and 1999. [welfare reform, neoliberalism, globalization, gender, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand]

Neoliberalism has emerged as one of the key concepts for studies of cultural and political-economic change on a global scale. Yet its enthusiastic adoption and application in recent anthropological work raises some significant theoretical and political problems. At the center of these is the challenge of discerning its limits. This Special Issue argues for the need to move beyond abstract and totalizing approaches that treat neoliberalism as a thing that acts in the world. We argue instead for approaches that stress its instabilities, partialities, and articulations with other cultural and political-economic formations, and that direct attention to the ways that culture, power and governing practices coalesce into concrete governmental regimes with their attendant patterns of inequality. Specific articles probe the limits and boundaries of neoliberalism as it plays out in different cultural and political-economic contexts.

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