Social Amelioration through Mass Insurgency? A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis

Albritton, Robert B.

doi:10.2307/1953984

Cited by 31 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Various researchers have provided empirical support for the relationship between civil disorder and welfare growth in the late 1960s (Betz, 1974;Jennings, 1979;Isaac and Kelly, 1981). Critics, however, have rejected this thesis upon finding no relationship between riottorn cities and increases in welfare (Durman, 1973;Albritton, 1979). Our analysis seeks to resolve these conflicting findings.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

Civil Disorder and the Welfare Explosion: A Two-Step Process

Schram¹,

Turbett²

1983

American Sociological Review

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Upon not finding a direct relationship between civil disorder and welfare growth in American cities in the late 1960s, some analysts have rejected the Piven and Cloward (1971) thesis that the expansion of welfare in the late 1960s operated largely as aform of social control so as to recreate political stability. We hypothesize that the welfare explosion in the late 1960s was in part the result of a two-step process in which civil disorder impelled the national government to enact liberalizations of welfare policy which in turn were most actively implemented by those states most wracked by rioting. Analysis of the relative state growth rates in the number offamilies receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children suggests the plausibility of our hypothesis and the Piven and Cloward thesis.

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mentioning

confidence: 95%

Civil Disorder and the Welfare Explosion: A Two-Step Process

Schram¹,

Turbett²

1983

American Sociological Review

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“…Support for the social threat-welfare expansion thesis has been mixed. Some studies reported a direct, positive association between measures of intergroup threat (e.g., urban rioting) and the expansion of the AFDC program (Chamlin, 1992;Issac & Kelly, 1981;Jennings, 1983;Schram & Turbett, 1983), whereas others do not (Albritton, 1979;Betz, 1974;Durman, 1973). In an effort to make sense of those ambiguous findings, we attempted to take advantage of recent efforts to "end welfare as we know it" to evaluate Cloward's (1971, 1987) ideas concerning the relationship between the welfare contradiction and the enforcement of work norms.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Welfare Policy as Social Control

Chamlin

Burek

Cochran

2007

Criminal Justice Policy Review

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Most macrolevel analyses of governmental aid to the poor focus on the relationship between indicators of social threat and the expansion of welfare programs. In this article, the authors' investigation extends that research by exploring the consequences of welfare contraction. Taking advantage of Wisconsin's ongoing natural experiment with welfare reform, the authors examine the extent to which the codification of more restrictive eligibility requirements functions to enhance the labor supply. The interrupted time series autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analyses of monthly welfare caseloads and labor force size fail to support previous contentions that restrictive eligibility requirements are designed to enforce work norms. The authors interpret those findings, raising serious doubts about the efficacy of the conflict perspective's contention that non-legal institutions, like welfare, serve as vehicles for the macrosocial control of subordinate groups or strata.

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“…The welfare state literature contains empirical evidence that supports Piven andCloward's (1971, 1993) thesis by demonstrating associations between civil disobedience and increases in social welfare policies in the latter half of the 1960 decade (Betz, 1974;Chamlin, 1992;Hicks & Swank, 1983;Isaac & Kelly, 1981;Jennings, 1979;Schram & Turbett, 1983a). Other researchers, however, inflicted a major blow to Piven and Cloward's (1971) Social Control Thesis upon finding no relationships between political unrest and growth in welfare expenditures in the late 1960s (Albritton, 1979;Durman, 1973). One explanation to these contradictory findings from Albritton (1979) and Durman (1973) was provided by Schram and Turbett (1983b):…”

Section: Theses Of Welfare Expansionmentioning

confidence: 99%