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In this article I examine how the neoliberal agenda of downsizing the state and minimizing its role in regulating the market has shaped welfare policy and the work of welfare provision. Using a study of welfare reform in Oregon, I explore how the enactment of welfare‐to‐work policies positions workers to negotiate the ideological terrain of welfare reform and the conflicts that privatization and devolution generate in a social welfare context. Self‐sufficiency, the professed goal of welfareto‐ work programs, is a complex concept, saturated with ideological meaning. Examination of the work of welfare provision provides an opportunity to analyze how workers give meaning to self‐sufficiency and construct their work as positive for the families they serve. However, high caseloads, unrealistic agency expectations, and conflicting mandates bear down hard on workers, creating disenchantment with agency policy and undermining workers' ability to meet clients' needs, [welfare, ideology, work, the United States, neoliberalism]

This article extends the feminist critique of bureaucracy by examining the ways feminist health organizations contest the bureaucratic ideal of impersonal, role-based, and instrumental social relations. Drawing on interview, archival, and fieldwork data collected by the author, this paper explores the personnel practices of feminist workplaces revealing the difficulties and possibilities that accompany their ways of handling personnel issues. The challenge of reconceiving personnel as persons is explored as a problem of both organizational theory and practice.

▪ Abstract  Anthropological research on welfare restructuring differs from most poverty research conducted by U.S. policy analysts and many other social scientists by its situating the study of welfare "reform" within an examination of the production of poverty and inequality at the center of the global system of advanced capitalism. In this review we examine urban poverty and welfare-state restructuring in relation to the ascent of neoliberalism, including the rise of market-oriented assumptions about social value, productivity, and investment that dominate civic life and public policy. We focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the United States. After a brief review of four theoretical frameworks that inform ethnographic research on welfare, we explore five approaches or themes in anthropological studies of welfare restructuring in the United States: (a) the ethnographic challenge to claims of policy success by documenting an unfolding crisis in social reproduction for the poor; (b) deconstructing the hegemonic discourse on welfare restructuring and juxtaposing it with the lived realities of impoverished households; (c) contesting and moving beyond the behaviorism of mainstream poverty research; (d) exploring the multiple perspectives of those differently situated within the welfare-state apparatus; and (e) theorizing the relationship between welfare restructuring and an eroding social citizenship of the poor. The analysis of gender, race, and, to a lesser extent, class is central to ethnographic research on welfare-state restructuring.

Refutes current political rhetoric that vilifies relatively effective programs such as the Comprehensive Employment & Training Act (CETA). CETA served millions of Americans from 1974 to 1983 & succeeded in placing women in job environments where real, transferable skills were acquired. Right-wing politicians, while recognizing the program's accomplishments, criticized it for not making greater gains & for serving the more educated segment of the welfare base, with both criticisms part of an effort to defund the Left. Public job training programs, through often innovative programs, should create jobs & provide education & training that respect the individual, offer voluntary participation, & qualify participants for labor market wages (Rose 1995). New reforms, however, supplant such programs with a limited "rapid attachment" design that forces workers into low-end jobs that lack benefits & long-term solutions. L. A. Hoffman

From the history of state terrorism in Latin America, to state- and group-perpetrated plunder and genocide in Africa, to war and armed conflicts in the Middle East, militarization-the heightened role of organized aggression in society-continues to painfully shape the lives of millions of people around the world. In Security Disarmed, scholars, policy planners, and activists come together to think critically about the human cost of violence and viable alternatives to armed conflict. Arranged in four parts-alternative paradigms of security, cross-national militarization, militarism in the United

ABSTRACT  How far has anthropology come in becoming racially inclusive? In this article, we analyze an online survey of anthropology graduate students and faculty of color undertaken by the AAA Commission on Race and Racism in Anthropology. Despite some progress, institutional and attitudinal barriers remain. We use the concept of "white public space" to analyze these barriers: departmental labor is divided in ways that assign to faculty and graduate students of color responsibilities that have lower status and rewards than those of their white counterparts. Colorblind racial explanatory practices—discourses that explain away racially unequal institutional practices as being "not about race"—are common. We argue that such practices make many anthropology departments feel like white‐owned social and intellectual spaces. We conclude by suggesting steps with which anthropology departments can create more inclusive social spaces that are owned equally by scholars of color and their white peers.

This volume examines the effects of mid 1990s welfare reform in the state of Oregon. The reforms made cash assistance temporary and contingent on recipients' seeking and finding employment. Based on comprehensive research conducted in the late 1990s, researchers interviewed and observed low-income families across the state, as well as welfare workers and administrators. These interviews led to new definitions of the problems facing those who work within the welfare delivery system and the people the system serves. The researchers assessed the strengths and shortcoming of welfare reform, and they suggest policy directions that will promote economic security and family well being. The reasons for the overall failure of welfare reform, the authors concluded, are complex and rooted in a misdiagnosis of the reasons that millions of families are poor and dependence on policy solutions "that intensified economic insecurity and reproduced inequalities more than they fostered poverty reduction or economic opportunity." The authors call for an immediate effort to build a stronger social safety net and to repeal the most onerous provisions of welfare reform. They recommend a host of policies to promote economic security including a focus on developing higher wage jobs, health care reform, and access to high quality and affordable higher education, housing and child care