Suchergebnisse

How does a graduate student acquire the skills necessary to define a clear research agenda and write meaningful contributions to the scholarship in his or her field? Can the requirements of professional advancement in the ivory tower be reconciled with making a difference in the bare-knuckle world of policymaking? Can even a celebrated activist-scholar survive the seemingly relentless neoliberalization of higher education? Becoming a Footnote takes the reader on an inspirational journey through the experiences of researcher Sanford F. Schram, illuminating how he overcame his early insecurities and limitations, particularly about his writing, to develop into someone cited by both scholars and people involved in the policymaking process. With wit and humor, Schram illustrates how his award-winning research on race, poverty, and welfare emerged from the political struggles in which he was immersed, and how we all have something unique to contribute if we commit ourselves to making it happen

For the past decade, political scientist Sanford Schram has led the academic effort to understand how Americans and their political officials talk about poverty and welfare and what impact that discourse has on policy and on the global society. In Welfare Discipline, Schram argues that it is time to take stock of the new forms of welfare and to develop even better methods to understand them. He argues for a more contextualized approach to examining welfare policy, from the use of the idea of globalization to justify cutbacks, to the increasing employment of U.S. policy discourse overseas, to the development of asset-based approaches to helping the poor. Stressing the importance of understanding the ways we talk about welfare, how we study it, and, critically, what we do not discuss and why, Schram offers recommendations for making welfare policy both just and effective.

Praxis for the Poor puts the relationship of politics to scholarship front and center through an examination of the work of Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward. Piven and Cloward proved that social science could inform social-policy politics in ways that helped energize a movement. Praxis for the Poor offers a critical reflection on their work and builds upon it, demonstrating how a more politically-engaged scholarship can contribute to the struggle for social justice. Necessary reading for political scientists, sociologists, social workers, social welfare activists, policy-makers, and anyone concerned with the plight of the poor and oppressed, Praxis for the Poor shows how social science can play a role in building a better future for social welfare.

Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on books by (1) Kathleen R. Arnold, Homelessness, Citizenship, Identity: The Uncanniness of Late Modernity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004); & (2) Leonard C. Feldman, Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell U Press, 2004).