Author : Catherine Kingfisher
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812202473
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)
Book Synopsis Western Welfare in Decline by : Catherine Kingfisher
Download or read book Western Welfare in Decline written by Catherine Kingfisher and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-05-29 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The feminization of poverty is increasingly recognized as a global phenomenon, affecting women not only in third world countries but also in the West. Taking globalization as its starting point, Western Welfare in Decline explores the plight of poor single mothers in five English-speaking nations that have implemented welfare restructuring: the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This restructuring is analyzed in relation to the emergence of neoliberalism, which valorizes the free market, individualism, and a circumscribed role for the state. Contributors to Western Welfare in Decline creatively combine theoretical and empirical analysis, emphasizing the economic and social goals of welfare reforms and the discourses of labor, gendered subjectivity, and the separation of public and private spheres. They document how the neoliberal project of welfare reform interacts with local cultures to create both similar and divergent new cultural formations and identify opportunities for asserting the social rights of poor single mothers who are being denied these rights at the level of the nation-state.