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  1. Home
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  3. States of Dependency
  • Cited by 24
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
April 2016
Print publication year:
2016
Online ISBN:
9781139924665
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139924665
Subjects:
Legal History, Law, Regional and World History: General Interest, History, Twentieth Century American History
Series:
Studies in Legal History
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Book description

Who bears responsibility for the poor, and who may exercise the power that comes with that responsibility? Amid the Great Depression, American reformers answered this question in new ways, with profound effects on long-standing practices of governance and entrenched understandings of citizenship. States of Dependency traces New Deal welfare programs over the span of four decades, asking what happened as money, expertise and ideas travelled from a federal administrative epicenter in Washington, DC, through state and local bureaucracies, and into diverse and divided communities. Drawing on a wealth of previously un-mined legal and archival sources, Karen Tani reveals how reformers attempted to build a more bureaucratic, centralized and uniform public welfare system; how traditions of localism, federalism and hostility toward the 'undeserving poor' affected their efforts; and how, along the way, more and more Americans came to speak of public income support in the powerful but limiting language of law and rights. The resulting account moves beyond attacking or defending Americans' reliance on the welfare state to explore the complex network of dependencies undergirding modern American governance.

Reviews

'States of Dependency inverts the story of New Deal social benefits to provide a fresh perspective on the story of state-building. Tani explains how federal authorities relied on the language of rights to legitimize new programs, only to run afoul of local communities. This powerful book suggests how providing relief led to a stronger central government with the authority to scrutinize individual lives. I’m persuaded!'

Alice Kessler-Harris - Columbia University, and author of In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America

'The publication of Karen Tani’s States of Dependency marks a new beginning in the history of the American welfare state. Deftly weaving together the techniques of social welfare history, legal history, the history of the state, and the history of administration, Tani offers an entirely new perspective on the persistence of poverty and the progress of social reform from the New Deal to the 1970s, from social security to the welfare rights movement. She tells the grand story of the rise (and fall?) of the American welfare state with expert attention both to complex matters of law and administration as well as to the everyday social struggles over issues of localism, needs, rights, race, gender, and inequality that basically define this important field of inquiry. This is bold and revisionist history in the traditions of Willard Hurst, Theda Skocpol, Michael Katz, and Jerry Mashaw.'

William Novak - University of Michigan

'In this brilliant administrative history, Karen Tani traces the remaking of poor relief from the passage of the Social Security Act to the failure of a federally guaranteed minimum income. Centering our attention on the assumptions, commitments, and everyday actions of what might be thought of as the worker bees of the modern administrative state (the mid-level interpreters of statutes - here, lawyers, social workers, and other professionals who staffed the Social Security Administration and state and local level welfare offices) and the fulcrum of modern state power (federal matching grants which bound national, state, and local governments together in an uneasy embrace, a new fiscally-driven federalism), States of Dependency beautifully and powerfully captures the intricate web of dependencies, the mode of governance at the heart of the modern American state in the ‘age of statutes.’'

Barbara Young Welke - University of Minnesota

'This book is a useful study of changes in assistance provided to poor people between the New Deal era and 1972, focusing on themes such as the development of rights language during the 1930s; the role of the New Deal in re-arranging powers of local, state, and the national government in providing assistance; the increasing reliance on law and the courts to legalize relief; and how these changes contributed to the rise of the modern American government … Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals.'

J. P. Sanson Source: Choice

… a profound and richly detailed reflection on the evolution of the right to government aid in the mid-twentieth-century United States … Tani’s approach teaches about more than welfare rights. It offers new insights into the history of the national government and its relationships to state, city, and local governments.'

Annelise Orleck Source: Journal of Interdisciplinary History

'If Karen Tani’s States of Dependency were a movie, we would describe it as a 'prequel'. It provides the backstory to the well-known tale of the emergence of the welfare rights movement in the 1960s. This book is impressive in many ways. Tani’s research is nothing less than extraordinary. … One of the greatest strengths of Karen Tani’s book is that it shows us in great detail how rights and federalism were interwoven during the first three decades of the American welfare state.'

R. Shep Melnick Source: Publius: The Journal of Federalism

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Contents

Contents
References
Selected Bibliography of Primary Sources
Committee on Economic Security. Report to the President of the Committee on Economic Security. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1935.
Federal Security Agency, in collaboration with Bureau of Accounts and Audits and Office of the General Counsel. Money Payments to Recipients of Old-Age Assistance, Aid to Dependent Children, and Aid to the Blind. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1944.
Federal Security Agency, Social Security Administration, Bureau of Public Assistance. Hearing Decisions in Public Assistance, vols. 1–4 (1947–49).
Federal Security Agency, Social Security Administration, Bureau of Public Assistance. Public Assistance 1941. Public Assistance Report No. 4. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941.
Marcus, Grace F.The Nature of Service in Public Assistance Administration. Public Assistance Report No. 10. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946.
National Resources Planning Board. National Resources Development Report for 1943. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936.
President's Committee on Civil Rights. To Secure These Rights: The Report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947.
Social Security Board. First Annual Report of the Social Security Board. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936.
Towle, Charlotte. Common Human Needs: An Interpretation for Staff in Public Assistance Agencies. Public Assistance Report No. 8. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945.
U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Statistical Report of Public Assistance to Indians, under the Social Security Act: Old Age Assistance, Aid to Dependent Children, Aid to the Blind, as of October 1, 1939. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Decennial Census of the United States, 1930. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932.
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Sixteenth Decennial Census of the United States, 1940. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943.
U.S. Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of Government and Council of State Governments. Federal-State Relations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949.
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Federal-State Relations Committee, Agricultural Planning and Federal-State Relations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938.
U.S. Department of Commerce. The Indian Population of the United States and Alaska 1930. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1937.

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