Workfare: A Geopolitical Etymology

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Peck
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Discourse ◽  
Local Models ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Contested Meanings ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Political Attack ◽  
Political Economic

The author traces the origins, evolution, and contested meanings of the ‘keyword’ workfare (work + welfare) in the United States which, in the space of 30 years, has evolved from a technocratic term deployed in the process of intrawelfare reform, through to powerful signifier of a systemic, postwelfare ‘alternative’. Discursive struggles around workfare are shown to have played a decisive role in reencoding the language of poverty politics, as ‘old’ discourses of needs, decency, compassion, and entitlement have been discredited, while ‘new’ (or more accurately reworked) discourses of work, responsibility, self-sufficiency, and empowerment have been forcefully advanced. This process is a geopolitical one in the sense that local models and stories of workfare have been absorbed—in a transformative way—into the new orthodoxies of policy discourse and practice. The ascendancy of local workfare (represented as the ‘solution’ to the ‘welfare mess’) over federal welfare (itself now a political attack term) has been associated not only with a rolling back of the language, routines, and systems of welfarism, but also with the rolling forward of radically new institutions and vocabularies of regulation. Although it continues to be contested, workfare is becoming the regulatory antonym of welfare; the programme is becoming programmatic. The paper presents a political-economic contextualization of workfare discourse.

Values of Voluntary Simplicity: Lifestyle and Motivation

1984 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avraham Shama ◽  
Joseph Wisenblit
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Metropolitan Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voluntary Simplicity ◽  
Ecological Responsibility ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
And Behavior

This paper describes the relation between values and behavior of a new life style, that of voluntary simplicity which is characterized by low consumption, self-sufficiency, and ecological responsibility. Also, specific hypotheses regarding the motivation for voluntary simplicity and adoption in two areas of the United States were tested. Analysis shows (a) values of voluntary simplicity and behaviors are consistent, (b) the motivation for voluntary simplicity includes personal preference and economic hardship, and (c) adoption of voluntary simplicity is different in the Denver and New York City metropolitan areas.

No sign of break in Turkish-US arms deal impasse

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Defence System ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
Defence Sector

Significance Blinken was told Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defence system was a closed issue, Cavusoglu said. NATO member Turkey remains unwilling to give them up even at the expense of relations with the United States deteriorating further under President Joe Biden. Impacts Biden’s determination to revitalise NATO, post-Trump, signals there will be no tolerance for Turkish moves to destabilise the alliance. Sanctions on Turkey’s procurement agency will work against Turkey’s push towards defence sector self-sufficiency. Anything short of deploying the S-400s would be politically unacceptable for the government’s domestic base.

scholarly journals Resurrecting Empire

2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 112-115
Author(s):  
Samer Abboud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Economic

Written at a critical historical juncture of Arab-western relations, Khalidi’stext provides a refreshing and informed account of western intervention inthe Middle East. It stresses the catastrophic human and political consequencesof western colonial adventures in the region and the neglect of thishistorical experience by current American foreign policy decision makers.Although written primarily for a non-academic, American audience, it is auseful and important text on contemporary Middle East history.Accessible and highly readable, it provides insights into a series ofmajor issues currently relevant to the study of the Middle East: democracy, oil, Palestine, and Iraq. The first chapter provides an account of westerncolonialism’s social, political, economic, and cultural legacy wrought on theMiddle East. Beginning with a brief introduction to the American march towar with Iraq, the author establishes an approach employed throughout thetext: juxtaposing the historical western colonial experience with theAmerican invasion and occupation of Iraq. Locating western involvement inthe Middle East within the context of the Ottoman Empire’s decline, Khalidihighlights the differential systems of colonial rule imposed on the region.Throughout, he emphasizes the indigenous resistance to colonialism, thusarguing against Orientalist discourses of indigenous acquiescence and subservienceto the supposed benevolence of colonialist rule. Two importantpoints emerge: first, that the political structures imposed by the colonialregimes have persisted, and second, that the region’s political cultureremains deeply rooted in the anti-colonial experience. This experience –entirely conditioned through European involvement in the region – meantthat for many, the United States never experienced the same political andcultural hostility as Europe. Throughout the cold war, however, the UnitedStates’ image as a disinterested outside power began to give way to an imageof the United States as a significant power broker in the region with manyinterests, and, most importantly, few objectives compatible with the politicaldesires of the region’s peoples ...

‘America’ and Europe, 1914–1945

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Ellwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mass Communications ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Democratic Stability ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
Second World

The First World War cost Europe the leadership of the world. But the United States of Woodrow Wilson was not ready to take its place. The 1920s brought Europe to a crossroads where mass democracy, mass production, and mass communications—the latter two dominated by American innovations— transformed ideas of sovereignty, modernity, and identity everywhere. The financial crash of 1929 destroyed illusions about the United States as the land of the future, and helped legitimize the totalitarians. European democrats looked to the 1930s New Deal as their last best hope. During the Second World War Roosevelt rebuilt the global order, with the United Nations and other new institutions. But the United States was now looking to ‘retire’ Europe from the world scene, and build a new universe based on America’s experience of the link between mass prosperity and democratic stability.

TIME-MOTION STUDY OF PRACTICING PEDIATRICIANS

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 254-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abraham B. Bergman ◽  
Steven W. Dassel ◽  
Ralph J. Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Child Health ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Respiratory Illness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Health Care ◽  
Time Motion ◽  
Motion Study ◽  
Paper Work

Four practicing pediatricians were followed by an observer with a stopwatch for a total of 18 days to gain a profile of how their working days were spent. An average of 48% of the day was spent with patients, 12.5% on the phone, and 9% on paper work. Fifty per cent of patient time was spent with well children, and 22% on children with minor respiratory illness. Intellectual understimulation seemed to arise from spending the majority of time with children who did not require their special talents. In view of the alarming decline in ratio of physicians to child population, pediatricians are urged to play a decisive role in formulating the alternative patterns of child health care that must inevitably develop in the United States.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document