Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help. By Eva Illouz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. (original) (raw)
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SW 820 History & Philosophy of Social Welfare Fall 2005r 20 Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m
This seminar traces the interrelated development of social policy and social services, the philosophy of social welfare, and the evolution of the social work profession in the United States. It analyzes the values and assumptions that form the foundation of existing services and institutions, and explores the social, economic, political, and cultural contexts in which they have developed. The seminar will explore the evolution of cash assistance and social service provision in light of the nation's enduring legacy of economic and social inequality, racism, and sexism. It will examine those aspects of U.S. social welfare development that are unique and those it shares with other industrialized countries. Finally, it will analyze the development of the social work profession from different perspectives and assess the potential future of social services in the U.S. in the context of economic globalization and its consequences.
The duality of culture and practice: Poverty relief in New York City, 1888--1917
Theory and Society, 1997
In 1893, Charles Henderson, a Baptist minister and member of the newly formed Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, published the first of his several books on the American social welfare system. In this book, entitled An Introduction to the Study of the Dependent, Defective and Delinquent Classes and of Their Social Treatment, Henderson set himself three tasks. First, he sought to rigorously differentiate the classes and sub-classes of the poor. Drawing upon scientific research in medicine, psychiatry, eugenics, and sociology as well as the accumulated records of numerous charity organizations and state agencies, he constructed a complicated taxonomic system to distinguish among various social types. In a chapter dedicated to "unemployed and homeless dependents," for example, he proposed a hierarchical scale ranging from "those who are temporarily out of employment, but who have some resources and are able to work" down to the "social bottom stratum" where one would find "the vicious wanderers, the semi-criminal vagabonds and the sturdy rogues." 1 In between these poles were two classes-the "partially futile," defined as "men who are willing to work and able to do something, but fall below the average in ability to coöperate in industry," and the "wholly futile," described as "the unemployable... (who) are not capable of keeping step with the average workman, nor of adapting their slow and uncertain movements to the speed of modern machinery." 2 Henderson's second task was to review the range of alternative relief practices for providing assistance (and punishment) to these various classes of "dependents, defectives and delinquents." Here he compared the
Law, Crime and History, 2017
This article approaches the question of the ‘child at risk’ through the case of an elite individual who became involved in infant welfare and the juvenile courts: Lady Cynthia Colville. Colville entered into voluntary social work as an activity ‘appropriate’ for a woman of her standing. With her appointment as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, the already very well-connected Colville had unrivalled access to the Royal Household for promoting the interests of her charities. The case of Colville provides a point of intersection for the historiographies on gender, class, welfare, and crime, and fresh insight into the relationship between ‘innovation’ in social work and the established social order.