Bøger af Stephen Pimpare

During the economic boom of the 1990s, arguments about the moral failings of the poor were used to pass welfare reforms heralded as the solution to a system that had failed everyone. Yet, as historian Stephen Pimpare demonstrates in this revealing social history, remarkably similar arguments were used to disastrous effect in campaigns against aid to the poor in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In The New Victorians, Pimpare reveals the disturbing parallels between the anti-welfare propagandists of the nineteenth century and the elite actors and well-funded policy research organizations of today. Alarmingly, he shows how the New Victorians of today often invoke the rhetoric of their predecessors while ignoring the complete failure of nineteenth-century reforms. The New Victorians goes on to uncover the elite and grassroots resistance in the Gilded Age that paved the way for the counter-reforms of the Progressive Era, revealing urgent lessons toward renewing support for broader state defense of the poor today.

This book is a concise, accessible guide to help social workers understand how politics and policy making really work-and what they can do to help their clients and their communities. It offers informed, practical grounding in the mechanics of policy making and the tools that activists and outsiders can use to take on an entrenched system.

In A Peoples History of Poverty in America, political scientist Stephen Pimpare brings the human lives and real-life stories of those who struggle with poverty in America to the foreground, vividly describing life as poor and welfare-reliant Americans experience it, from the big city to the rural countryside. Prodigiously researched, A Peoples History of Poverty in America unearths rich, poignant, and often surprising testimoniesboth heart-wrenching and humorousthat range from the early days of the United States to the present day. Pimpare shows us how the poor have found food, secured shelter, and created community, and, most important, he illuminates their battles for dignity and respect in the face of the judgment, control, and disdain that are all too often the price they must pay for charity and government aid.In telling these hidden stories, Pimpare argues eloquently for a fundamental rethinking of poverty, one that includes both a more nuanced understanding of the history of the American welfare state, and a meaningfuland truly accuratenew definition of the poverty line. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as an illuminating history of Americas poor and a useful counter against those who blame the poor for their bad luck, A Peoples History of Poverty in America reminds us that poverty is not in itself a moral failure, but our failure to understand it may well be.