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Regulating the Poor Revisited*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Joan Higginst
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Abstract

This paper takes as its subject the explanation of social policy development through the use of comparative data. It is based upon the book by Piven and Cloward entitled Regulating the Poor, published in 1972. This book has been both dismissed too lightly and adopted too uncritically. While the thesis of the book may be somewhat over-simplified it nevertheless points to a range of important issues in social policy and exposes a number of assumptions. As well as evaluating Piven's and Cloward's general perspective this paper looks, in particular, at three themes. These are the relationship between social policy and social control, the relationship between work and welfare and lastly the relationship between power and poverty.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 1978 , pp. 189 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard, Regulating the Poor, Tavistock Publications, London, 1972.Google Scholar

2 Ibid. p. xiii.

3 Quoted ibid. p. 15.

4 Ibid. p. xiii.

5 Bridges, Lee, ‘The Ministry of Internal Security: British Urban Sodal Policy 1968–74’, Race and Class, 16:4 (1975), 375–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 These issues are discussed in more detail in Higgins, Joan, The Poverty Business: Britain and America, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, forthcoming.Google Scholar

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13 Goodwin, Leonard, Do the Poor want to Work?, Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1972, p. 112.Google Scholar

14 Quoted in Piven and Cloward, op. cit. p. 81.

15 Ibid. p. 173.

16 Graham, Elinor, ‘The Politics of Poverty’, in Ben Seligman, Poverty as a Public Issue, Free Press, New York, 1965, p. 243.Google Scholar

17 Piven and Cloward, op. cit. p. 258.

18 Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., Power and Poverty, Oxford University Press, London, 1970.Google Scholar

19 Ibid. p. 43.

20 Ibid. p. 44.

21 Muraskin, William, ‘Regulating the Poor: Review Article’, Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 4:6 (1975), 607–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar