The Many Hands (and Fingers) - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Many Hands (and Fingers) of the State

Elisabeth Clemens

University of ChicagoSlide2

El Paso, Arkansas 1931Slide3

We left

Arkansas “relief ready”Slide4

We should understand the distinction between state and society “not as the boundary between two discrete entities, but as a line drawn internally within the network of institutional mechanisms through which a social and political order is maintained.” Timothy Mitchell (1991:78)

Three questions follow:

Why do so many voluntary associations cluster at this boundary, at least in the United States?

What determines where the boundary is drawn?

What happens because of this boundary? How does it shape the dynamics of political conflict, change, and development?Slide5

What do associations do at the boundary?

“One of the questions frequently asked is why the Government does not do what the Red Cross is doing? The Government is compelled to confine itself to a standardized service, treating all men more or less alike. The Red Cross can go into all the ramifications of the individual case and help the man overcome his peculiar handicaps and obstacles. The Government must stick to the essentials of the job. It has a gigantic and difficult task to accomplish the obvious work, common to the handling of every case of a disabled man. It cannot take infinite pains with every case. What it does for one, it must be prepared to do for all who are eligible whether they need it or not.”Slide6

Managing the relationship of the individuality of citizens to the uniformity expected from the Government

A challenge in the case of the army:

Principle of equality within ranks (although often violated)

Preservation of soldier’s private status as breadwinners

Protection of dignity of soldier’s families

Voluntary associations worked at the point of conflict among these individual and collective standings.Slide7

Defense of individuality in social support

As the

Chairman of the North Lonoke County Chapter explained to the national convention in

1931,

“there

was a lack of appreciation on the part of the public as to the necessity of

handling Red

Cross work upon the individual case system. It was our policy to deal with

the individual

case and not attempt mass feeding. Shortly after the work started there was

a demand

on the part of some plantation owners and landlords that whatever relief

was afforded

to tenants and sharecroppers should be handled through the commissary of

the plantation

owner or landlords. This, of course, was contrary to the principles

of emergency

relief and was not countenanced by the Red Cross. Experience has shown

the justice

of dealing with the individual case

.”Slide8

Agreement in practice if not politics

In 1936, a former national chairman of the Unemployed Council charged that

:

the question of relief was relegated to the private ‘charity’ agencies that operate on

the ‘case

work’ theory. This theory is that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with

our social

system, but that some individuals are ‘somehow’ unable

to adjust

themselves

to our

‘perfect’ social order. This means, also, that unemployment and destitution are

the fault

of the individual and that, therefore, having no one to blame but himself, he has

no right

to make demands upon the class that profits from, and the government

that maintains

, the capitalist system.Slide9

What shapes the location of the boundary?

Historically, understood as setting a minimum of public support; principle of “less eligibility”

Georg

Simmel

explains the sociological rationale:

“A

collectivity which comprises the energies or interests of many individuals can only take into account their peculiarities, when there is a structure with a division of labor whose members are assigned different functions. But when it is necessary to perform a united action, whether through a direct organ or a representative organ, the content of this action can only include that minimum of the personal sphere that coincides with everybody else’s.”

Insistence on uniformity.Slide10

Implications for associational activity

“over and above” arguments for fund-raising

With introduction of expanded public relief at all levels (federal, state, local), private voluntary associations emphasize “rehabilitative hypothesis” with specific attention to individualized problems that are created by unemployment (stress, domestic violence) or that are required by individuals who fall outside the domain of generality (“the unemployables”).

Momentary stabilization of a division of labor, a boundary within a network of relationships.

Then. . .Slide11

“Rolling in the categories”

Social Security Act of 1935 established categories of eligibility for social insurance and aid (inc. aged, unemployed, blind, dependent children).

Most of these required passage of a state enabling act to establish the matching-grant arrangements that supported many of these categories as well as a two-year “accumulation” period.

By 1938, a year which also saw the onset of the “Roosevelt Recession,” social workers (both public and private) began to anticipate what would happen as “the categories” began to be implemented.Slide12

New questions of uniformity

After Congress passed on amendment in 1937 that would protect recipient of aid “under the categories” from publicity (e.g. publishing names in newspapers) or the disclosure of personal information, one social worker asked:

“If it is considered desirable to protect from publicity the aged, the blind and children in need of assistance, by what reasoning should such protection be denied persons in need of direct relief? Are they less honest, less sensitive to humiliation? Are their children different from the children of those who “fit” the ADC category? Is the fact that, as the

Milwaukee Journal

said, they have “adjusted” to “similar blows” any reason for inflicting a new one?”Slide13

Required a renegotiation of the boundary

As one social worker observed in 1940

More than one hundred thousand individuals are now regularly receiving monthly federal old-age and survivors insurance payments. Within this year payments will go to a half million or more retired workers, their wives and children and the survivors of deceased workers. Because these persons are the beneficiaries of a social insurance program, not the recipients of direct public aid, the questions arise: Does the manner in which their benefits are paid differ from the way in which payments are made under an assistance program? Are the fundamental differences between social insurance and public assistance reflected in the administration of the insurance program?Slide14

Projects of expanding the domain of generality

One correspondent quoted a novel popular among social workers, Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s

Bonfire

“don’t dare to call this charity, or let anyone think of it as charity. Its name is decency. This would not be a gift to the young people it would benefit. It would be a right they have deserved by being born American. Any American, any Vermonter, any Clifford man ought to be ashamed if any man’s children

have less of a chance – a

chance

, that’s

all

this is

– than his own.

In a stirring call for generality, the opinion piece concludes that “Grandma called it charity. We call it social justice. Isn’t it also the brotherhood of man?”Slide15

What does the boundary make happen?

In liberal polities, the activities of these voluntary associations contribute to the management of an ideologically-central boundary between individual particularity and the domain of generality/uniformity held to be appropriate for “State” or “Government” programs.

This takes one form when the principle of minimalism governs the domain of uniformity; private associations complement and extend public benefits (however inadequately and reluctantly).

A quite different dynamic takes hold with the political project of expanding the domain of government social support . . .Slide16

The “fingers of the state”

The expansion of the scale of public support – “rolling in the categories” – brings the problem of particularization/individualization into the domain of generality.

“Many Hands” is a metaphor for thinking about a particular French state of the 1980s, which was also the source of the metaphor of nonprofit organizations as the “fingers” of the state.

Socialist turn to

autogestion

.

Challenges the stability of the “summating concepts” or “illusory general interest” that is linked to processes of

legitimation

.Slide17

Implications for thinking about “state-ness”

Speaks to the implications of two ways of unpacking the stylized coherence of the “

Weberian

” state

As networks or infrastructures of power (Mann,

Balogh

)

As combinations of governing arrangements and a cultural element (a state illusion or effect)

This effect is typically linked to a “summating concept” (

Nettl

) or “

illusory common

interest” (Engels)

The activity of voluntary associations at the boundaries of the state suggest the importance of holding on to the second of these insights.

State-building as both an organizational and an ideological project.

This double nature, in turn, generates a distinctive dynamic of political conflict, change, and development.