Poverty in Common : The Politics of Community Action during the American Century

Alyosha Goldstein

ISBN 10: 0822351811 / ISBN 13: 9780822351818

Published by Duke University Press Mär 2012, 2012

About this Item

Neuware - Alyosha Goldstein is Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Seller Inventory # 9780822351818

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Poverty in Common : The Politics of Community Action during the American Century
• Publisher: Duke University Press Mär 2012
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822351811
• ISBN 13: 9780822351818
• Binding: Taschenbuch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 231W x 155H x 23D millimeters 231 millimeters width by 155 millimeters height by 23 millimeters depth
• Weight: 540 grams

About this title

Synopsis

After the Second World War, the idea that local community action was indispensable for the alleviation of poverty was broadly embraced by US policymakers, social scientists, international development specialists, and grassroots activists. Governmental efforts to mobilize community action in the name of democracy served as a volatile condition of possibility for poor people and dispossessed groups negotiating the tension between calls for self-help and demands for self-determination in the era of the Cold War and global decolonization. In Poverty in Common, Alyosha Goldstein suggests new ways to think about the relationship among liberalism, government, and inequality in the United States. He does so by analyzing historical dynamics including Progressive-era reform as a precursor to community development during the Cold War, the ways that the language of "underdevelopment" articulated ideas about poverty and foreignness, the use of poverty as a crucible of interest group politics, and radical groups' critical reframing of community action in anticolonial terms. During the mid-twentieth century, approaches to poverty in the United States were linked to the racialized and gendered negotiation of boundaries—between the foreign and the domestic, empire and nation, violence and order, and dependency and autonomy.

About the Author

Alyosha Goldstein is Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.