The second part of a MOOC created by Alice Kessler-Harris, past director of CSSD's working group on Social Justice After the Welfare State and Professor of American History Emerita at Columbia University, was recently launched by Columbia and the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society. "Women Have Always Worked: The U.S. Experience 1700 – 1920" started this past fall and is available free to the public. View the MOOC here.
Alice Kessler-Harris' "Women Have Always Worked" MOOC Launched
The first part of the "Women Have Always Worked" MOOC (massive open online course), led by Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History Emerita at Columbia University and former project director of CSSD's Social Justice After the Welfare State, was recently launched on the edX platform.
The Women Have Always Worked course is the first full-length MOOC on the history of women in America and is free and open to the public. A joint venture between Columbia University and the Center for Women’s History at the New-York Historical Society, the course introduces students to historians’ work to uncover the place of women and gender in America’s past.
Read the full story here.
CSSD Co-sponsors Dissent Issue Launch Concerning the Feminist Movement's Response to Trump Presidency
Dissent magazine’s editors and contributors are gathering Tuesday, November 22, 6:30 p.m. at The New School for an issue launch focused on the challenges feminists will face under a Trump presidency, and how feminist movements can fight back.
One contributor to the discussion is Premilla Nadasen, Associate Professor of History at Barnard College and co-director of CSSD's working group on Social Justice After the Welfare State.
Others speaking are Dawn Foster, Ann Snitow, and Sarah Leonard. Dawn Foster is a London-based writer on politics, social affairs, and economics, and the author of Lean Out (Repeater, 2016). Ann Snitow, a co-founder of the Network of East-West Women, is a professor of Literature and was the Director of Gender Studies from 2006 to 2012 at The New School. Her most recent book is The Feminism of Uncertainty: A Gender Diary (Duke University Press, 2015). Sarah Leonard is a senior editor at the Nation and co-editor of The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for a New Century (Macmillan, 2016). She is a contributing editor to Dissent and the New Inquiry.
A flyer for the event says "A virulent misogynist is now president of the United States. He has bragged about sexually assaulting women, threatened to repeal abortion rights, and will refuse to protect transgender individuals from discrimination. His proposals to ban immigrants, reject refugees he deems “terrorists,” and cut federal climate spending will have serious consequences for everyone, especially women. And if he follows through on his promise to "bomb the shit" out of countries he deems his enemies, women abroad will suffer too."
The event is co-sponsored by Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, The New School; CSSD; and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality, Columbia University.
See the Facebook event page here.
Alice Kessler-Harris Receives American Historical Association Award
Alice Kessler-Harris, R. Gordon Hoxie Professor of American History Emerita of American History at Columbia University and director of the CSSD project on "Social Justice After the Welfare State," recently received an American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction to senior historians for lifetime achievement.
Kessler-Harris specializes in the history of American labor and the comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of women and gender.
Premilla Nadasen Publishes Article on the Clinton Administration's Criminalization and Racialization of the Poor
Premilla Nadasen, project co-director for CSSD's working group Social Justice After the Welfare State and Visiting Associate Professor of History at Barnard College, recently published an article in Jacobin Magazine explaining how the Clinton Administration simultaneously criminalized and racialized poverty by enacting two extremely detrimental policies.
President Bill Clinton's "systematic overhaul of federal policy...led to the criminalization of the welfare poor," writes Nadasen, citing the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which allocated billions of dollars for prison construction and intensified police surveillance.
Similarly, the 1996 welfare reform act reduced welfare rolls by drawing on stereotypes of black women and families being bound to a culture of poverty, charges Nadasen.
"In an era of market worship, those who couldn’t demonstrate self-reliance or independence were identified not only as unworthy of assistance, but as a potential threat to the core institutions of American society," concludes Nadasen.
Read the full article here.
Premilla Nadasen's "Household Workers Unite" Draws Positive Reviews in Feminist, Trade, Mainstream Press
Strong reviews from feminist, trade, and mainstream press for Premilla Nadasen's Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement. Nadasen is Associate Professor of History at Barnard College and co-director of CSSD's working group on Social Justice After the Welfare State.
Deesha Philyaw in Bitch Magazine wrote that Household Workers Unite is the story of "the help" helping themselves while Kirkus Reviews claimed, "Valuable for its recovery of a largely neglected piece of labor history, particularly one in which race, class, immigration, and gender intersect, this work may prove most useful as a how-to guide for those looking to effect change in the landscape of the new economy."
In The American Prospect, Rachel Cohen wrote that "Nadasen’s book is a powerful reminder that 20th century activism, led by some truly incredible women, has helped to make our present-day victories possible."
Ms. Magazine's Michelle Chen wrote that "Nadasen’s account comes at a particularly relevant moment. Domestic-worker activism is experiencing a renaissance today, as housekeepers, nannies and other care workers campaign for labor protections like overtime pay and paid sick leave."
Sara Catterall wrote in Shelf Awareness that "Nadasen overturns the popular image of African American domestic workers in the mid-20th century as passive caretakers and victims. Instead, she shows that they redefined domestic work as a profession deserving decent pay, proper training and respect, and built influential local and national labor organizations. Household Workers Unite adds a significant contribution to the history and ongoing discussions of labor organization, feminism and civil rights."
Purchase the book here.
Christian Lammert on "Welfare and Citizenship: The Pillars of Social Cohesion"
PUBLIC LECTURE:
Wednesday, November 5th, 5pm in 754 Schermerhorn Extension.
Christian Lammert, Professor for North American Politics at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, will speak about the relationship between welfare and democracy—a question central to contemporary transatlantic debates surrounding capitalism, austerity, and inequality.
Over the course of the twentieth century in the United States and Europe, the social bargaining process we call welfare integrated capital and labor in ways that had a profound impact on political participation and legitimacy. Examining social policy and citizenship in a comparative framework, Christian Lammert, Professor for North American Politics at the John F. Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin, will speak to the relationship between welfare and democracy—a question central to contemporary transatlantic debates surrounding capitalism, austerity, and inequality. Please join us in 754 Schermerhorn Extension on November 5th at 5PM for an enlightening lecture on this topic.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - 5:00pm
754 Schermerhorn Extension
WORKSHOP: Shifting Notions of Social Citizenship: The “Two Wests”
What is the welfare state? What happens when it disintegrates? What is the future of the family in light of its historical transformation?
Scholars and graduate students from research universities in the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway convened to answer these questions during the Shifting Notions of Social Citizenship: The “Two Wests” workshop, held June 11-13, 2014 at the Columbia Global Center | Paris.
What constitutes a welfare state?
Maurizio Vaudagna chaired the opening session with welcoming addresses delivered by Brunhilde Biebuyck (Columbia Global Centers|Paris), Marc Lazar (Institut d’Études Politiques), and Raffaella Baritono (University of Bologna-CISPEA). Alice Kessler-Harris presented introductory remarks that asked participants to answer the elementary question, “What constitutes a welfare state?” Kessler-Harris showed how setting conceptual limits around the welfare state are made difficult by the variety of its present-day obligations.
Papers in the first session took up the definitional challenge by thinking about the concepts that undergird the intellectual production of the welfare state in the European Union and in comparative context between the United States and Sweden. Vincent Michelot (SciencesPo Lyon) chaired presentations by Maurizio Ferrera (University of Milan), Ann Shola Orloff (Northwestern University), and a research group that conducted a longue durée analysis of the welfare state in France and the United Kingdom, rooting the welfare state’s earliest beginnings in the 17th century and well before industrial capitalism supplanted mercantilism. Ferrera outlined the intellectual and political roots of the European Union idea, suggesting that a “neo-Weberian” typology offered solutions to the intractable differences between ideas about national sovereignty and the EU’s political and economic superstructure. Orloff examined “gendered policy formation” and rebutted arguments that the state simply reinforced paternalism as too simplistic. Orloff’s analysis challenged participants to think about how historically changing definitions of gender changed social policy and vice-versa.
What happens when safety nets go?
Day two opened with the question, “What happens when safety nets go?” Donna Kesselman (University Paris Est Créteil) chaired presentations by Christian Lammert (Free University of Berlin), Beatrix Hoffman (Northern Illinois University), and Sébastien Chauvin (University of Amsterdam). Lammert argued that in the process of re-commodification, the visibility of the welfare state’s provision in people’s lives diminishes, which undermines public support for these programs. The results are pernicious for democracy because as people are forced back into the labor market and forced to accept a shrinking safety net, their level of political participation also declines. Hoffman dug into the problem of healthcare in the welfare state by comparing citizen participation for health reform in Spain and the United States. Hoffman showed how Spain’s generous healthcare provision has failed to embrace the healthcare needs of a growing number of immigrations and how the United States has become increasingly less responsive to the demands of civil rights organizations, especially after hospital closures zipped through urban neighborhoods during the 1970s and 1980s. Chauvin answered the question from the perspective of precarious labor and the growing exploitation of contingent—not temporary—workers. Through participant-observation in two contingent work dispatch centers in Chicago, Chauvin asserted that the idea of “temp work” is a fiction because precarious workers often develop long-term relationships with a small number of employers.
The Future of the Family
The next session envisioned the future of the family. Mario Del Pero (Institut d’Études Politiques) chaired presentations by Chiara Saraceno (University of Turin), Robert O. Self (Brown University), and Laura Lee Downs (European University Institute, Florence). Saraceno argued that the EU forces a plural acknowledgement of different family forms and that family and family policy are not one and the same. Civil regulation regarding the family contains variety, but remain attuned to traditional conceptions of the family. Self argued that the push for the reconstruction of the welfare state after the 1960s came mostly from the center left, rather than reactionary forces. The extent of social solidarity from the New Deal had been exaggerated, while the myth of the breadwinner was a social idea before it ever became an economic reality. Downs pondered the future of social protection in France by looking at the history of its colonies de vacances, holiday camps that were established for working-class children throughout the country. The extent of centralization in France meant that the diversity of political and ideological groups that participated in the state was far-reaching. At the same time, Downs shows how fiscal pressures during the 1970s and 1980s, demonstrating just how reliant all groups were on a state committed to financing social activities and opportunities to build national solidarity and to develop equality among young adults.
Possibilities of Resistance and Solutions
The last session, held on the last day of the workshop, thought about possibilities of resistance and solutions to the present-day impasses and challenges to the welfare state. Olivier Giraud (CNAM) chaired presentations by Gro Hagerman (University of Oslo), Birte Siim (Aarlborg University), Marissa Chappell (Oregon State University), and Neil Gilbert (University of California-Berkeley). Hagerman questioned whether the Norwegian and Swedish welfare states could “have it all,” arguing that the fiscal basis of both welfare states is premised on their status as resource-rich states. Siim asserted that democracy and citizenship needed articulation outside of the nation-state framework and that the rise of right-wing populism was more than just racism and constituted a serious critique about the distributional objectives of the state. Chappell’s archival research found that the Civil Rights Movement galvanized movements for greater economic citizenship among poor people; however, gender bias and racism prevented the formation of alliances. Gilbert traced how the U.S. welfare state transformed from a system of entitlement to one increasingly checked by means testing and conditionality.
The workshop concluded with Vaudagna and Kessler-Harris synthesizing the wide-ranging contributions of the speakers and the dialogic exchange that occurred between sessions. All participants left with a greater sense of the enormity of the welfare state as an object of study and the importance of comparative analysis between countries and even supranational structures of governance. The work of thinking about the welfare state in historical, social and political perspective continues.
The Columbia University Blinken European Institute and the Interuniversity Center for European-American History and Politics convened the international workshop with the support of the Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University’s Department of History, and the University of Eastern Piedmont’s Department of Human Studies.
George Aumoithe
PhD student in History at Columbia University | Graduate Fellow, Social Justice After the Welfare State Project at Columbia’s Center for the Study of Social Difference