Volume 54, No. 4, Winter 1995
The Single-Parent Family, Child Poverty, and Welfare Reform
Janet M. Fitchen
Key words: children, family, poverty, welfare, USA, New York
Although more than one-fifth of America's children are living in poverty, the current public and political dialogue is not focusing on underlying causes of poverty, but on reforming the welfare system and reducing welfare costs. In this context, "the single-parent family" has been identified as the problem and the target of reform. Fieldwork among low-income families in upstate New York provides data that challenge the politically popular paradigm of the "the single-parent family," and questions the appropriateness of this focus in current welfare reform planning. Unstructured interviews, focus groups, and residential history questionnaires exposed dimensions of temporality, process, and values often ignored in studies of poor families. The research found important variations among low-income families with a single resident parent, and showed that the monolithic concept of "the single-parent family" is inadequate and misleading. These points were further explored in reconnaissance research conducted in high-poverty communities in nine other states. This dispersed-site study included ethnic/racial as well as regional diversity, but found similar inadequacies in the current conceptualization of single-parent families and in the marriage-based approach to welfare reform. Overall, this article argues that the single-parent family paradigm is inadequate as description, explanation, and basis for policy.
The Elusive Enclave: Ethnicity, Class, and Nationality among Latino Entrepreneurs in Greater Washington, DC
Patricia R. Pessar
Key words: ethnicity, Latinos, immigrant entrepreneurship, USA, Greater Washington, DC
In much of the social science literature on immigrant entrepreneurship and ethnic enclaves, social solidarity among coethnics is assumed rather than substantiated. Immigrants are portrayed as constituting ethnic communities based on organic solidarity with little of the asymmetry, exploitation, and individualism characterizing the host society. This study of Latino entrepreneurs in Greater Washington, DC insists that rather than assuming the existence of social solidarity among immigrants, it is best to delineate those historical, social, and cultural factors which facilitate or impede its development. Among those factors which have constrained the creation of social solidarity and an ethnic enclave among Washington, DC's Latinos is the existence of marked divisions based on social class and nationality. In contrast to prevailing views, this study concludes that the forging of ethnic solidarity is not at all an easy accomplishment nor is it necessarily desired by all immigrants.
The Paradoxical World of Daily Domestic Workers in Cali, Colombia
Afaf I. Meleis and Pilar Bernal
Key words: domestic workers, women's roles, labor, Cali, Colombia
An overwhelming majority of domestic workers in most of the world are women, but domestic work is largely invisible and devalued. A women's roles approach was used to describe and analyze the satisfying and stressful aspects of the domestic work role for a randomly stratified sample (N=60) of women who worked as daily domestic workers in Cali, a large metropolitan city in Colombia, South America. Women in these jobs are satisfied with several aspects of the job such as working hours, congruency between the work and their interests, and temporary economic support. We also describe the overload and inflexible scheduling imposed upon them, the deep sense of economic insecurity, and the mistreatment experienced by these women, whose strength is demonstrated in the variety of strategies they use to cope with their work situation. We argue that these jobs are necessary for the women who do them, as well as for those women who need them done, yet the needs of these working women have been neglected and their work has neither been valued nor regulated.
There Are No Free Gifts! Social Support and the Need for Reciprocity
Holly Ann Williams
Key words: reciprocity, social support, USA
Few discussions of aid or social support address the feelings that such support engenders in the support recipients. Yet receipt of the support creates an emotional cost for the recipient and alters his/her perceived status as an independent member of a social group. This paper presents findings from a larger study of 202 African American and White parents of children with cancer, focusing on social support, social networks, and coping. Most discussions of social support highlight affective support and its relationship to psychological outcomes. Rarely are charitable gifts to individuals mentioned in the literature. Although both affective and material support are discussed in this paper, the data focus primarily on the financial support that was given to the parents as a tangible form of social support. Using Sahlins's model of reciprocity, I argue that the normal patterns of exchanges alter due to the pressing needs of providing support to those experiencing a crisis. I focus on the responses of the recipient and propose that an additional form of reciprocity operates where the support recipient returns the favor to a new person in need. I call this type of reciprocity "stepwise reciprocity." My findings suggest that the need and desire to reciprocate is a generalized feeling that cuts across gender, race, and socioeconomic distinctions. Applied anthropologists work in a variety of settings in which we can begin to target interventions that address this facet of the support process.
Historical Transformation of a Grassroots Environmental Group
Kelly D. Alley, Charles E. Faupel, and Conner Bailey
Key words: Grassroots environmentalism, hazardous waste, resistance, USA, Alabama, Sumter County
This paper examines the historical transformation of a grassroots environmental group in Alabama's Black belt soils region. This group, known as Alabamians for a Clean Environment (ACE) formed with the specific purpose of closing down the nation's largest hazardous waste landfill just outside the town of Emelle in Sumter County. An examination of the agenda and activities of this group and the careers of its core members reveals struggles to maneuver the public right to know within entrenched economic and regulatory contingencies. While generating knowledge about national networks of waste disposal and the risks associated with them, ACE members crossed spatial locales and juggled national with local agendas. By tracing the professional development of these members as they moved from homefront to other sites of grassroots struggle, this paper outlines the marginal position ACE cultivated in local waste politics and the alliances they made with translocal networks.
Reconciling Perceptions of Career Advancement with Organizational Change: A Case from General Motors
Crysta J. Metcalf and Elizabeth D. Briody
Key words: organizational change, career advancement, career perceptions, General Motors, USA
Little attention has been given in the literature to the effects of corporate restructuring on the career mobility and career perceptions of organization "survivors." Employees remaining with the firm typically exhibit career mobility concerns since they anticipate that fewer job opportunities will exist, particularly within the managerial tier. Past research has neither compared actual career moves with employee perceptions of thosemoves, nor adequately emphasized perceptions of career mobility. This report examines the effects of a mid-1980s downsizing on sales and service employees in one General Motors division. Our results suggest that employee perceptions were rooted in past career path patterns. Because of this reliance on past behavior and the accuracy of the perceptions of past career movement, the majority continued to believe that they would advance in their careers. We discovered the longer an employee was associated with any given position, the less likely he/she was to anticipate future career movement (p<0.01). Perceptions of career mobility change only when employees are personally affected by the restructuring; ideological change for the majority of organization members not only follows change in organizational structure, but actually lags behind it.
Fisher Scientists: The Reconstruction of Scientific Discourse
Priscilla Weeks
Key words: fisheries, discourse, science, USA, Texas
Scientific models of resource management underpin laws and regulations designed to protect animal and plant species by restricting potentially harmful human activities. The relationship between science and policy problematizes the scientific models on which regulations are based, making them the focal point for political controversies. This article studies the reconstruction and mobilization of research science by Texas oyster fishers to fight regulations which they perceive as harmful to their livelihoods.
Fisheries along the Eastern Black Sea Coast of Turkey: Informal Resource Management in Small-scale Fishing in the Shadow of a Dominant Capitalist Fishery
StŒle Knudsen
Key words: fisheries, management, Turkey, Black Sea
Since the 1950s the Turkish Black Sea fisheries have been developing at a rapid pace. An important sector of small-scale fishing has evolved, parallel with the growth in the dominant capital intensive and technologically advanced fishing fleet. This article will illuminate relationships between the recent historic developments of the fisheries and the present management systems, especially as pertains to small-scale fishing. While lacking a historical tradition and legitimization, there have nevertheless evolved some forms of informal regulation in certain kinds of small-scale fishing during the last 20-30 years. This situation gives a unique opportunity to study which factors are decisive in producing the system. At one level, the informal regulations in small-scale fishing can be regarded as a self-contained system. On the other hand, the technological and economic discrepancy between small-scale fishing and capitalistic fishing is paralleled by a social and cultural closeness that limits the scope of these regulations. In a situation with increasing resource crises, small-boat fishermen's ability to secure a livelihood is threatened by possible limitations on their present levy to regulate access to marine resources in an informal way among themselves.
Rotating Credit Associations in Nepal: Dhikuri as Capital, Credit, Saving, and Investment
Ram B. Chhetri
Rotating Credit Associations (RCAs) such as Dhikuris, are becoming common among different groups of people in urban as well as rural areas of Nepal today. In this article, cases of Dhikuri among the Loba of Mustang, the Tibetan refugees, and the businesspeople in the urban center of Pokhara are discussed. Besides, examples of revolving fund management among forest user groups in the hills of Nepal are also presented. The case materials make it evident that Dhikuris and similar organizations in Nepal have performed different types of roles among various groups of people as instruments of capital, credit, saving, investment, and mutual support or exchange. Since banks have yet to extend their services to meet the needs of most of the people in the country, such informal institutions as the RCAs in Nepal have a vital role to play as subsidiaries to the formal institutions of banking and credit.
Family Planning Outreach and Credit Programs in Rural Bangladesh
Sidney Ruth Schuler and Syed M. Hashemi
Key words: credit, family planning, women, Bangladesh
Results of this recent study in rural Bangladesh suggest that programs that draw women out of their homes and reduce their dependence on men are contributing to greater use of contraception. One such program, Grameen Bank, now has female members in nearly half of all Bangladesh villages. Participation in the program was found to be associated with high levels of contraceptive use even among women who have not been exposed to family planning outreach. For nonparticipants in communities where the program works, the combination of home visits by female family planning workers and the presence of Grameen Bank in the village appears to have a dramatic effect on contraceptive use.
Life Stories of the Terminally Ill: Therapeutic and Anthropological Paradigms
Laurie J. Price
Key words: life review, life history, terminal illness, hospice, USA, North Carolina
Nurses and counselors at Hospice in North Carolina noticed that terminally ill clients often tell life stories to caregivers and family. Hospice wanted to sensitize staff members to recognize, respect, and respond effectively. I co-directed a project to videotape four Hospice clients reviewing their lives. Subsequently, we held a conference where academics and health care providers shared perspectives on life story. With story narration, the teller can symbolically transcend dependencies and isolation associated with terminal diagnosis. Hospice staff emphasized therapeutic aims in life review, believing that negotiation about life experience can help clients resolve problematic feelings. This article explores resolution of tensions between a therapeutic paradigm and an anthropological priority of maximizing storyteller autonomy. In addition, the analysis explores potential pitfalls of anthropological praxis in such projects. If life review becomes reimbursable, cultural and economic forces may reify and deform stories into a commodity. We should guard against transformations that undermine narrator autonomy.
Gender and Migration: The Readjustment of Women Migrants in Barbados, Ireland, and Newfoundland
George Gmelch and Sharon Bohn Gmelch
Key words: gender, return migration, Barbados, Ireland, Newfoundland, Canada
Significant gender differences were found in the satisfaction and readjustment of return migrants to Barbados, Ireland, and Newfoundland. In all three societies, women were less satisfied than men to be "home." The greater dissatisfaction among women appears to stem from their limited employment opportunities and a range of social factors.
Commentary: Mississippi Shrimpers' Unions Again: Facts, Figures and Misrepresentations
E. Paul Durrenberger
