Anthropology / Sociology at EOU

Number of credits: 5

Instructor: Bill Grigsby

Course time(s): every fall term, at either 9 or 10 am

General Education: Does not fulfill gen-ed requirements

Catalog description: Analysis of the concept of social welfare including an introduction to the nature of government and voluntary programs and the services provided by them, as well as their theory, principles, and methods.

Prerequisites: None, but Soc 204 or 205 is recommended, and college level reading and writing ability is expected.

Website: www.eou.edu/socwelf

Most recent syllabus: Fall 2007

Recent textbooks used:

• Barbara Ehrenreich. 2001. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting by in America. New York: Owl Books.
• Sharon Hays. 2003. Flat broke, with children. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Karen Seccombe. 1997. So you think I drive a Cadillac? Boston: Allwyn and Bacon.
• Bradley Schiller. 2001. The economics of poverty and discrimination. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

General topics covered: history of welfare; inequality and poverty; welfare theory; low-wage work; family; social insurance programs; stigmatization of the poor; means-tested programs; private/non-profit/public welfare; corporate welfare

Course objectives

1. be exposed to the historical context of social welfare in the United States.
2. be familiar with the various types of public social welfare programs and policies.
3. be able to critically evaluate political arguments surrounding social welfare programs.
4. examine the relationships between poverty, inequality and low-wage work.
5. become familiar with welfare reforms begun in the mid 1990s, and their impacts.

Social welfare can be broadly defined as social intervention designed to enhance or maintain human welfare. That's pretty broad, and could include things like police and fire services (in fact multinational energy companies might say they're in the welfare business with that sort of eligibility requirement). Most of the time we limit this to interventions designed to improve the lives or situations of the distressed and the disadvantaged. You can probably think of various populations that would meet these requirements-people and families falling below the poverty line, victims of natural disasters, refugees seeking asylum from political persecution, migrant farm workers, disabled persons, the elderly, parolees from corrections, the unemployed, people without housing, children who've been removed from their homes, AIDS patients, victims of sexual assault, etc. For each of these groups of people, there may be public, private or non-profit resources, agencies or programs available to help meet their needs. Social welfare is also a politically charged arena, especially in the U.S. where many believe that people are responsible for their own circumstances in life, and government shouldn't be in the business of 'providing handouts.' A more structural argument contends that many people are in fact the victims-whether intended or unintended-of unresponsive, distorted or underfunded government policies that reflect the power of wealth, elite groups and corporations with greater political influence over decision makers, who are often far removed from the harsh realities of people living below the poverty line. Consider: government budgets are generally growing faster than people's incomes. Conservatives use this as a rallying cry for reducing the size of government; liberals will say 'do you think it's a coincidence?'