Results by title
5 books match the query 'Relief'
Becoming Entitled
Relief, Unemployment, and Reform during the Great DepressionAbigail Trollinger
Temple University Press, 2020
In the 1930s, the unemployed were organizing. Jobless workers felt they were “entitled" to a new kind of government protection—the protection from undeserved unemployment and the financial straits that such unemployment created. They wanted dignified forms of relief (including work relief) during the Depression, and unemployment insurance after.
Becoming Entitled artfully chronicles the emergence of this worker entitlement and the people who cultivated it. Abigail Trollinger focuses largely on Chicago after the Progressive Era, where the settlement house and labor movements both flourished. She shows how reformers joined workers and relief officials to redeem the unemployed and secure government-funded social insurance for them. Becoming Entitled also offers a critical reappraisal of New Deal social and economic changes, suggesting that the transformations of the 1930s came from reformers in the “middle,” who helped establish a limited form of entitlement for workers.
Ultimately, Trollinger highlights the achievements made by reformers working on city- and nation-wide issues. She captures the moment when some people shed the stigma that came with unemployment and demanded that the government do the same.
Between Rebels and Relief
Negotiating Humanitarian Access in the Democratic Republic of the CongoMyfanwy James
University of Michigan Press, 2027
Between Rebels and Relief follows the frontline humanitarians who negotiate access with rebel groups in North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, to foreground the work of local aid workers who are the backbone of humanitarian operations. Myfanwy James examines how global endeavors are built on the personal networks, knowledge, and skills of local personnel who are rarely given credit. Based on ethnographic research on Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), James uncovers the brokerage, translation, and creative identity work that keeps medical relief operations running, and the crucial role of locally hired staff in navigating violent political terrains and building trust with armed groups.
Humanitarian agencies draw upon the personal profiles of different staff who learn to position themselves strategically for different audiences, casting and recasting themselves as a form of tactical agency in uncertain violent terrains. Identities are put to work—they become tools, influencing who can wield power, who can gain trust, and who is at particular risk of violence. Yet this produces a central paradox: To uphold a universalist mandate, humanitarian organizations leverage and reproduce the very borders between people—of race, gender, ethnicity, and personal history—that their egalitarian values seek to transcend.
Citizens and Paupers
Relief, Rights, and Race, from the Freedmen's Bureau to WorkfareChad Alan Goldberg
University of Chicago Press, 2008
Citizens and Paupers explores this contentious history by analyzing and comparing three major programs: the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Works Progress Administration, and the present-day system of workfare that arose in the 1990s. Each of these overhauls of the welfare state created new groups of clients, new policies for aiding them, and new disputes over citizenship—conflicts that were entangled in racial politics and of urgent concern for social activists.
This combustible mix of racial tension and social reform continues to influence how we think about welfare, and Citizens and Paupers is an invaluable analysis of the roots of the debate.
Saving San Francisco
Relief and Recovery after the 1906 DisasterAndrea Rees Davies
Temple University Press, 2011
Combining the experiences of ordinary people with urban politics and history, Saving San Francisco challenges the long-lived myth that the 1906 disaster erased social differences as it leveled the city. Highlighting new evidence from San Francisco’s relief camps, Andrea Rees Davies shows that as policy makers directed various forms of aid to groups and projects that enjoyed high social status before the disaster, the widespread need and dislocation created opportunities for some groups to challenge biased relief policy. Poor and working-class refugees organized successful protests, while Chinatown business leaders and middle-class white women mobilized resources for the less privileged. Ultimately, however, the political and financial elite shaped relief and reconstruction efforts and cemented social differences in San Francisco.
Wood Engraving
The Art of Wood Engraving and Relief EngravingBarry Moser
Brandeis University Press, 2021
Written and illustrated by master wood engraver Barry Moser, this primer on the art of wood engraving is filled with valuable knowledge including how to prepare a printing block; how to think in the medium’s properties of line, shape, and ink; and how to transfer a drawing onto a block. It also offers practical advice on which tools to use for a project and which ink works best. A highly illustrated guide to this art form, Wood Engraving will be useful to experienced and beginner engravers alike. This book features stunning examples of Moser’s art and skill to admire and inspire.