To understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony, we compare the U.S. 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act and the English 1834 New Poor Law—two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones. Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by “the perversity thesis”—a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from “poverty to perversity.” We use the term “ideational embeddedness” to characterize the power of such ideas to shape, structure, and change market regimes. The success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism, theoretical realism, and the conversion narrative. In the poverty to perversity conversion narrative, structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves—they become sexually promiscuous, thrust aside personal responsibility, and develop longterm dependency. This claim enables market fundamentalism to delegitimate existing ideational regimes, to survive disconfirming data, and to change the terms of debate from social problems to the timeless forces of nature and biology. Coupling economic sociology with a sociology of ideas, we argue that ideas count; but not all ideas are created equal. Only some have the capacity to fuel radical transformations in the ideational embeddedness of markets.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AndersonMartin1978. Welfare: The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States.Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
2.
ApplebyJoyce1978. Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3.
ArsneaultShelly2000. “Welfare Policy Innovation and Diffusion: Section 1115 Waivers and the Federal System.”State and Local Government Review.32: 49–60.
4.
BarthesRoland1977. “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives,” in Image-Music-Text.London, England: Fontana.
5.
BermanSheri1998. The Social Democratic Moment: Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe.Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.
6.
BlankRebecca1997. It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty.New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
7.
BlaugMark1963. “The Myth of the Old Poor Law and the Making of the New.”Journal of Economic History23: 151–84.
8.
BlockFred2003. “Karl Polanyi and the Writing ofThe Great Transformation.” Theory and Society32: 275–306.
9.
BlockFredSomersMargaret2003. “In the Shadow of Speenhamland: Social Policy and the Old Poor Law.”Politics & Society31: 283–324.
10.
BlythMark2002. Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
11.
BourdieuPierre1998. Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market. Translated by NiceRichard. New York: New Press.
12.
BrewerJohn1989. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783.New York: Knopf.
13.
BrewerJohnStylesJohn eds.1980. An Ungovernable People.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
14.
BrinkleyAlan1996. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War.New York: Vintage.
15.
BrundageAnthony1978. The Making of the New Poor Law: The Politics of Inquiry, Enactment, and Implementation, 1832–1839.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
16.
BrundageAnthony2002. The English Poor Laws, 1700–1930.New York: Palgrave.
17.
CallinicosAlex2001. Against the Third Way.Cambridge, England: Polity.
18.
CamicCharlesGrossNeil2001. “The New Sociology of Ideas.” Pp. 236–250 in The Blackwell Companion to Sociology, edited by BlauJudith R.. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
19.
CampbellJohn1998. “Institutional Analysis and the Role of Ideas in Political Economy.”Theory and Society27: 377–409.
20.
CampbellJohnPedersenOve K. eds.2001. The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
21.
ColemanDonald C. ed.1969. Revisions in Mercantilism.London, England: Methuen.
22.
ColemanDonald C. ed.1980. “Mercantilism Revisited,”The Historical Journal23: 773–91.
23.
DanzigerSheldon H.GottschalkPeter1985. “The Poverty of Losing Ground.”Challenge28 (May-June): 32–38.
24.
DanzigerSheldon H.HavemanRobert H.2001. Understanding Poverty, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
25.
DavisMartha1993. Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960–1973.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
26.
DeanMitchell1991. The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance.London: Routledge.
27.
de TocquevilleAlexis [1835]1983. “Memoir on Pauperism.” Translated by Seymour Drescher. The Public Interest70 (Winter): 102–120.
28.
DigbyAnne1978. Pauper Palaces.London, England: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
29.
Domestic Policy Council Low Income Opportunity Working Group.1986. Up from Dependency: A New National Public Assistance Strategy.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
30.
DriverFelix1993. Power and Pauperism: The Workhouse System, 1834–1884.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
31.
DuncanGreg J.1984. Years of Poverty, Years of Plenty.Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research.
32.
DunkleyPeter1982. The Crisis of the Old Poor Law in England: An Interpretative Essay.New York: Garland.
33.
EllwoodDavid T.1988. Poor Support: Poverty in the American Family.New York: Basic.
34.
EllwoodDavid T.1996. “Welfare Reform As I Knew It,”The American Prospect26: 22–29.
35.
FischerWolframLundgreenPeter1975. “The Recruitment and Training of Administrative and Technical Personnel,” pp. 456–561 in The Formation of National States in Western Europe, edited by TillyC.. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
36.
FoucaultM.1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.New York: Vintage.
37.
Fourcade-GourinchasMarionBabbSarah2002. “The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries.”American Journal of Sociology108: 533–79.
38.
FraserDerek1976. ed. The New Poor Law in the Nineteenth Century.New York: St. Martin's Press.
39.
FraserNancyGordonLinda1994. “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State.”Signs19: 309–336.
40.
FraserNancyGordonLinda1998. “Contract vs Charity: Why Is There No Social Citizenship in America?” Pp 113–30 in The Citizenship Debates, edited by ShafirGershon. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
41.
FriedmanThomas1999. The Lexus and the Olive Tree.New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
42.
FurnissEdgar1920. The Position of the Laborer in a System of Nationalism: A Study in the Labor Theories of Later English Mercantilists.Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
43.
GalbraithJames K.2000. “How The Economists Got It Wrong.”The American Prospect.11: 18–20.
44.
GallagherCatherine1987. “The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew.” Pp. 83–106 in The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, edited by GallagherCatherineLaquerThomasBerkeley, CA: University of California Press.
45.
GeorgeSusan1997. “How to Win the War of Ideas: Lessons from the Gramscian Right.”Dissent44: 47–53.
46.
GilensMartin1999. Why Americans Hate Welfare.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
GueronJudithPaulyEdwardLougyCameran M.1991. From Welfare to Work.New York: Russell Sage.
49.
HallPeter ed.1989. The Political Power of Economic Ideas.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
50.
HallPeterSoskiceDavid eds.2001. Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage.Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
51.
HammondJohnHammondBarbara [1911]1970. The Village Labourer, 1760–1832.New York: Harper & Row.
52.
HandlerJoel2004. Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: The Paradox of Inclusion.New York: Cambridge University Press.
53.
HarphamEdward J.ScotchRichard K.1988. “Rethinking the War on Poverty: The Ideology of Social Welfare Reform.”Western Political Quarterly41: 193–207.
54.
HarveyPhilip1999. “Joblessness and the Law Before the New Deal.”Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law & Policy.6: 2–41.
55.
HaysSharon2003. Flat Broke with Children: Women in the Age of Welfare Reform.New York: Oxford University Press.
56.
HeckscherEli [1935]1955. Mercantilism. Translated by ShapiroMendel. New York: Macmillan.
57.
HenriquesUrsala R. Q1979. Before the Welfare State: Social Administration in Early Industrial Britain.London, England: Longman.
58.
HicksAlexander1999. Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
59.
HimmelfarbGertrude1984. The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age.New York: Knopf.
60.
HimmelsteinJerome L.1990. To the Right: The Transformation of American Conservatism.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
61.
HirschmanAlbert O.1991. The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
62.
HollanderSamuel1997. The Economics of Thomas Robert Malthus.Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
63.
HuberEvelyneStephensJohn D.2001. Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
64.
KatzMichael B.1986. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America.New York: Basic.
65.
KatzMichael B.1989. The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare.New York: Pantheon.
66.
KatzMichael B.2001. The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State.New York: Henry Holt.
67.
KeynesJohn Maynard [1936]1964. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money.New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
68.
KorpiWalterPalmeJoakim2003. “New Politics and Class Politics in the Context of Austerity and Globalization: Welfare State Regress in 18 Countries.”American Political Science Review19: 425–46.
69.
KuhnThomas1977. “A Function for Thought Experiments.” Pp 240–65 in The Essential Tension.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
70.
LakatosImre1970. “Falsif ication and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.” Pp. 91–196 in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by LakatosI.MusgraveA.. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
71.
LakoffGeorge1996Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
72.
LeesLynn1998. The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
73.
LiebermanRobert C.2002. “Ideas, Institutions, and Political Order: Explaining Political change.”American Political Science Review96: 697–712.
74.
LindertPeter1998. “Poor Relief before the Welfare State: Britain versus the Continent, 1780–1880.”European Review of Economic History2: 101–40.
75.
LukerKrisin1996. Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
76.
MacIntyreAlasdair1980. “Epistemological Crisis, Dramatic Narrative and the Philosophy of Science.” In Revolutions and Paradigms, ed. by GuttingGary. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
77.
MalthusT. R. [1798]1985. An Essay on the Principle of Population.London, England: Penguin Books.
78.
MalthusT. R. [1803]1992. An Essay on the Principle of Population.2nd Edition. Edited by WinchDonald. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
79.
MannheimKarl [1929]1986. Ideology and Utopia.New York: Anchor.
80.
MarshallT. H.1981. The Right to Welfare and Other Essays.New York: Free Press.
81.
MarshallDorothy1926. The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century.London, England: Routledge.
82.
McNamaraKathleen R.1998. The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
83.
MertonRobert K.1936. “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.”American Sociological Review1: 894–904.
84.
MicaDaniel1995. “Personal Responsibility Act of 1995.” House of Representatives, Congressional Record, March 24.
85.
MinchintonWalter F.1972. Wage Regulation in Pre-Industrial England.New York: Barnes and Noble.
86.
MishelLawrenceBernsteinJaredBousheyHeather2003. The State of Working America 2002/2003.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
87.
MurrayCharles1984. Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980.New York: Basic.
88.
MurrayCharles1986a. “White Welfare, White Families, White Trash.”National Review, March 28 pp. 30–34.
89.
MurrayCharles1986b. “No, Welfare Isn't Really the Problem.”Public Interest84: 3–11.
90.
MurrayCharles1993. “The Coming White Underclass.”Wall Street Journal, October 29.
91.
O'ConnorAlice2001. Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth- Century U.S. History.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
92.
OlaskyMarvin1992. The Tragedy of American Compassion.Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
93.
OsborneDavidGaeblerTed1993. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector.New York: Penguin.
94.
PalmerRobert1993. English Law in the Age of the Black Death, 1348–1381: A Transformation of Governance and Law.Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina.
95.
PavettiLaDonnaBloomDan2001. “State Sanctions and Time Limits.” Pp. 245–69 in The New World of Welfare, edited by BlankRebeccaHaskinsRon. Washington, DC: Brookings.
PiersonPaul1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
98.
PimpareStephen2004. The New Victorians: Poverty, Politics, and Propaganda in Two Gilded Ages.New York: New Press.
99.
PivenFrances FoxClowardRichard1993. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare.New York: Vintage.
100.
PivenFrances FoxClowardRichard1997. The Breaking of the American Social Compact.New York: New Press.
101.
PlotkeDavid1996. Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s.New York: Cambridge University Press.
102.
PolanyiKarl [1944]2001. The Great Transformation.Boston, MA: Beacon.
103.
PoynterJ.R.1969. Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795–1834.London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
104.
QuadagnoJill1994. The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty.New York: Oxford University Press.
105.
RedmanDeborah A.1997. The Rise of Political Economy as a Science: Methodology and the Classical Economists.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
106.
ReeseEllen. Forthcoming. Backlash Against Welfare Mothers: Past and Present. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
107.
RicoeurPaul1989. The Narrative Path: The Later Works of Paul Ricoeur. Edited by Peter KempT.RasmussenDavid. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
108.
Rogers-DillonRobin2004. The Welfare Experiments: Politics and Policy Evaluation.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
109.
RoseMichael1970. “The Anti-Poor Law Agitation.” Pp. 78–94 in Popular Movements c. 1830–1850, edited by WardJ. T.. London, England: Macmillan.
110.
CommissionRoyal1834. Report from His Majesty's Comissioners for Inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws.London, England: B. Fellowes.
111.
RueschemeyerDietrichSkocpolTheda eds.1996. States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
112.
SchmollerG. [1897]1989. The Mercantile System and Its Historical Significance.New York: A.M. Kelley.
113.
SchramSanford1995. Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
114.
SchramSanford2000. After Welfare: The Culture of Postindustrial Social Policy.New York: NYU Press.
115.
SchramSanford2002. Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare.New York: New York University Press.
116.
SenAmartya1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation.Oxford, England: Clarendon.
117.
ShapiroRobert Y.PattersonKelly D.RussellJudithYoungJohn T.1987. Public Opinion Quarterly51: 120–30.
118.
ShiplerDavid K.2004. The Working Poor: Invisible in America.New York: Knopf.
119.
SkocpolTheda1992. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
120.
SkocpolThedaSomersMargaret,1980. “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry.”Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22: 174–197.
121.
SmeedingTimothy M.RainwaterLeeBurtlessGary2001. “U.S. Poverty in a Cross-national Context.” Pp. 162–89 in Understanding Poverty, edited by DanzigerSheldon H.HavemanRobert H.. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
122.
SmithAdam [1776]1976. The Wealth of Nations.Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
123.
SnellK.D.M.1985. Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
124.
SolarPeter M.1995. “Poor Relief and English Economic Development before the Industrial Revolution.”Economic History Review38: 1–22.
125.
SolowRobert M.2000. “Welfare: The Cheapest Country.”New York Review of Books, March 23. Available at http://www.nybooks.com./articles/article-preview?article_id=177. Last accessed March 1, 2005.
126.
SomersMargaret R.1992. “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking Working- Class Formation.”Social Sciences History16 (4): 591–630.
127.
SomersMargaret R.1993. “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy.”American Sociological Review58: 587–620.
128.
SomersMargaret R.1994. “Rights, Relationality, and Membership: Rethinking the Making and Meaning of Citizenship.”Law and Social Inquiry19: 63–112.
129.
SomersMargaret R.1995. “Narrating and Naturalizing Civil Society and Citizenship Theory: The Place of Political Culture and the Public Sphere.”Sociological Theory13: 221–65.
130.
SomersMargaret R.1998. “We're No Angels: Realism, Rational Choice, and Relationality in Social Science.”American Journal of Sociology104: 722–84.
131.
SomersMargaret R.1999. “The Privatization of Citizenship: How to Unthink a Knowledge Culture.” Pp. 121–61 in Beyond the Cultural Turn, edited by BonnellVictoria E.HuntLynn. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
132.
SorosGeorge1998. The Crisis of Global Capitalism.New York: Public Affairs.
133.
SorosGeorge2000. Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism.New York: Public Affairs.
134.
SteinbergMarc W.1999. Fighting Words: Workingclass Formation, Collective Action and Discourse in Early Nineteenth-Century England.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
135.
SteinmetzGeorge1992. “Reflections on the Role of Social Narratives in Working-Class Formation: Narrative Theory in the Social Sciences.”Social Science History16:3 (Fall): 489–516.
136.
SteinmetzGeorge1993. Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany.Princeton: Princeton University Press.
137.
SteinmetzGeorge, ed.1998. State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn.Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
138.
StiglitzJoseph2002. Globalization and Its Discontents.New York: Norton.
139.
TelesSteven M.1998. Whose Welfare ? AFDC and Elite Politics.Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
140.
ThompsonE.1971. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd.”Past and Present50: 76–136.
141.
TillyCharles1995. Popular Contention in Great Britain 1758–1834.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
142.
TownsendJoseph [1786]1971. A Dissertation on the Poor Laws.Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
143.
ValenzeDeborah1995. The First Industrial Woman.Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
144.
WalterJohnWrightsonKeith,1976. “Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England,”Past and Present, No. 71 (May): 22–42.
145.
WeaverR. Kent2000. Ending Welfare as We Know It.Washington, DC: Brookings.
146.
WeaverR. KentShapiroRobert Y.JacobsLawrence R.1995. “The Polls-Trends: Welfare.”Public Opinion Quarterly59: 606–627.
147.
WebbSidneyWebbBeatrice1927. English Local Government: English Poor Law History: Part I: The Old Poor Law.London, England: Longmans, Green.
148.
WeberMax1969 [1922] The Sociology of Religion.Boston, MA: Beacon.
149.
WhiteHayden1987. The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation.Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
150.
WilliamsKarel1981. From Pauperism to Poverty.London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
151.
WilliamsLucy. A1996. “The Right's Attack on Aid to Families with Dependent Children.”The Public Eye (Fall/Winter): 1–18.
152.
WilsonCharles1969. “The Other Face of Mercantilism.” Pp. 73–93 in WilsonCharles, Economic History and the Historian: Collected Essays.London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
153.
WinchD.1992. “Introduction.” Pp. vii–xxiii in Malthus'sT. R.Essay on the Principle of Population, edited by WinchDonald. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
154.
WinchD.1996. Riches and Poverty: An Intellectual History of Political Economy in Britain 1750–1834.Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
155.
WrightsonKeith1980. “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen In Seventeenth-Century England.” Pp. 21–46 in An Ungovernable People, edited by BrewerJ.StylesJ.. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
156.
WrightsonKeith2000. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain.London, England: Yale University Press.
157.
WrigleyE.1983. “The Growth of Population in Eighteenth Century England: A Conundrum Resolved.”Past and Present98: 121–150.
158.
YamamuraKozoStreeckWolfgang eds.2003. The End of Diversity? Prospects for German and Japanese Capitalism.Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
159.
YoungRobert M.1969. “Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory.”Past and Present43: 109–45.
160.
ZukinSharonDiMaggioPaul1990. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–36 in Structures of Capital: The Social Organization of the Economy, edited by ZukinSharonDiMaggioPaul. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
