PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

该社会和行为少数群体博士后研究奖学金为社会科学领域未被充分代表的少数群体学者提供为期两年的独立研究资金，其总体目标是增加科学领域未被充分代表的群体。在第一年，研究员将集中注意在最近福利政策发生变化之后救济贫穷的组织动态。1996年《个人责任和工作机会和解法》的通过为该国援助穷人确定了明确的新基调，这是一种有时间限制的援助，要求福利母亲工作。贫困家庭临时援助计划（TANF）取代了有受抚养子女家庭援助计划（AFDC）和工作机会和基本技能培训计划（JOBS）。TANF的创立标志着联邦津贴和联邦-州对口补助的终结。很少有研究试图了解负责实施这一广泛政策转变的一线组织内部的动态：地方福利官僚机构。数百万寻求公共援助的低收入家庭仍然经常与这些机构互动，寻求财政支持、工作支持资源、社会服务信息和经济转型指导。运用组织理论的工具来考察福利办公室的动态，为扶贫研究开辟了一条重要的途径。福利改革在TANF办公室展开的方式为这一历史性政策转变的长期成功或失败绘制了一条路线，它提供了关于制度变革、组织生活中的角色转变和所涉及的个人经常有争议的身份之间关系的重要经验。因此，拟议的民族志研究包含了对组织行动者（专业、种族、阶级和社区）所持有的一系列相互关联的身份如何受到挑战或促进的分析；凝固的：重新成形或凝固的；在正在转型的官僚机构中表达或沉默。它评估了TANF办事处周边地区的经济和社区人口变化是否以及如何通过使种族、民族、阶级或社区冲突和联盟成为影响社会工作者与客户互动的核心问题，从而推动内部制度动态。该项目还追溯了从1935年福利创建之前到1996年后福利改革的福利工作者的支持与监督职能的谱系，以分析这种二元性的一个方面如何在某些背景下被强调而不是另一个方面，这种长期存在的二元性如何以及为什么在今天的TANF办公室中仍然存在，以及这种模式在新的福利改革下是否已经过时。通过深入访谈、参与者观察和在东海岸两个TANF办公室的档案研究，该项目试图展示一场全面的制度变革，如福利改革带来的变革，是如何卷入冲突的，不仅围绕目标人群应该如何转变，而且围绕一线工人——作为专业人士、特定种族和阶级群体的成员——办公楼周边社区的居民也应该重新塑造和表达他们的身份。该项目假设，这种“身份工作”框架了TANF社会工作者对其劳动的态度，从而塑造了福利改革如何在实地实现。该项目将产生一本书手稿和其他出版物，考虑研究结果对正在进行的关于福利政策实施的学术和公众辩论的影响，权力下放和组织变革的一线困境，以及福利制度中根深蒂固的种族和阶级冲突。第二年的博士后资助支持对艾滋病毒/艾滋病对黑人妇女的社会后果进行人种学分析。通过对工作、家庭、养育子女和人际关系等一系列社会领域的探索，沃特金斯希望通过具体的一些方式，帮助我们理解影响妇女艾滋病流行经历的社会动态，以及这种疾病与使不平等永久化的社会和经济因素之间的关系。

This Social and Behavioral Minority Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship funds two years of independent research for an underrepresented minority scholar in the social sciences with the overall goal of increasing underrepresented groups in the sciences. During the first year, the Fellow will focus on the organizational dynamics of poverty relief in the wake of recent changes in welfare policies. The passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) set a definitive new tone in the country's aid to the poor, one of time-limited assistance with the requirement that welfare mothers work. The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) programs. The creation of TANF marked the end of federal entitlements and federal-state matching grants for recipients. Few studies have attempted to understand the dynamics within the front-line organizations that are responsible for the implementation of this broad policy shift: local welfare bureaucracies. Millions of low-income families who seek public assistance still frequently interact with these institutions, seeking financial support, work support resources, information about social services, and guidance in their economic transitions. Using the tools of organizational theory to examine welfare office dynamics opens an important avenue in the study of poverty relief. The ways in which welfare reform is unfolding in TANF offices charts a course for the long-term success or failure of this historic policy transformation and it provides important lessons about the relationships between institutional change, role transitions in organizational life, and the often-contested identities of the individuals involved. The proposed ethnographic research therefore, incorporates an analysis of how a range of interlocking identities held by organizational actors - professional, racial, class, and community - can be challenged or promoted; re-shaped or solidified; and articulated or silenced in bureaucracies undergoing transformation. It assesses whether and how economic and community demographic shifts in TANF offices' surrounding areas might fuel internal institutional dynamics by making racial, ethnic, class, or community conflicts and alliances central concerns that impact caseworker-client interactions. The project also traces the genealogy of the support versus surveillance functions of welfare workers from the years prior to the creation of welfare in 1935 to post-1996 welfare reform to analyze how one aspect of this duality comes to be emphasized over another in certain contexts, how and why this long-standing duality remains in present-day TANF offices, and whether this model is obsolete under the new welfare reform. Through in-depth interviews, participant-observation, and archival research in two East Coast TANF offices, the project seeks to demonstrate how a sweeping institutional change such as the one brought on by welfare reform becomes embroiled in conflict around not only how the target population should be transformed, but also about how front-line workers - as professionals, members of particular racial and class groups, and residents in the offices' surrounding communities - should re-shape and re-articulate their identities in its wake. The project hypothesizes that this "identity-work" frames TANF caseworkers' approaches to their labor, therefore shaping how welfare reform is realized on the ground. The project will lead to a book manuscript and other publications that consider the implications of the findings for ongoing academic and public debates on welfare policy implementation, the front-line dilemmas of devolution and organizational change, and the persistent racial and class conflicts embedded in the welfare system. Post-doctoral funding for the second year supports an ethnographic analysis of the social consequences of HIV/AIDS for Black women. By exploring a range of social domains such as work, family, parenting, and relationships, the study seeks to specify some of the ways in which Watkins hopes to contribute to our understanding of the social dynamics that shape women's experiences with the AIDS epidemic and the disease's relationship to the social and economic factors that perpetuate inequality.