PostDoctoral Research Fellowship

博士后研究奖学金

• 批准号: 0512018
• 负责人: Celeste Watkins-Hayes
• 金额: $ 10万
• 依托单位: Watkins Celeste M
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2008-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0512018&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PostDoctoral; Research; Fellowship

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.

这一社会和行为少数民族博士后研究奖学金为社会科学中代表性不足的少数民族学者提供了为期两年的独立研究，总体目标是增加科学界代表性不足的群体。在第一年，研究员将重点关注最近福利政策变化后扶贫的组织动态。1996年通过的《个人责任和工作机会协调法》(PRWORA)为该国对穷人的援助定下了明确的新基调，其中之一是有时限的援助，要求福利母亲工作。贫困家庭临时援助(TANF)方案取代了对有受扶养子女的家庭的援助(AFDC)以及就业机会和基本技能培训(JOBS)方案。TANF的成立标志着联邦福利和联邦-州配对补助金的结束。很少有研究试图了解负责执行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、工作支助资源、关于社会服务的信息，以及在经济转型中的指导。使用组织理论的工具来考察福利办公室的动态，为研究扶贫开辟了一条重要的途径。TANF办公室正在进行的福利改革为这一历史性的政策转变的长期成败勾勒出了一条道路，它提供了关于机构变革、组织生活中的角色转变以及参与其中的个人往往存在争议的身份之间的关系的重要教训。因此，拟议的民族志研究纳入了对组织行为者--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提升；如何重塑或巩固；以及如何在正在转型的官僚机构中表达或沉默的分析。它评估了TANF办事处周围地区的经济和社区人口结构变化是否以及如何通过将种族、民族、阶级或社区冲突和联盟作为影响个案工作者与委托人互动的核心问题来推动内部机构动态。该项目还追溯了从1935年创建福利之前的几年到1996年福利改革后的福利工作者的支助和监督职能的谱系，以分析在某些情况下如何强调这种二元性的一个方面而不是另一个方面，这种长期的二元性如何以及为什么在今天的TANF办公室仍然存在，以及这种模式在新的福利改革下是否过时。通过深入访谈、参与者观察和对东海岸TANF两个办事处的档案研究，该项目试图展示由福利改革带来的全面制度变革如何陷入冲突，不仅围绕着目标人群应该如何转变，而且还涉及一线工作人员--作为专业人员、特定种族和阶级团体的成员，以及办事处周围社区的居民--应该如何重塑和重新阐明他们的身份。该项目假设，这种“身份工作”将TANF社会工作者的劳动方法框定下来，从而决定福利改革是如何在当地实现的。该项目将产生一本书的手稿和其他出版物，这些出版物考虑到调查结果对正在进行的关于福利政策执行的学术和公共辩论的影响，权力下放和组织变革的第一线困境，以及福利制度中长期存在的种族和阶级冲突。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。通过探索工作、家庭、育儿和人际关系等一系列社会领域，这项研究试图指明沃特金斯希望通过哪些方式帮助我们理解塑造女性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的关系。