Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Politics of Help Seeking in Marginalized Populations

在一个热衷于新教职业道德理想的社会里，向政府寻求帮助的人，往好了说，被视为无法控制环境的被动受害者，往坏了说，被视为靠诚实的纳税人过日子的无能的搭便车者。这两种描述都不适合将寻求帮助者概念化为受限制但可行的政治行为者。然而，不能或不能通过投票等传统政治途径行使权力的弱势群体，能够在分配关键资源的地方机构内采取政治行动(SOSS 2000)。如果我们忽视这些潜在的政治舞台，那么我们就关闭了一种更彻底地了解我们社会中最弱势群体的日常政治的可能性。该项目将审查地方官僚机构内的政治参与，这些机构特别融入边缘化人群的生活。这些机构提供基本商品和服务，如住房援助、儿童保育券、补充收入和失业补偿。对于那些全神贯注于维持体面生活水平的根本任务的人来说，这样的机构可能是至关重要的，不仅是作为生存场所，而且是可以刺激一系列政治交流、谈判和行动的空间，可以被视为“寻求帮助的政治”。这项研究的核心有三个重要问题：种族和经济上处于边缘地位的个人如何在政治上与他们寻求帮助的官僚机构接触，以满足他们的日常需求？这种努力如何受到个人特征以及官僚和邻里环境的更大结构动态的影响？在这些情况下，公民参与对个人和机构都会产生哪些更广泛的政治后果？该项目将采用定性和定量的方法来回答这些问题。在质量方面，该项目将结合对地方官僚机构的人种学观察与对官僚机构“客户”和工人的精选深度访谈。在数量方面，该项目将对中低收入的白人、黑人和拉丁裔芝加哥人进行原始调查，并对选定的地方官僚机构进行组织调查。通过探索寻求帮助的政治，该项目试图从理论上洞察贫困社区中机构和结构之间的相互作用。尽管目标人口是少数群体，但政策制定者必须了解他们是如何以及在什么情况下进入政治舞台的，他们希望确保官僚结构不会成为人们利用政府提供的福利的障碍。

In a society acutely invested in the ideal of the Protestant work ethic, people who turn to the government for help are seen, at best, as passive victims of uncontrollable circumstances and, at worst, as shiftless free riders living off the dime of upstanding taxpayers. Neither of these portrayals lends itself to conceptualizing help seekers as constrained yet viable political actors. Nonetheless, disadvantaged groups that cannot or do not exert power via traditional political avenues, such as voting, are capable of taking political action within local institutions that distribute critical resources (Soss 2000). If we ignore these potential political arenas, then we close off one possibility for more thoroughly understanding the everyday politics of those most vulnerable in our society. This project will examine political participation within local bureaucratic institutions that are particularly embedded in the lives of marginalized people. These institutions supply essential goods and services such as housing assistance, child care vouchers, supplemental income and unemployment compensation. For people who are preoccupied with the fundamental task of maintaining a decent standard of living, such institutions can be crucial, not only as sites of subsistence, but as spaces that can stimulate a range of political exchanges, negotiations and actions which one can consider as the "politics of help seeking." There are three important questions at the heart of this research: How do racially and economically marginal individuals engage politically with the bureaucratic institutions that they turn to for help in meeting their daily needs? How are such efforts affected by individual characteristics as well as by the larger structural dynamics of bureaucratic and neighborhood contexts? What are the broader political consequences of citizen participation in these contexts both for individuals and for institutions? The project will employ both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer these questions. On the qualitative end, the project will combine ethnographic observation of local bureaucracies with selected in-depth interviews of bureaucratic "clients" and workers. On the quantitative end, the project will conduct an original survey of low to moderate income white, black, and Latino Chicagoans as well as an organizational survey of select local bureaucracies. By exploring the politics of help seeking, the project seeks to gain theoretical insight into the interplay between agency and structure in poor communities. Although the targeted populations are numerical minorities, awareness of how and under what circumstances they enter into the political arena is imperative for policymakers concerned with ensuring that bureaucratic structures are not obstacles for people taking advantage of benefits provided to them by their government.