Scholars Award: Insecurity: Disability, the Great Depression, and the New Deal State

该项目研究残疾公民身体的社会和科学框架如何塑造新政者的努力，以减轻大萧条造成的痛苦，并影响长期的经济安全。新政推动了州的发展，改变了美国人对联邦政府的期望。这项研究旨在揭示能力，无能和残疾的看法如何引导这种增长。它分析了有关残疾和政策的想法，同时调查和集中残疾美国人的实际经验，他们越来越多地成为政策的对象，旨在纠正，遏制，理解和消除他们身份的核心要素。在大萧条期间，残疾人经常遭受极端贫困，因为经济紧缩允许雇主进一步缩小工作的身体条件，但医生和社会科学家对如何最好地解决残疾问题提出了相互矛盾的想法。新政制定的大多数政策反应都将残疾人作为照顾和研究的对象，而残疾人自己往往也在寻找工作机会。这种对残疾人的关注为联邦政府提供医疗保健以及为医生、卫生保健工作者和广泛的科学家和社会科学家影响政策创造了新的途径。新政制定的许多政策，以解决残疾问题，并告知他们的想法，继续塑造残疾美国人的生活。虽然随着时间的推移不断完善和扩展，但新政者为处理残疾问题而设想、创建和实施的基本系统仍然存在。美国经济和社会的大部分不可接近性--政策、未满足的需求和导致残疾人经济和社会边缘化的潜在思想--也仍然存在。这些想法和制度塑造了残疾美国人继续经历的不平等：残疾美国人的收入明显低于非残疾同龄人，生活在贫困中的可能性是非残疾同龄人的两倍多。此外，残疾美国人完成高中或大学学业的可能性明显低于非残疾成年人。今天，残疾人约占美国人口的19%，是美国最大的少数群体，也是唯一一个任何人都有可能在任何时候加入的少数群体。这项研究旨在了解这些系统是如何以及为什么建立的，这些知识将有助于改善现有系统或开发新系统，以促进残疾人更好地融入经济。利用广泛的档案和政府文件，该项目旨在将新政的残疾历史带入公共领域，以告知和背景化重大的当代辩论，并通过使我们已经走过的道路变得清晰来帮助照亮有用的前进道路。新政建立了现代美国州与其最大的少数民族的关系。只有通过与新政的持续遗产接触，美国才能制定政策，实现新政的经济安全承诺。该项目由STS和刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project researches how the social and scientific framing of disabled citizens' bodies shaped New Dealers' efforts to relieve the suffering wrought by the Great Depression and effect long-term economic security. The New Deal propelled momentous state growth and transformed Americans' expectations of the federal government. This research aims to uncover how perceptions of ability, inability, and disability guided that growth. It analyzes ideas about disability and policy, while investigating and centering the actual experiences of disabled Americans who increasingly became the objects of policy meant to correct, contain, understand, and erase a central element of their identity. Disabled people often suffered extreme poverty during the Depression as economic constriction allowed employers to further narrow the physical qualifications for work, but physicians and social scientists presented conflicting ideas about how best to address disability. Most of the policy responses New Dealers developed made disabled people the objects of care and study, while disabled people themselves often sought opportunities for work. This focus on disability created new avenues for the federal government to provide medical care and for physicians, healthcare workers, and a broad range of scientists and social scientists to influence policy. Many of the policies New Dealers developed to address disability, and the ideas that informed them, continue to shape the lives of disabled Americans. While refined and expanded over time, the fundamental systems New Dealers imagined, created, and implemented to deal with disability remain. Much of the inaccessibility of the U.S. economy and society - policies, unmet needs, and underlying ideas that contributed to disabled people's economic and social marginalization - also remains. These ideas and systems shape the inequality disabled Americans continue to experience: disabled Americans earn significantly less than their non-disabled peers and are more than twice as likely to live in poverty. Moreover, disabled Americans are significantly less likely to have completed high school or college than non-disabled adults. Today, at roughly 19 percent of the population, disabled Americans constitute the largest U.S. minority group, and the only minority group that anyone could potentially join at any point. This research seeks to understand how and why these systems were put in place, knowledge that will help in improving the existing systems or developing new ones that will facilitate better economic inclusion for people with disabilities. Drawing on extensive archival and government documents, this project aims to bring the disability history of the New Deal into the public sphere to inform and contextualize significant, contemporary debates and help to illuminate useful paths forward by making the path we have already traveled clear. The New Deal forged the modern U.S. state's relationship with its largest minority group. Only by engaging with the New Deal's ongoing legacies can the United States create policy that fulfills the New Deal promise of economic security.This project is jointly funded by STS and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.