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

本项目研究残疾公民身体的社会和科学框架如何影响新政者减轻大萧条带来的痛苦和影响长期经济安全的努力。新政推动了重大的州发展，改变了美国人对联邦政府的期望。这项研究旨在揭示对能力、无能和残疾的认知是如何引导这种成长的。它分析了关于残疾和政策的观点，同时调查和集中了美国残疾人的实际经历，他们越来越多地成为政策的对象，这些政策旨在纠正、遏制、理解和消除他们身份的一个核心要素。在大萧条时期，由于经济紧缩，雇主可以进一步缩小工作的身体条件，残疾人往往遭受极端贫困，但医生和社会科学家在如何最好地解决残疾人问题上提出了相互矛盾的观点。新政制定的大多数政策都把残疾人作为关心和研究的对象，而残疾人自己往往也在寻找工作机会。这种对残疾的关注为联邦政府提供医疗保健以及为医生、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。新政为解决残疾人问题而制定的许多政策，以及这些政策的理念，继续影响着美国残疾人的生活。随着时间的推移，新政者为处理残疾而设想、创造和实施的基本制度得到了完善和扩展。美国经济和社会的许多障碍——政策、未满足的需求以及导致残疾人在经济和社会上被边缘化的潜在观念——仍然存在。这些观念和制度塑造了美国残疾人继续经历的不平等：美国残疾人的收入明显低于非残疾人，生活在贫困中的可能性是非残疾人的两倍多。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，美国残疾人大约占人口的19%，是美国最大的少数群体，也是唯一一个任何人都可以随时加入的少数群体。这项研究旨在了解这些制度是如何以及为什么实施的，这些知识将有助于改进现有制度或开发新的制度，以促进残疾人更好地融入经济。利用大量的档案和政府文件，该项目旨在将新政的残疾历史带入公共领域，为重要的当代辩论提供信息和背景，并通过使我们已经走过的道路变得清晰，帮助照亮有用的道路。新政建立了现代美国与最大的少数民族的关系。只有处理新政遗留下来的问题，美国才能制定出能够实现新政对经济安全承诺的政策。本项目由STS和“促进竞争研究既定计划”（EPSCoR）联合资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.