Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The study of social welfare has undergone a shift since the 1980s from a strongly realist to a decidedly constructionist orientation. The move is largely the result of the impact of feminist scholars such as Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon whose attention to the construction of gender categories called into question key analytic assumptions of earlier research agendas. The cultural turn that took place in this arena depended on the analysis of discourse. In this chapter I explain how the concept of discourse came into and subsequently transformed the sociological study of welfare institutions. I then highlight two key features of institutional discourse that I believe need to be taken into account in future research – that it is, (1) organized within semiotic systems, and (2) constructed through mutually constitutive dimensional orders. I will develop these arguments by highlighting some findings from my own research on the history of the American welfare state.There is a longstanding connection between sociological research and the field of social welfare. These linkages were especially evident during the Progressive Era when academic departments of sociology were being founded in American universities at the same time that the profession of social work was being established and the social welfare sector was undergoing a period of intense rationalization. This conjuncture was defined ... log in or subscribe to read full text