Social constructions, social control, and resistance: An analysis of welfare reform as a hegemonic process

Hegemony is the process through which individuals are incorporated into a shared consensus of dominant values, political ideologies, and cultural forms. Means-tested public assistance programs, popularly known as welfare, expand in accordance with dominant constructions of its recipients. Single mothers and women of color are constructed as undeserving recipients whose poverty is viewed as a result of individual deficiencies. Welfare policy is designed and implemented by the government but its consequences are far-reaching. Policy impacts people in the way it shapes their experiences and treats them as citizens.; Poverty and welfare in the United States are best studied from a critical theoretical perspective. This dissertation documents the material and ideological impacts of welfare on single mothers. From a phenomenological examination of data gathered in ten focus groups from 1998 to 2004, this dissertation explores the lived experience of sixty-four single welfare mothers from various races/ethnicities including Black, Latina, American Indian, and White, who range in age from early teens to early sixties. The analysis of their experiences with the welfare system center on dealing with policy demands and reprimands, and contending with interactions that reflect negative popular assumptions about them. Despite similarities in experience, some of the women internalize dominant welfare ideologies, while others resist them.; A phenomenological analysis of oral histories with eight women who participated in the focus groups reveals that negative childhood experiences leading to negative self-images, coupled with few interactions with other subordinate groups contributed to some women's internalization of dominant welfare ideology. Conversely, women who resisted dominant welfare ideology were more likely to be Black women, familiar with discrimination, who developed a shared awareness about the oppression of others similarly situated. They also had positive self-images, directly related to their positive feelings about their childhoods. Finally, the research design situated in the lived experience of single welfare mothers and consistent with Freire's dialectical model offers possibilities for consciousness-raising as a precursor to mobilization.