Reclaiming AP

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-168
Author(s):  
Patricia Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Black Womanhood ◽  
Good View ◽  
Attachment Parenting ◽  
Patricia Hill Collins ◽  
Welfare Queen

This chapter highlights the terms ‘welfare queen’, ‘baby mother’, and ‘angry black woman’ as representations of black womanhood that dominate popular culture and frame public policy making. It mentions Patricia Hill Collins, who describes the terms as stereotypical representations of black womanhood that play a central role in the ideological justification of the intersecting oppressions of race, class, gender, and sexuality. It also explains how the terms perpetuate black women's inferiority and pathology that are specifically linked to black women's failures as mothers. The chapter concentrates on the diverse experiences of several black mothers that provide a small glimpse into the complex ways that they went about developing a good view of motherhood that is inspired by attachment parenting (AP). It analyzes the black women's dislike of the label of AP, which reflected their belief that this style of childrearing was more natural and familial.

scholarly journals Analyzing and Visualizing Government-Citizen Interactions on Twitter to Support Public Policy-making

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocío B. Hubert ◽  
Elsa Estevez ◽  
Ana Maguitman ◽  
Tomasz Janowski
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Public Policy Making ◽  
Citizen Interactions

A Note on “Public Policy”

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Government Body

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

Cripping the Welfare Queen

Social Text ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-101
Author(s):  
Jina B. Kim
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Low Income ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Black Mothers ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Queer Of Color Critique ◽  
Public Resource ◽  
Welfare Queen

Abstract Drawing together feminist- and queer-of-color critique with disability theory, this essay offers a literary-cultural reframing of the welfare queen in light of critical discourses of disability. It does so by taking up the discourse of dependency that casts racialized, low-income, and disabled populations as drains on the state, reframing this discourse as a potential site of coalition among antiracist, anticapitalist, and feminist disability politics. Whereas antiwelfare policy cast independence as a national ideal, this analysis of the welfare mother elaborates a version of disability and women-of-color feminism that not only takes dependency as a given but also mines the figure of the welfare mother for its transformative potential. To imagine the welfare mother as a site for reenvisioning dependency, this essay draws on the “ruptural possibilities” of minority literary texts, to use Roderick A. Ferguson’s coinage, and places Sapphire's 1996 novel Push in conversation with Jesmyn Ward's 2011 novel Salvage the Bones. Both novels depict young Black mothers grappling with the disabling context of public infrastructural abandonment, in which the basic support systems for maintaining life—schools, hospitals, social services—have become increasingly compromised. As such, these novels enable an elaboration of a critical disability politic centered on welfare queen mythology and its attendant structures of state neglect, one that overwrites the punitive logics of public resource distribution. This disability politic, which the author terms crip-of-color critique, foregrounds the utility of disability studies for feminist-of-color theories of gendered and sexual state regulation and ushers racialized reproduction and state violence to the forefront of disability analysis.

scholarly journals Playing the policy game: a review of the barriers to and enablers of nutrition policy change

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (14) ◽  
pp. 2643-2653 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Cullerton ◽  
Timothy Donnet ◽  
Amanda Lee ◽  
Danielle Gallegos
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Change ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Nutrition Policy ◽  
Present Review ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Policy Problem ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Practical Experiences ◽  
State And Local

AbstractObjectiveTo progress nutrition policy change and develop more effective advocates, it is useful to consider real-world factors and practical experiences of past advocacy efforts to determine the key barriers to and enablers of nutrition policy change. The present review aimed to identify and synthesize the enablers of and barriers to public policy change within the field of nutrition.DesignElectronic databases were searched systematically for studies examining policy making in public health nutrition. An interpretive synthesis was undertaken.SettingInternational, national, state and local government jurisdictions within high-income, democratic countries.ResultsSixty-three studies were selected for inclusion. Numerous themes were identified explaining the barriers to and enablers of policy change, all of which fell under the overarching category of ‘political will’, underpinned by a second major category, ‘public will’. Sub-themes, including pressure from industry, neoliberal ideology, use of emotions and values, and being visible, were prevalent in describing links between public will, political will and policy change.ConclusionsThe frustration around lack of public policy change in nutrition frequently stems from a belief that policy making is a rational process in which evidence is used to assess the relative costs and benefits of options. The findings from the present review confirm that evidence is only one component of influencing policy change. For policy change to occur there needs to be the political will, and often the public will, for the proposed policy problem and solution. The review presents a suite of enablers which can assist health professionals to influence political and public will in future advocacy efforts.

Reconsidering the state

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-74
Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The State ◽  
Binary Choice ◽  
Policy Effectiveness ◽  
Comparative Public Policy ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
The Core ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Public Policy Analysis

State-centred and society-centred explanations in comparative public policy analysis disagree markedly on the extent to which the state has autonomy or is essentially a clearing-house for outside forces. In this chapter, we reconsider the position of the state in policy studies by investigating the interactions and inter-dependency between the state and society rather than making a binary choice between state-centred and society-centred perspectives on governance. The core argument is that policy studies can improve its ability to apprehend the position of the state in dilemmas of contemporary policy-making by acknowledging that the state is, at once, both critical to collective action and reliant on crucial elements of societal support for its policy effectiveness. In such terms, governance is a useful label for the variety of ways in which society is not simply acted upon by the state, but actively shapes the actions of and outcomes of state activity.

Reconsidering institutions

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Kate Crowley ◽  
Jenny Stewart ◽  
Adrian Kay ◽  
Brian W. Head
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
Complex Landscape ◽  
Emergent Networks ◽  
Over Time

Although institutions are central to the study of public policy, the focus upon them has shifted over time. This chapter is concerned with the role of institutions in problem solving and the utility of an evolving institutional theory that has significantly fragmented. It argues that the rise of new institutionalism in particular is symptomatic of the growing complexity in problems and policy making. We review the complex landscape of institutional theory, we reconsider institutions in the context of emergent networks and systems in the governance era, and we reflect upon institutions and the notion of policy shaping in contemporary times. We find that network institutionalism, which draws upon policy network and community approaches, has a particular utility for depicting and explaining complex policy.

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