Battered Black Women And Welfare Reform: Between a Rock And a Hard Place (Suny Series in African American Studies) [Paperback]

Dana-ain Davis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0791468445 | ISBN-13: 978-0791468449 | Publication Date: August 10, 2006

Examines the consequences of welfare reform for Black women fleeing domestic violence.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This timely and compelling ethnography examines the impact of welfare reform on women seeking to escape domestic violence. Dana-Ain Davis profiles twenty-two women, thirteen of whom are Black, living in a battered women’s shelter in a small city in upstate New York. She explores the contradictions between welfare reform’s supposed success in moving women off of public assistance and toward economic self-sufficiency and the consequences welfare reform policy has presented for Black women fleeing domestic violence. Focusing on the intersection of poverty, violence, and race, she demonstrates the differential treatment that Black and White women face in their entanglements with the welfare bureaucracy by linking those entanglements to the larger political economy of a small city, neoliberal social policies, and racialized ideas about Black women as workers and mothers.

"For anyone who imagines that welfare policy promotes improved economic well-being and security, opportunity, self-sufficiency, and hope for poor women and their families, this book is a wake-up call." — from the Foreword by Sandra Morgen

"At once an ethnographic community study and a review of the national data, there are very few books that offer such a rich and contextualized analysis of the nexus between violence and poverty." — Beth E. Richie, author of Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women

"There are not many social scientists or journalists who have embedded themselves so deeply in a particular setting like Angel House as Davis has, or who have been able to witness firsthand so many of the ‘rituals of degradation’ to which these women are routinely subjected. I found these parts of the book to be completely compelling and disturbing." — Susan Brin Hyatt, Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Dàna-Ain Davis is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 215 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (August 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791468445
• ISBN-13: 978-0791468449
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,670,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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