Description
Book SynopsisWINNER, 2024 Jock Young Criminological Imagination Book Award, given by the Division on Critical Criminology & Social Justice of American Society of CriminologyA riveting indictment of a government that fails to help citizens in need of aid, protection, andhumanityThe Shaming State argues that Americans have been abandoned by a government that has relinquished its duties of care toward its citizens. Sara Salman describes a government that withholds care in times of need and instead shames the very citizens it claims to serve, both poor and middle class. She argues that the state does so by emphasizing personal responsibility, thus tacitly blaming the needy for relying on state programs. This blame is pervasive in the American cultural imagination, existing in political discourse and internalized by Americans. This book explores how shaming is exhibited by state and political institutions by showing the ways in which the state withholds care, and how people who need that care are humili
Trade Review"
The Shaming State offers a brilliant ethnographic analysis of how the supposedly compassionate welfare state produced just the opposite of its explicitly stated intentions. Focusing on problems faced by immigrants in Michigan and by people traumatized by Hurricane Sandy in New York City, Sara Salman shows similarities and differences in the two U.S. cases while calling for a genuinely more caring approach to public policies and governmental assistance. Scholars, policymakers, and activists will learn much from this detailed, insightful, and beautifully written study." * Lynn S. Chancer, author of After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a Revolution *
"In moments of acute need and social vulnerability arising from displacement and persecution, how does the state respond in aid to groups in need? Salman examines with rigor, humanity, and beautiful prose how two seemingly dissimilar groups experience cultural notions of worthiness, precarity, suspicion, and responsibility. As the book centers the psychology of shame and moral worth, readers learn how government bureaucracies communicate deservingness to groups and in so doing the limits of a caring state and the American Dream." * Lauren Duquette-Rury, author of Exit and Voice: The Paradox of Cross-Border Politics in Mexico *
"This is an intriguing, timely, and insightful book that examines how care is administered and vulnerability is mitigated in the US. Or not administered or mitigated because of longstanding hostility to such assistance from whichever political party is in office. Instead, these aspects of American society have made it a shaming state." * John Pratt, author of Law, Insecurity and Risk Control: Neo-Liberal Governance and the Populist Revolt *
