ANTH 112 Introduction to Socio-cultural Anthropology
Winter 2018
Mar. 22 Policy, poverty
READ: Dolson, Mark (2015) By sleight of neoliberal logics: Street youth, workfare, and the everyday tactics of survival in London, Ontario, Canada. City and Society 27(2): 116-135.

How can anthropology help to understand inequality in the Global North? In particular, how does it provide insights into the framing of social policy and how social policy is experienced by recipients?

Dolson:
Concepts:
    - what is the “culture of poverty” (Lewis)?
    - what does de Certeau mean by “tactics”?
    - what does de Certeau mean by “strategies”?

Context:
    - what is the Ontario Works program, and how has it been structured in neoliberal ways?
        - what are the strategies OW uses to try to induce desired behaviours?

Evidence:
    - what are the situations  of the people Dolson discusses here?
    - how do they describe OW? What does it look like on the basis of their experience?
    - how do they work to achieve their own goals?

Conclusion:
    - what does Dolson think would be a better approach to youth homelessness and economic precarity?

What do you think? Are such people individually responsible for their situations, or is there a need for structural reform to address underlying causes?

Ontario works video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqOnMttoI0

Poor no more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_2562406909&feature=iv&src_vid=UcjP0xgkch4&v=u0yTVclbOQw

The painful truth of welfare, A life learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcjP0xgkch4

 next