The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen (review)

It will come as no surprise to sociologists that distorted, but widely-held beliefs about women who receive welfare shape social welfare policy-making. In The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen, Ange-Marie Hancock establishes this link by developing two central ideas – "public identity" and "politics of disgust" – and by undertaking an ambitious, though problematic mixed method study of media and political discourse surrounding the passing of the historic Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

Public identities, she argues, are "constituted of stereotypes and moral judgments of multiple group identities (e.g., race, class, gender) ascribed to groups that are the subject of legislative policy." (15) They change, but are more enduring than stereotypes. They serve as ideological justifications for particular policy agendas. And, ultimately, they impoverish democratic processes and limit empowered citizenship.

Specifically, Hancock explores the public identity of the welfare queen during the debates about welfare reform in 1995 and 1996 – debates, she argues, that stirred up disgust, and, consequently, channeled the political process in a particular, harmful direction. The four features of the politics of disgust: 1.) a perversion of democratic attention, 2.) an unequal communicative context, 3.) a failure of representative thinking, and 4.) a lack of solidarity from traditional allies have led to a profound "misrecognition" of its target population. To establish these claims, Hancock uses a broad array of methods, including historical analysis, qualitative and quantitative content analysis, and in-depth interviewing.

First, Hancock presents a historical account of the public identity of the welfare queen, emphasizing the political voice that the National Welfare Rights Organization of the 1970s afforded welfare recipients. Next, she performs a content analysis of national media accounts of the welfare reform debate. In this chapter she establishes connections between text units like "Don't Work" (an attribute of public identity) and "Workfare" (an aspect of welfare policy) to underscore how public discourse and policy options concerning welfare are intertwined. In the next chapter, Hancock analyzes 82 randomly selected documents from the welfare reform floor debate and, as in the media chapter, finds that the content analysis reveals a coherent public identity that not only labels welfare recipients as lazy, hyperfertile and black, but also frames public understanding and debate and, in the end, limits the range of conceivable policy prescriptions.

Though at times compelling, the content analysis has limitations. First, the data are predictable, and do not necessary merit the conclusions that Hancock makes. One would expect to find "Don't Work" and "Workfare" or "Overly Fertile" and "Family Caps" referenced together in the same article. In a selection from the New York Times, for example, Hancock cites the line, "some Republicans say that [extra money] encourages women to have more babies." (73) This article – about a House bill proposing family caps – is coded as both "Overly Fertile" and "Family Caps." The selection also notes that "the Children's Defense Fund and some economists" dispute the claim. In many of her examples, media accounts seem to simply report the political debate, rather than play the sinister role Hancock ascribes to it.

The discourse analysis, however, does show effectively how the welfare reform debate lacked poor women's voices, artificially dichotomized work and non-work, nearly never mentioned welfare recipients as "good mothers," and only evoked compassion for welfare children, rather than the mothers themselves. It also effectively emphasizes "intersectional analysis," which looks at race, class and gender as multiplicative rather than additive variables (20). Furthermore her analysis shows that the loaded moral discussions about welfare "deservingness" are not limited to "the rich white establishment." (53) Traditional allies such as African American politicians and white feminists let welfare recipients down as well.

In the third – and most persuasive – empirical chapter, "Contending with the Politics of Disgust: Public Identity through Welfare Recipients' Eyes," Hancock uses interviews to begin to establish the disjuncture between what policy-makers and the media discuss...