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The article presents a research which analyzes the role of social service organizations in society for helping the poor and the needy. According to the research, which is based on the personal experience of the researcher, the social service delivery system involves several contradictions which the service providers have to face, because of which even with good intentions, they end up reinforcing not only the otherness of the poor, but their reliance on an indifferent market.

Targeting public redevelopment funding toward the most marketable brownfields is viewed as an economically efficient use of scarce resources because it may guarantee the greatest likelihood of success. But to what extent does this policy result in spatial and social inequities by neglecting contaminated sites in distressed neighborhoods containing minority and low-income populations? This case study of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, identified that tracts with above-average percentages of African Americans and Hispanics, although containing above-average numbers of brownfields per square mile and higher percentages of brownfields compared to percentage of the city's area, had below-average city-assisted redevelopments as a percentage of all brownfields. A policy implication is that despite difficulties promoting brownfield redevelopment in distressed neighborhoods, in addition to economic efficiencies, more emphasis is needed on the social benefits of public assistance for brownfield redevelopment, including potential spillover benefits, such as crime reduction and health improvements for surrounding neighborhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article proposes a relational definition of poor people and poverty situations grounded in the Epistemology of the Known Subject and drawn from qualitative research data. I first examine the basic assumptions of such epistemology which has arisen from the limitations of prior ways of knowing; that is, of what I call the epistemological paradigms of the Epistemology of the Knowing Subject. Then I discuss the features of an empirical study on extreme poverty in Buenos Aires city, as well as the data analysis and concept creation processes involved. This enables me to consider the characteristics of the relational definition of poor people and poverty situations. Finally, I explore the societal model and the type of social process underlying the usual notions of poverty, and the influence of both on social policy design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that through a concern with disciplinary power, post-structuralists have recently turned their attention to the discursive force of welfare in constituting the poor as docile and subservient populations. Using the recent example of 'work-welfare' in Britain, the pessimism of this position is rejected by pointing to the continuing importance of resistance and opposition, while considering their wider significance for the analysis of welfare provision. With the apparent failure of welfare statism, the inability of collectivism to withstand the current phase of welfare retrenchment and the growing influence of the new social movements and the voices from the margins, post-modernism and post-structuralism have been embraced as offering new ways of thinking about welfare and social policy. The post-structuralist claim to represent a new radical agenda for the analysis of social welfare provision is considerably less impressive, however, when positioned in relation to wider developments in radical thought.

Data from the 1970 census show that black migrants to six of the nation's largest cities were less likely to be poor or on welfare in 1 970 than blacks born and raised in these cities. The cross-sectional pattern suggests that black migrants from the South may initially experience fairly high rates of poverty and welfare dependence, but after a few years tile Southern migrants are more successful in escaping from poverty and welfare dependence than blacks native to large cities in the North. Among whites in time six cities there is no consistent relationship between migration status and being poor and on welfare, except for slightly higher than average rates of poverty and receipt of welfare among the Southern born. These findings are placed in the context of previous research on differences between first-generation black Northerners and second-(and later) generation black Northerners. Sonic explanatory hypotheses are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of today's entrenched poverty reflects the fact that poor adults seldom work consistently. The problem cannot be blamed predominantly on lack of jobs or other barriers to employment, as the chance to work seems widely available. More likely, the poor do not see work in menial jobs as fair, possible, or obligatory, though they want to work in principle. Government has evolved policies explicitly to raise work levels among the poor. Workfare programs, linked to welfare, show the most promise but still reach only a minority of employable recipients. Welfare reform should, above all, raise participation in these programs, as the share of clients involved largely governs their impact. Welfare should also cover more nonworking men to bring them under workfare. While work enforcement may seem punitive, the poor must become workers before they can stake larger claims to equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]