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Volume 3
Anthropology at Work
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Set to See Us Fail
Debating Inequalities in the Child Welfare System of New York
Viola Castellano
234 pages, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80073-803-4 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (March 2023)
eISBN 978-1-80073-791-4 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“The book is very good … The work is serious, original, thorough, and solid. It represents highly skilled and serious scholarship.” • Halvard Vike, University College of Southeast Norway
“The book is in an insightful and thorough analysis of how oppressive dynamics are generated and understood, and how inequalities intersect in the child welfare system in the US.” • Hanne O. Mogensen, University of Copenhagen
Description
Examining the interaction between families and professionals in the child welfare system of New York, this book focuses on how inequalities are reproduced, measured, managed, and contested. The book describes how state institutions and neoliberal governance police the groups which are most represented in the child welfare system, including low income, female-headed families living in racialized neighborhoods. The book also shows how these forms of policing produce unstable terrains, and give rise to contestation among families, communities, and professionals. It questions and re-thinks how state welfare and protection is administered.
Viola Castellano is Research Fellow at Bologna University, Italy and the recipient of an Individual Fellowship grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Bayreuth. Her research interests revolve around the anthropology and ethnography of institutions, welfare and migration policies, political subjectivity, racialization and global inequalities.