“Pimping the System”

The Limits of State Classification

Bourdieu wrote that “systems of classification ‘are not so much instruments of knowledge as instruments of power, subordinated to social functions and more or less openly geared to the satisfaction of the interests of a group” (quoted in Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 14n26). I suggest that the current system of classifying welfare programs by the extent to which they are “work first” succeeds in reinforcing one key goal shared by many state agencies and actors as well as big businesses and many tax-payers: emptying the welfare rolls. Current frameworks for understanding welfare programs neglect the larger goals of ending poverty, creating a more equitable society, and improving poor Americans’ lives.

The federal government commissioned many of the most important studies of welfare programs. Two such studies conducted prior to welfare reform sought to answer definitively the question of which approach is more successful: education or work. A “mixed strategy” program produced the greatest earnings gains for participants, while work first programs came in second (Riccio, Friedlander, and Freedman 1994; Hamilton et al. 2001). Despite the relatively small gains in earnings of those in work first programs, and the greater success of a mixed-strategy program, the purported success of the work first programs in these studies became influential during the mid-1990s Congressional debates over welfare reform.

Studies since 1996 have continued to look at welfare programs through the lens of the work first versus human capital development debate, despite the inability of states to receive federal funding for true human capital development programs. Typically, researchers categorize programs by the degree to which they are work first. For example, an Urban Institute study prepared for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services looked at welfare-to-work programs in five states. Programs were then classified as either strict work first programs (Work First, Work Mandate models) in which only employment or work experience counted as work, or less strict programs (Work First, Participation Mandate models) in which education and training were available to those unable to find work (Holcomb et al. 1998. See also Holcomb and Martinson 2002).

Classificatory systems are important. They help us to understand what is going on, but they also shape the institutions they are describing. Work first is not just a description of the dominant program type; achieving a work first (and in some cases mixed-strategy) classification is a goal of nearly all welfare programs across the country. In fact, the role of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) has extended beyond just researching the “success rates” of different welfare program types and the extent to which programs have complied with the work first mandate. In March of 1997, just as states were scrambling to set up welfare programs that complied with PRWORA, the MDRC published a 131-page “how-to guide” titled “Work First: How to Implement an Employment-Focused Approach to Welfare Reform” (Brown 1997). The State’s interest lies in implementing work first programs and pushing women off the welfare rolls and into employment. Studies that survey PRWORA’s implementation across the country reflect this. But these studies, and this classificatory system, serve the State’s interest while ignoring many important dimensions of welfare programs, especially welfare-reliant women’s experiences within a program and their long-term prospects in the labor market.

Reinterpreting Welfare Programs

A decade after PRWORA, the work first approach received more support in 2006 when Congress passed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which included a reauthorization of TANF that effectively increased the work participation rates states’ welfare rolls must meet. Previously, most states had negligible participation requirements because they had been offset by caseload reductions in the first years of TANF. The deficit reduction bill reset mandatory participation rates at 50 percent of states’ caseloads. This change forced a renewed enthusiasm for work first policies and a shift away from allowing other activities, such as counseling and education, to count as work (Schott 2008).

Yet while the work first/human development classification system remains politically salient, I argue that classifying—or designing—programs only along this dimension has limited our ability to understand the range of welfare-to-work programs implemented since PRWORA. Studies that look at the variation among welfare programs on such issues as time limits, sanctions, benefit levels, and child care availability suggest that welfare programs differ in important ways that have little to do with the predominant classifications. Ethnographic studies of welfare programs illuminate not only the variation among programs that describe themselves as work first (including Hays 2003; Broughton 2001a, 2001b, 2003; Korteweg 2003, 2004; Morgen, Acker, and Weigt 2010; Ridzi 2009), but also show the existence of programs that deviate in many ways from the work first hegemony (e.g., Broughton 2001a, 2001b; Little 2001). These studies show differences in office ethos, in the types of interactions clients have with workers and with each other, and in pedagogical practices and discourses. In light of these ethnographic studies and my findings in CCC, I argue that we need new categories for understanding the variation between welfare-to-work programs, and to help us identify the characteristics that are most beneficial for welfare-reliant women’s long-term success.

Bourdieu’s theory of capital provides an excellent framework for capturing what is really going on in welfare programs. Welfare offices are places where resources are distributed, social interactions take place, discourses are employed, information and knowledge is disseminated, and life-changing decisions are made. In short, welfare programs are engaged in the (re)distribution and transmission of economic, social, and cultural capital. Capital, for Bourdieu, is “accumulated labor (in its materialized form or its ‘incorporated,’ embodied form) which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive, basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in the form of reified or living labor” (1986, 241). For Bourdieu, it is the distribution of the three forms of capital—economic, social, and cultural—that structures our society. Each form of capital can be converted to the other forms, albeit with an expenditure of time and labor (1986). The more capital—of any kind—one has, the better their chances of success in the formal economy.

Bourdieu conceived of capital as a singular system in which each individual has (or does not have) a certain amount of each type of capital. While Bourdieu has, at times, been interpreted to mean that there is a homogenous, unified body of knowledge and tastes held by the white upper class (i.e., “highbrow” culture), many scholars have called this notion into question (Lamont and Lareau 1988; Hall 1992; Lareau and Weininger 2003), and some have argued that multiple forms of cultural capital exit (Yosso 2005; Carter 2003, 2005). In particular, Prudence Carter (2003, 2005) argues that there are dominant and nondominant forms of cultural capital. She shows that the young African Americans in her study share a set of symbolic markers including language, dress, and musical tastes that determine membership in the group. While status differences within black youth culture are dependent on the acquisition of this nondominant cultural capital, these youth acknowledge a need to learn the dominant cultural capital as well, and to know when to deploy which type of capital. I argue that this is true of welfare-reliant women as well. However, I take Carter’s argument a step further; I argue that dominant and subjugated forms of all three types of capital exist. I suggest that alongside the dominant system of capital described by Bourdieu and others, there is also a subjugated system of capital, which is particularly evident in the welfare office, but not peculiar to it. Subjugated capital, while honored in one setting or community, is likely to be unacknowledged or stigmatized in more mainstream settings, such as the labor market.

Research Setting and Methodology

Welfare workers administer California’s TANF program, CalWORKs, from an almost windowless building in Lewiston. The building is located in the heart of this midsized (approximately one hundred thousand people) city, surrounded by fast-food restaurants, a small supermarket, and a drugstore. In contrast, the Strafford Employment and Human Services Office located only two towns over, sits atop a grassy hill overlooking a bay. Set in a small industrial park, the Strafford building appears well landscaped and inviting.

The dramatic contrast in settings is the first noticeable difference between Lewiston and Strafford. The second difference is therefore not very surprising. Lewiston serves a predominantly African American community, with a racially similar staff. Strafford, on the other hand, is exceptionally diverse, with significant numbers of African American, Latina, and white welfare recipients; the workers mimic the racial diversity of their clients. In addition, one unit is devoted entirely to Southeast Asians, mostly Laotians, many of whom are refugees and do not speak English. While these demographic differences were observable, statistical data collected by each welfare office confirms racial differences between participants at the two offices. CCC administrators granted me access to seven months of these data overlapping my participant observation.

Beyond these two immediately obvious differences, the offices are more similar than they are different. Both located in Contra Costa County, they must conform to the same written policies, and workers answer to the same upper-level administrators. Applicants undergo the same administrative process, and generally, welfare participants at both offices follow similar paths through the system as they face work requirements and time limits.

When I first obtained permission to observe a two-week-long Job Search class at the Lewiston welfare office, I knew that I was interested in interactions between welfare workers and participants, but I did not have a research question or clear plan of what, exactly, I was doing there. Following the extended case method approach to ethnography, I was looking for the “surprise”—the moment where I saw something unexpected that challenged my theories and assumptions. Michael Burawoy writes about this approach, “Rather than theory emerging from the field, what is interesting in the field emerges from our theory” (1991, 9). Despite not having a clearly formulated research question, I had no trouble identifying what was surprising: the empowering, supportive, positive potential of this welfare program. Through memo writing and qualitative coding, I began thinking—then, modestly reconstructing—existing theories and taken-for-granted assumptions (Burawoy 1991) about welfare programs and types of capital.

I spent approximately six months each at two welfare offices in Contra Costa County. ⁴ Much of this time was spent shadowing welfare workers as they met or spoke on the phone with participants, interacted with each other, and completed their computer/paper work. I sat through dozens of intake interviews, assessment meetings, and follow-up appointments. During this time, I also conducted brief, informal interviews with ten to fifteen workers from each office. I asked about their job trajectories, their feelings about their jobs, and their opinions about welfare reform and current policies. My observations were limited to English-speaking meetings and classes, although numerous participants and some workers spoke Spanish and Southeast Asian languages. Most of the data for this paper comes from the eight weeks I spent observing the mandatory Job Club and Job Search classes at each of the two offices, for a total of more than three hundred hours of observations. During these sixteen weeks, I attended all class sessions except one half-day at Lewiston at the beginning of my research when the counselor was running a workshop on self-esteem and prohibited my presence.

I was always upfront about my role as a researcher, and I obtained permission from the participants before observing them. With only a couple of exceptions, participants were very willing to talk with me and allow me to be present during classes and meetings. At Lewiston, my white, middle-class background stood out far more than at Strafford, and there were a couple times where my motives were directly questioned. By spending several weeks with most of these participants, and trying to get to know them individually, I believe I earned enough trust to get an accurate sense of what went on in the classes and how participants thought and felt about them. This is not to say that my white, middle-class standpoint was irrelevant; I was conspicuous, and at times, my lack of subjugated capital was conspicuous as well. A few of the women were wary of me. I worked hard to overcome this, which I think I did with most, although not all, of the women. My role in the classes varied depending on the instructor and activity at hand. Sometimes I was an active participant in the classes, joining in group exercises and personal sharing, or working as an assistant helping participants with computers, resumes, or other job search tasks. At other times, I sat in primarily as an observer, talking with participants only during breaks and after class.

I ended my participant observation a little more than a year after starting when I no longer felt I was seeing anything “new.” Over the next several months I conducted in-depth, tape-recorded interviews with five women from the Lewiston office, four of whom I had met while attending the mandatory classes, and one whom I knew from tutoring at a local low-income housing complex. Four of my interviewees were African American and one was Filipina. I also met and talked with, but did not formally interview, one Latina woman whom I had met in a Job Search class but who had since lost custody of her children and was therefore no longer eligible for TANF. I also interviewed six welfare-reliant women from the Strafford office, including a mother–daughter pair. I only knew one of these women from my participant observation, the rest I recruited by returning to Bill’s Job Search class and asking for volunteers. Two of these women were white, three black, and one Latina. Interviewees ranged in age, number of children, education, and experiences; however, all were single. All interviewees were paid twenty dollars for their time.

I followed a loose interview schedule, beginning with questions about women’s life history and ending with questions about their thoughts and feelings about welfare reform, their welfare workers, and the mandatory classes. Interviews ranged in length from about thirty minutes with a couple of the younger, shier women, who often had a toddler crawling nearby, to about an hour and a half, particularly with the older women and those with whom I had established a relationship previously. Most interviews took place in the interviewees’ homes, which allowed me another window into their lives.

One important limitation of this study is its neglect of sanctioned and noncompliant welfare participants. Absent from my study were the many participants who had “opted out” of cash aid for themselves, but who continued to receive it for their children because of California’s safety net at the time. Throughout my observations, I regularly witnessed participants moving in and out of noncompliant and sanctioned status. Welfare workers sanctioned participants for repeatedly missing meetings, failing to complete Job Club and Search classes, and failing to meet the work requirements. But what about the men and women who were sanctioned and did not return to compliance—those who chose, for whatever reason, not to comply with the requirements to receive cash aid for themselves? Their story, to the extent that it differs from compliant or sometimes-compliant families, is absent here.

Economic Capital

Economic capital, that which can easily and immediately be converted into money, is obviously the form of capital that is most lacking in welfare-reliant families. Dominant economic capital, or legal and condoned economic resources, comes from legal means and is reported to the welfare office as per the requirements. It comes in three primary forms for welfare-reliant women: government assistance, paid work—usually in the formal labor market—and assistance from family and friends. Subjugated economic capital, on the other hand, is illicit income—or in the case of welfare-reliant women, gifts or income that is not reported to the welfare office. (see Table 1)

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Dominant and Subjugated Capital.

	Dominant Capital	Subjugated Capital
Economic capital	Legal and condoned	Illicit
Social capital	Acknowledged	Devalued
Cultural capital	Affirmed	Stigmatized

Welfare programs provide dominant economic capital in the forms of both cash aid—including TANF’s cash grant as well as transportation monies and reimbursements for such things as interview clothing and schoolbooks—and in-kind benefits that have a clear cash value, such as food stamps and child care subsidies. Other programs, such as Medicaid and housing programs like Section 8, provide many welfare participants with other benefits that have a clear economic value as well. Here I focus my discussion of economic capital on cash grants and child care subsidies because they are the primary economic benefits tied to TANF and because they differ significantly from state to state.

CCC’s CalWORKs program provided high levels of dominant economic capital compared to other programs across the nation. In early 2004, CCC’s maximum cash grant was just over $700 a month in urban areas for a family of three with a work requirement (NCCP 2006). Nationally, 2005 TANF cash benefits ranged from $170 (Mississippi) to $923 (Alaska) a month for three-person families, with Alaska’s monthly benefit far exceeding all other states (NCCP 2006). California’s monthly grant was—and continues to be—one of the highest in the country, despite the significant decrease in benefit amounts enacted recently. However, the cost of living in CCC is also high.

Child care subsidies are another crucial economic benefit for those TANF participants engaged in an approved work activity. Although sorely lacking in many locations throughout the United States (Schulman and Blank 2005), fully subsidized child care was widely available in CCC. All single parents engaged in an approved work activity in CCC were eligible for child care assistance, as were two-parent families in which the parents worked fifty-five hours per week or more. Numerous local day care centers and licensed family providers accepted this as full payment. After completing the paperwork, parents had to make arrangements with an available provider of their choice. They also had the option of leaving their child(ren) with a close relative who was not licensed; the County then provided that relative with a modest payment.

When I asked Cassie, a Strafford participant, what she liked about CCC’s welfare program, she replied,

All the things they do for you! I mean, I used, people used to tell me they were on welfare, and I would be like, God, why would you be on welfare? ’Cause I thought welfare was just food stamps. I didn’t know that they give you medical coverage, I can go to the dentist; I’ve gotten, I’ve gotten eye glasses since I’ve been in school—I didn’t even know I had a vision thing. Um, they pay for my son’s child care, I mean what am I going to do when I have to pay for that child care myself?

Cassie, a white mother with one child, had grown up middle class but had struggled with drugs and an abusive husband before arriving at the Strafford welfare office. She told me that CCC had also provided her with books and uniforms for the dental hygienist training program she pursued at the local community college. By living in her grandmother’s home and claiming to pay rent (she, in fact, paid some utilities), Cassie was one of the few women whose welfare benefits—including TANF, Medicaid, and food stamps—were enough to meet her family’s most basic needs.

Many scholars, most notably Edin and Lein (1997), have shown that the cash and food stamps provided by welfare are not nearly enough to meet most poor families’ basic needs. Many welfare-reliant women are experts not only at making a little money go a long way, but also at making money and resources materialize for their families. Getting the most dominant economic capital out of CCC’s welfare program often required some work and some patience. Therefore, only those participants who were adept at working the system, and willing and able to be patient, received the maximum available benefits. Yet even if you “pimped the system” in this way, it was impossible for most families to survive on welfare alone. This was especially true for the many sanctioned women I encountered. Their survival without welfare, and usually without a formal job, is evidence of the unreported economic resources many, though not all, welfare-reliant women had. I call this unreported, illicit income subjugated economic capital. Gifts from family, unofficial support from their children’s fathers, and “hustling” were the primary sources of subjugated economic capital. Hustling included work performed in the informal labor market, such as babysitting and doing hair, as well as illegal ways of making money. I heard about credit card and check scams and attempts to get money through welfare programs for which the women did not actually qualify. The availability of subjugated economic capital varied for different women, and depended on the subjugated social and cultural capital that they possessed. For some women, hustling was a comfortable and reliable means of getting by.

During my interview with Shauntay, a young black mother, I asked her what she thought about TANF’s time limits. Although she appeared to have very little dominant capital that might help her support herself in the formal labor market, she seemed quite unconcerned about her future. While she may well have been in denial about a time limit that was still years away, her words are nonetheless telling about how some poor women survive without welfare. She said:

I mean it’s easy to go out there and hustle, I mean not like, you know, just, it’s easy to go out there and get money. I mean, it’s not, but it is. You can do different things by trying to get money. Not, I mean not necessarily drugs, just . . . [I asked her what kinds of things.] Like, be on the corner selling shirts and stuff. You know, all different kinds of things.

Worker discourses play an important role in the transmission of capital, even economic capital. Instructors who encourage welfare participants to “pimp the system,” as Mr. James called it, inform women of their rights and encourage them to ask for everything that might be available to them. This is one way that welfare workers can maximize the amount of economic capital welfare-reliant women are able to acquire. This approach differs from that of welfare workers who blame and chastise participants for needing aid at all (Broughton 2001b, 2003; Korteweg 2003, 2004).

Welfare worker discourses can also promote the acquisition of economic capital by successfully promoting work in the formal labor market. While all welfare-to-work programs set out to do this, some programs do a better job than others do. One perhaps counterintuitive way that welfare programs can encourage the transition from welfare and the use of subjugated economic capital to income earned in the formal labor market is by acknowledging and implicitly allowing participants’ reliance on hustling. Many of the welfare workers—particularly the instructors—in CCC said they knew that women had unreported income but that they were not interested in turning them in for this. Both Ms. Johnson and Mr. James, black instructors at Lewiston, wrote monthly cash aid amounts on the board to show participants how cash aid compared to hourly wages (e.g., the $704 a month a family of three received at that time was equivalent to a month of full-time work at $4.40 an hour). Directing attention to these figures on the board, Ms. Johnson said, “Five hundred and forty-eight dollars is not enough [for two people]—so we hustle the rest. It’s okay to hustle some, but you don’t want to still be at $548 ten years later.” Mr. James took an even more radical stance. He told the class that these numbers should “piss them off,” he said,

These are black people in this class and Hispanic people and this is what the government thinks of you. . . . This is economic slavery. . . . Five of these amounts are less than minimum wage. This should encourage you and inspire you to use this program to get everything you deserve, so you never have to be bound by these economic chains again. This is bondage.

Mr. James also promised not to turn people in for unreported income. By simultaneously acknowledging and ignoring women’s subjugated economic capital, these workers accomplished two things. First, they allowed poor women to keep whatever money they could get, thus financially benefiting these poor families. Given that it often costs more to work than not to (Edin and Lein 1997), this is important. Second, welfare workers developed trusting relationships with participants when they showed that they understood the constraints of women’s lives, and proved that they were not going to get them in trouble. Such trusting relationships between participants and workers is important for the transmission of cultural capital, forms the basis for social capital’s positive effects, and is crucial for empowering women.

Social Capital

Bourdieu described social capital as a form of capital that is “made up of social obligations (‘connections’), which is convertible, in certain conditions, into economic capital” (1986). Putnam (2000) reconceptualized the concept to include a broader array of relationships by distinguishing between bridging and bonding social capital. The former describes networks that cut across class or other stratifying lines (e.g., welfare-reliant women and workers), and is generally thought to be more influential as capital in the traditional, convertible sense. Bonding social capital, on the other hand, describes relationships formed horizontally among people (e.g., relationships between welfare-reliant women); these relationships are less likely to prove useful in converting social capital into other forms. While I find Putnam’s distinction incredibly useful, in the context of welfare-reliant women—and presumably other stigmatized populations—there is another important distinction to be made: those relationships that are acknowledged by mainstream institutions and those that are devalued.

Thus, I suggest that dominant and subjugated varieties of social capital exist, and participants may form both types of relationships inside and outside of the welfare office. Dominant social capital, or social connections acknowledged and valued by mainstream society, might, for example, include relationships between welfare participants and those who work in the formal labor market. Subjugated social capital, on the other hand, involves relationships that are devalued by society, such as those between a welfare participant and someone engaged in the informal economy (see Table 1). Some relationships may blur the distinction, or be both dominant and subjugated social capital. For example, relationships between welfare recipients who are supporting each other’s efforts to find formal employment are likely to be encouraged and validated by welfare workers who are aware of the relationship.

Empowering welfare programs seek to foster the development of dominant social capital, or those relationships that will in some way support women’s efforts to find formal employment and leave welfare behind. By developing bridging social capital between workers and participants and encouraging participants to utilize mainstream connections and resources (local job centers, connections to pastors or other community resources, friends or neighbors with stable employment, etc.), empowering programs acknowledge the importance of social networks in finding employment and moving up in a job (Smith 2005; Newman 1999). By fostering a supportive environment between welfare-reliant women (bonding social capital), programs can help create support networks for women to rely on as they transition off welfare.

CCC did a good job of fostering dominant social capital. Although I rarely saw participants who had long-term, meaningful relationships with their regular welfare workers—and I heard as many complaints about workers as I did stories of their supportiveness—participants were overwhelmingly positive about their relationships with the instructors (although there were a few exceptions). The two instructors I observed at Lewiston, Ms. Johnson and Mr. James, were well liked by most of the participants, as were the Strafford instructors, particularly Susan (African American) and Bill (white). All offered their help and support to welfare participants after the classes were over, thereby offering themselves as a type of bridging social capital. And participants regularly returned to the welfare office to update their instructors or get advice about how to handle a situation.

Alexis, talking about one of her instructors, Susan, conveyed the importance of welfare workers as supportive and motivating mentors:

She just made the class. I mean, just her presence, it was just like, she’s Fab. . . . It’s just her whole presence, it, you know, she makes you wanna be there. She’s just like, so, I don’t know what other word to use, just bright! You know, just like, whoo. . . . That’s really motivating. When you don’t have support any other place, that’s important, that’s just like, “You can do it!” and you know, “Don’t give up.”

Cassie similarly valued Bill’s motivating role in her life:

It’s like he was right on the button with me; he must tune into everybody like that individually. But he is the perfect guy. If he lost his job, I would be so sorry for the welfare up there. Because he just tunes into each individual and just knows: he is a motivator! He should just be like at a conference motivating speaker, make millions, cause he’s really good. . . . He’s just, he’s really good at his job and, I, I haven’t called him in a long time and I feel like I should call him and tell him that I still think of him, you know?

Two interviewees told me how their relationship with Ms. Johnson continued after their classes were over. More than six months after completing the required classes, Clara, a young Filipina immigrant, and one of only a handful of women I encountered at Lewiston who was not black, called Ms. Johnson to thank her for all her help. Clara said of her instructor, “She keeps telling me if I need her help, you know, just call; and she’s really nice.” LaWanda, an African American woman with three children, also formed a close relationship with Ms. Johnson over time. After the classes ended, she contacted her for help before going on a job interview: “Right before I went on my interview I called Ms. Johnson and said, ‘OK, I’m all freaked up, so, what should I say?’ And she told me, and I ended up getting the job.”

Because welfare-to-work classes were the primary place where welfare-reliant women came in sustained contact with one another at the welfare office, instructors in CCC played important roles in the creation of bonding social capital. Research has shown the importance of social support for poor and low-income mothers both in terms of reducing economic and material hardship, and for improving overall coping (Stack 1974; Edin and Lein 1997; Henly, Danziger, and Offer 2005). Thus, efforts to help women create larger support networks for themselves are likely beneficial for welfare-reliant women in terms of both their material and their emotional well-being. Of course, bonds that form among poor women inevitably include both dominant and subjugated social capital. That is, women provided each other with emotional and practical support that helped them in their search for employment and efforts to get off welfare—or that “fit” into a mainstream notion of a “good” friendship. But women may also have provided each other with “hustling” assistance, or simply been friends to one another in ways not clearly tied to the goals of the welfare program—or in other words—in unacknowledged ways that are typically ignored or discouraged by the welfare system. I contend that empowering programs foster social bonds between participants and encourage them to help one another make the permanent transition to “legitimate” work. By encouraging a certain quality of relationship between participants, welfare instructors can promote bonds that provide some type of support for women’s move into the formal labor market and off welfare.

Although it is common for welfare-reliant women to dissociate themselves from other welfare participants, often viewing them as “undeserving” or lazy (Kingfisher 1996; Seccombe 1999; McCormack 2002; Broughton 2001a, 2001b, 2003), I rarely saw this take place between participants within the same class in CCC. All the instructors I observed fostered a sense of camaraderie and encouraged a noncompetitive, supportive atmosphere. In turn, participants sincerely wanted each other to succeed, and helped each other by sharing job leads, teaching each other computer skills, helping out with transportation, babysitting, and in one instance even moving in together to save on rent. There was a true spirit of cooperation.

During Ms. Johnson’s Job Search class, which unlike Mr. James’s and Bill’s classes did not include instruction, participants helped each other with some of the most rudimentary aspects of a contemporary job search: learning to use a computer, signing up for an email account, posting their resumes online, and using fax machines. LaWanda, a street-wise woman seemingly possessing lots of subjugated capital, took Clara, a shy, young mother who seemed to have more dominant but less subjugated capital than LaWanda, to several local businesses to get applications. They were an unlikely pair, but this is a good example of the sort of cooperation among participants that I witnessed regularly at both offices.

While a supportive ethos developed in all the classes, the extent to which a real, lasting community developed varied. In classes where sharing and consciousness raising (see Broughton 2001a) were encouraged, trust and real friendships emerged. Some instructors did a better job than others at encouraging deep, emotional sharing. The Job Club instructors at Strafford, particularly Susan, and Mr. James at Lewiston, were noteworthy for the deep sharing they elicited from participants. Instructors facilitated free-flowing, deeply personal conversations by allowing participants time and space to share, by being interested and supportive, and by refraining from judgment. Two counselors frequently dropped by the Strafford Job Club classes, and they helped facilitate these discussions. Instructors’ willingness to share their own life experiences also helped to encourage sharing. On one day, conversations included the stress of dealing with children’s fathers, the physical and/or emotional abuse Jackie and Rosa had experienced in their relationships, the struggles of several participants—including Rosa and George—with controlling their own anger and violent behavior, and the sexual harassment Kalia had experienced on the job.

Similar sharing and bonding took place in Mr. James’s classes at the Lewiston office; however, instead of talking about domestic violence and people’s painful pasts, participants shared their feelings about race, welfare, and discrimination. In a discussion that began about diversity in the workplace, Mr. James and the class engaged in a dialogue about race and ethnicity that began with identifying the common stereotypes of different groups: welfare recipients, Middle Easterners, and gays and lesbians. The sharing that ensued was honest and intense. Mr. James shared numerous personal experiences with racism. Some women conveyed their deep anger. Martha asked, “Why are we the only ones with no restitution?” Most said they did not believe they would ever see a black president. When the conversation turned to other groups, a few of the women turned their anger and frustration on “Others.” I wrote in my field notes (October 2, 2003), “Kima is complaining about foreigners. Jasmine responds [by explaining] why people are coming here. They start screaming at each other. Mr. James breaks it up and tells Kima that ‘the Middle Easterners who are doing terrorist stuff are aiming at the white power structure—not at you.’” Mr. James tried to get participants to see that their stereotypes of other groups were akin to stereotypes of African Americans and welfare recipients. The participants who saw this connection immediately tried to make it clear to those who did not. Mr. James facilitated this process by sharing his own stories as well as providing information and insight that helped the group reflect on their stereotypes. Through sharing their thoughts and feelings, participants learned more about their own oppression and that of others.

Evidence of the deep bonds, trust, and sense of community that formed in these classes was often most evident as they came to an end. Mr. James ended the class with a pizza party and movie, and participants lingered long after they had permission to leave as they watched the movie, chatted, took pictures together, and wrote down each other’s contact information. Women described the four weeks as powerful and inspiring. After the class, I kept in touch with a few of the women for several months. During this time, many of the women stayed in contact with one another. Several of them also met each other regularly in the Resource Room at the Lewiston office. They planned to have study groups together when many of them started college in January. Months later, while conducting interviews, I learned that Shauntay and another classmate were living together. Both women had been living with family and had desperately wanted to move out, but rental costs were prohibitive. Together, they were able to get an apartment in a low-income housing development.

On the last day of a Job Search class in Strafford, Cassie tearfully told the class that she had cried that morning as she thought about how much she was going to miss the instructors and her fellow participants. She said, “Just now that I’m feeling more relaxed and ready to go back to work and school I have to leave this support.” Later that day Natalie, a mother of five, said she would miss the class and group too; she joked that she was thinking about not getting a job just so she could come back. A couple weeks later, Cassie and Dave, a black participant from Cassie’s Job Search class, stopped by the Job Club room to talk with Anna (a black assistant instructor employed through the school district) and me. The following is from my field notes:

Cassie comes in and hugs Anna and then me. She is good. . . . She is trying to find out about CNA/LVN [certified nurses’ assistant/licensed vocational nurse] classes.

Dave comes in and sits down. They tell us about some others who were in their Search class. Dave and his Mom helped Sandra [a black woman from their class] move—I think into her Mom’s complex—for two weeks—the maximum she is allowed to stay there. She has lots of people helping her look for an apartment. Sandra also got an interview with the city of El Cerrito. Dave is going to take care of her kids for her when she goes for the interview on Saturday. Great networking, I say. They have tried to reach Julie [a black participant] but have been unsuccessful. Cassie says Skyla [a black participant] has been homeless and somehow they helped her to find a temporary place to stay. (Field Notes, March 13, 2003)

None of these people knew each other before being in the same mandatory welfare classes. Yet they had formed a real network to provide emotional and practical support for each other, and the welfare classes and instructors fostered this network.

All of these forms of social capital described above—including positive and supportive relationships with instructors and peers—are examples of dominant social capital. These relationships were acknowledged and sanctioned by the welfare office (here the welfare office represents the part of “mainstream society” that matters for our purposes) because they have the potential to provide support for women’s efforts to attain formal employment. Most welfare-reliant women have both dominant and subjugated social capital. In other words, they have relationships that are supportive of their efforts to get off welfare and find employment (dominant economic capital), and, often, women have relationships that are not acknowledged as valuable. These relationships may be of great benefit to participants in terms of acquiring subjugated (illegitimate) economic capital, or they may provide emotional support or other benefits. Of course, both dominant and subjugated social connections may also affect people in negative ways (Wacquant 1998).

Historically the welfare system, including welfare workers, has denied the significance of poor women’s social networks, and has sought to limit the help women can receive from these networks. Until the late 1960s, the infamous “man in the house” and “suitable home” rules prohibited welfare-reliant women in many states from living with a man, and sometimes even from having one sleep over. These rules disproportionately “purge[d] blacks from the welfare rolls” (Reese 2005, 42). Even today, reporting requirements force women to report the fathers of their children for child support collection, but little of this money goes to helping these poor families. In fact, nationally only about 27% of child support monies collected on behalf of welfare-reliant children goes to the families (Wheaton and Sorensen 2007). In addition, welfare-reliant families are required to report money received as gifts. These regulations have a negative effect on women’s relationships as well as limiting their economic capital. Such policies drive a wedge in what may have been supportive, healthy relationships.

Instead of seeking to regulate or discount poor women’s relationships, empowering welfare programs recognize the complexity of poor women’s lives and the likelihood that women have relationships that have traditionally been devalued. For example, boyfriends or “baby daddies” may come and go providing financial or other support when they can. They may not be reliable sources of support, but many women are willing to take what they could get. Other relationships might include friends or relatives who are engaged in illegal activities. While perhaps having negative consequences at times, these relationships may be important as sources of emergency money, loans, informal work, physical protection, or other benefits. Empowering welfare programs help women distinguish between social relationships that are negative or that hinder their long-term chances for economic and emotional stability, and those that are either beneficial or neutral in these respects. Most importantly, they avoid judging women and their relationships, and instead seek to empower women to make the best choices for their own lives.

Mr. James had participants “create a Dream Team” by thinking about the people in their lives who supports them and what types of support each can offer. He encouraged them to get rid of people in their lives that were not supportive, and he shared personal examples of people he had cut out of his life because they were getting in the way of his dreams. Similarly, Strafford participants completed a worksheet called, “My Support Circles,” a visual handout where participants could map their social support. In a conversation with several participants during a class break, Susan, an instructor, said that Jamiqua, a young black mother, needed more support. Her friend replied that Jamiqua’s “family needs to let her do more.” Susan nodded and said that she meant “moral support, ‘You can do it!’ support.

At Strafford, there was a lot of discussion about networking, and an assumption that participants had connections to people who could potentially help them find work. In both Job Club and Job Search, participants were encouraged to tell everyone they knew that they were looking for a job. Bill even had participants do informational interviews with employed people they knew; he told the class that in the past these interview assignments had led to jobs—sometimes until the participant started asking questions, family members or friends did not even know they were looking for work. Anna told a woman who wanted to be a nurse to surround herself with nurses and nursing. She said, “Just like if you hang around with drug dealers you are likely to end up dealing, if you hang around with nurses . . . .” While Lewiston instructors did not emphasize networking, Ms. Johnson did discuss one’s social networks as a way to find jobs—especially jobs that are not listed in the paper—thus acknowledging that participants may have dominant social capital already.

The instructors I encountered acknowledged the range of relationships participants had outside the welfare office, and tried to get participants to assess these, often through exercises like those above. They acknowledged that some relationships may pose as a barrier to formal labor market participation, and they encouraged women to move away from negative relationships in favor of supportive ones. However, they did not expect women to forgo all subjugated social capital—only that which impeded their well-being. All the instructors in CCC promoted participants’ success by encouraging them to identify and nurture supportive relationships and to end negative ones. And by fostering relationships within the welfare office, they helped women create support for themselves as well.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital, which Bourdieu has called “informational capital” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), includes the cultural knowledge and dispositions one has, as well as the education and skills one has attained (Bourdieu 1986). The formal labor market and other mainstream institutions affirm dominant cultural capital, while stigmatizing subjugated cultural capital. Welfare programs typically provide opportunities to acquire three types of dominant cultural capital: formal education or training (often called human capital), job search skills, and workplace norms of appearance and behavior. As is true for social capital, the acquisition of cultural capital in welfare programs is dependent on more than just policies and the formal curriculum. Welfare workers’ practices and discourses are also highly influential in determining the opportunities for acquiring dominant cultural capital and again in shaping which opportunities welfare-reliant women are likely to pursue.

Formal education and training is clearly linked to higher incomes (Martinson and Strawn 2003; U.S. Census Bureau 2005), yet a combination of federal and state rules combined with the work-first ideology has severely limited the number of welfare participants who pursue education, particularly college. Federal TANF participation rules state that adult basic education, including GED preparation, is not a primary work activity (although vocational education can be) and thus that this type of education may only count toward one’s work requirement if it is combined with 20 or more hours of work (45 C. F. R. §261). CCC adhered to this rule, which limited the number of participants who pursued basic education, as well as to the state’s rule ⁵ allowing no more than eighteen to twenty-four months of education, training, or subsidized employment to count as work. However, despite a California policy requiring welfare participants to look for work before pursuing education as a work activity, in practice most CCC participants were able to go directly to school. CCC approved a broad range of vocational and postsecondary programs, including many community college programs, ranging from automotive to business to nurses’ assistant programs. Assessment workers sometimes approved other educational or training programs, as well.

Although formal education and training took place outside the welfare office, the policies, practices, and discourses within the welfare office affected who received training and what types of education they pursued. All of the instructors at both offices were strong advocates for education, but the Lewiston instructors were particularly inclined to push women in this direction. Clara, a young Filipina mother, credited Ms. Johnson with giving her the idea of going to school. Then, when Clara asked for help figuring out how to get to the campus by bus, Ms. Johnson drove her there. When I talked to Clara about six months after this occurred, she had earned her GED, enrolled in college, and gotten a work-study job through the CalWORKs office on campus. She told me, “First, I didn’t even think of going to school, going back to get my GED, that’s the first thing. But then [Ms. Johnson] was like, . . . ‘you know you can do this!’ . . . like a few weeks ago I called her up and I thanked her because, really . . . it really helped me like, you know, to get my mind straight a little.” Clara viewed the role of Ms. Johnson in encouraging her to go back to school as pivotal; the policy allowing education to count as work was not necessarily enough without someone suggesting and encouraging this choice.

While Ms. Johnson only pushed education for those she thought would benefit most, Mr. James advocated the skill-building path indiscriminately. He promised to advocate for participants and to try to get unapproved programs approved by the social workers who had the final say. Using their time on welfare to pursue education was the most important part of Mr. James’s “pimping the system” strategy. One of the first things he told his class was, “We don’t push work in here—we push education, training. We push careers, education.” He viewed college or vocational training as the best route out of poverty. When a participant was forced to attend Job Club rather than continue with classes leading to a high school diploma—because the latter is not a primary work activity—Mr. James promised to help her get around these rules. Another participant said her worker told her that she could not get credit for a fashion design program; Mr. James promised to “fight” for her. Although he did not always win these fights, participants seemed grateful for his advocacy and willingness to help them come up with an alternative plan that would eventually allow them to achieve their dream. By the end of the month-long Job Club/Job Search sequence, the majority of participants in Mr. James’s class were seriously considering college or another vocational program, and many were already in the process of registering. Of course, starting college or vocational classes is not the same as completing them, and there were a couple people, at least, who did not make it through their first semester.

While formal education and training took place outside of the welfare office, the Job Club and Job Search classes sought to transmit two other types of cultural capital. The first and arguably most useful form of these was job search skills, including how to use job databases, create a resume, and answer interview questions. As with education, there is tremendous variation among welfare-reliant women regarding their knowledge of job search skills, including how to construct a resume and answer interview questions. Most welfare programs, including CCC’s, teach these skills and the literature suggests that most women in a broad range of program types (Broughton 2001b, 2003; Korteweg 2003) appreciate this.

Most notable about the way CCC’s instructors taught job search skills was their clear departure from a work-first discourse. Instructors usually began by encouraging participants to think about the kind of job they wanted. Susan and the other Strafford instructors focused on this first step. They had participants fill out various interest inventories and discuss the types of jobs they might enjoy. Instructors supported participants’ dreams while encouraging them to start small. They also emphasized the importance of enjoying your work. It was common to hear instructors say, “If you don’t like your job, you won’t stick with it.” Instructors expected participants to hone in on one particular interest and look for work and/or education in that field. Participants were discouraged from applying to jobs that they did not really want. Ms. Johnson chided one young woman who was filling out a sheet that asked about the kind(s) of job she was looking for, “You do not want to be a janitor and if you write it down I will cross it off.”

Many of the women had never been on a job interview before, although most had worked in the formal labor market. Low self-esteem and self-confidence was common, and women often expressed extreme fear of interviews. Instructors spent time helping participants prepare for interviews by discussing interview questions and strategies, and occasionally conducting practice interviews. When I asked LaWanda, a seemingly gregarious black mother of three, what she got out of the required classes she told me,

I learned how to get out and go get a job. (laughs) And, um, communication skills, I liked that because that’s really why I wasn’t never just go find a job. . . . Like I’m talking to you, I wouldn’t have been able to do this at first because I . . . you see, in the class, I’m out in the open, but to be on a one-on-one basis, I could not talk. . . . When there’s a crowd of people, I’m all right, but when it’s just one-on-one I am very shy.

The second type of cultural capital transmitted during the mandatory classes was knowledge of the norms of appearance and behavior that dominate most workplaces. While related to job search skills in that both involve the presentation of self, this dominant cultural capital is more about habits, dispositions, and ways of interacting with others, similar to what is referred to as “soft skills.” Like most welfare programs, a considerable portion of the formal curriculum at CCC dealt with these topics, including appropriate dress and hygiene, and anger management (i.e., handling workplace conflict in ways that will not get you fired). In addition, there was a focus on improving one’s self-esteem and working toward one’s goals. While the most empowering programs abandon much of this “cultural retraining” (see Broughton 2003) altogether, others, including CCC’s, continue to teach this form of cultural capital but do so in a way that does not assume that participants are lacking appropriateness or values. Instead, they approach participants as though they may be either lacking or resisting some of the knowledge or behaviors (capital) that are helpful for keeping a job once you have one, and they encourage a strategic use of these norms.

The transmission of this form of cultural capital was clearly the least empowering portion of CCC’s welfare classes. Instructors differed in how they approached it. Mr. James relied less on prepared curriculum, instead leading informal discussions. One day he had the class come up with a list of good reasons to miss work and discussed the circumstances under which they might be acceptable to an employer. By having participants look at things from the perspective of the employer, Mr. James acknowledged the dominant cultural capital participants had and avoided telling participants how they should behave on the job. Ms. Johnson, on the other hand, taught directly out of the formal curriculum, typically reading from overhead slides. Bill and Strafford’s Job Club instructors fell somewhere in between Mr. James and Ms. Johnson.

What really made the approach of Harris County’s instructors stand out in contrast from repressive programs such as Broughton’s (2001b, 2003) Readywork and Korteweg’s (2003, 2004) Burnett County, among others, was the way they incorporated a critical element in their discourses. Each instructor worked against the mainstream assumptions about welfare programs and welfare recipients. Ms. Johnson acknowledged her disagreement with some of the welfare regulations, in particular the eighteen-month deadline to get a job, which she felt put too much pressure on people. However, she also said about the system, “it is what it is.” Although not as critical of structured racism and the welfare system as Mr. James, Ms. Johnson did leave space for participants to think about racism and inequality and she encouraged awareness and political involvement. She also promoted a non-work-first perspective not only by encouraging education but also by suggesting to participants that they should research a company before working for them to “see if you agree with the company’s practices.” She gave an example, “maybe you don’t want to work for a company that has a lawsuit with the NAACP, or that gives money to wars in Third World countries.” She then gave them a mini lecture on paying attention to “what is going on in the world.” And she told them to vote, “since our votes do count, as we learned from Florida.”

During one Job Club class at Strafford, instructors presented an interesting exercise that turned the intrusive social control of welfare into an incentive to work toward self-sufficiency. Susan told participants to imagine an association, “Citizens for a Stable Society,” that sought to end poverty, crime, and unemployment. But to do so, the members of the association would have to make all the decisions for those in the community regarding what work, education, and hobbies people would pursue. The class was then asked to come up with three reasons why this was a bad plan. Participants were horrified at this idea, and a lot of talking ensued, although they had trouble coming up with specific reasons why this was a bad idea. After some conversation, one of the instructors, Susan, held up the monthly report form that participants must fill out while on welfare. She said, “Your incomes are so low that we basically tell you how to live.” She explained that the purpose of this exercise was to get them to think about all the rules they had to follow, and how much control the government had over them. One participant insisted that welfare did not dictate their hobbies. Susan and Janet, another instructor, responded that with so little income there are many hobbies they cannot pursue, so in a sense the government does make decisions about their choice of hobbies. Of course, this exercise completely ignored the reality that if women left welfare for work, the low-wage job market would control their lives almost as much as the welfare system had. But it was an interesting admission by instructors that clients’ lives are deeply constrained, and that the welfare system is invasive. There was an implicit, although definitely not explicit, critique of the welfare system embedded in the exercise, although its purpose was to motivate participants to get a job and get off welfare.

Mr. James’s pedagogical approach was more engaged and respectful than his Lewiston co-worker’s, Ms. Johnson’s, and involved self-awareness and personal sharing. He clearly identified himself as “like” participants. On the first day he announced, “I don’t teach; I share. I will never talk down to you; I’m not any better. I’d be at the GA office if I lost my job.” Because he located himself as “like” participants—and was, in many ways, like them—he could also criticize aspects of subjugated cultural capital and endorse aspects of dominant cultural capital without sounding preachy. In discussing job interviews, he told participants, “no ghetto-fabulous talk.” Here he showed his intimate knowledge of “ghetto culture,” made a joke they could relate to, and reminded them that a workplace requires a different style of language and self-presentation. Moreover, he did this without denigrating subjugated capital.

Ultimately, Mr. James taught the dominant cultural norms as strategy: something to learn and use in order to achieve one’s goals. Mr. James’s approach appeared to succeed in presenting the realities of “workplace cultures,” as he called them, and in convincing participants that playing by certain rules was in their best interest. Mr. James specifically acknowledged that “workplace cultures” differed from participants’ “home cultures” or “subcultures.” He discussed his own initial discomfort in certain workplaces—including a bank—and spoke about the mistakes he had made adjusting to workplace norms, including allowing his friends to visit him at work. He asked them, “Why is understanding workplace culture important?” and told them, “Because it is very different from our home culture.” He then went on to explain that workplace cultures are not homogenous—each is different. He told them to “investigate workplace culture as best you can” and to know themselves and what works for them. For participants, Mr. James was an example of a black man who came from inner city poverty and who still embraced his “home culture” while strategically setting it aside when necessary on the job. Rather than asking participants to internalize dominant norms, or treating participants as “lacking” knowledge or willingness to follow the norms, his approach encouraged participants to observe and strategically follow workplace norms. Mr. James seemed to view strategic use of dominant norms as powerful and subversive, and participants believed that he cared about their futures and success.

Shauntay, who Ms. Johnson dropped from a previous class for poor attendance, had more complaints about welfare workers than most participants did. She also presented herself with more subjugated and less dominant cultural capital than most. Yet she summed up the general sentiment about Mr. James’s class when she told me, “I didn’t find nothing that I didn’t like about Mr. James’s class.”

What Mr. James did in the classroom could not have been done by a white person, or, in all likelihood, a black person who grew up in the suburbs. However, there are other ways for an instructor to respect participants’ subjugated capital and to encourage dominant capital, even if they do not share that subjugated capital. Bill, the only full-time instructor who was white, shared his personal and professional weaknesses with participants. He told them he had been fired once, and discussed some of the difficulties he had had with supervisors, while also providing tips about dealing with difficult bosses. Bill may have had more trouble connecting to participants had he worked at the Lewiston office, but in the more diverse Strafford office Bill’s style worked well.

While all of the instructors had empowering moments, not all were equally adored. Ms. Johnson, who seemed less comfortable with subjugated cultural capital than most instructors, appeared judgmental or condescending to some women. Shauntay said about her:

I don’t know, [Ms. Johnson] just feel like she was so good. I don’t know. It was like she just treated it, she treated welfare people different. I don’t know, like people on welfare different. Like “I’m better than ya’ll,” or “I can talk to you any kind a way because you’re on welfare.”

But others grew close to Ms. Johnson over time. LaWanda, whose self-presentation might be described by Mr. James’s phrase, “ghetto-fabulous,” described the process of getting to know Ms. Johnson:

She was really nice. She was really nice. First she came off to me and another one of the girls that was there that she was, you know, better than everybody, but then, as the class went on, she was really nice. Cause she told me, she kind of got the same thing about me—that I thought I was better than everybody because I came in there with high heels and skirts on. But she, she was really nice.

What’s important here is not only that Ms. Johnson got mixed reviews, but that those reviews were consistently based on the extent to which participants felt she respected them, as well as their perceptions of how she presented herself—or the type(s) of cultural capital she displayed. Much like Elijah Anderson’s (1999) findings in his study of street culture, I found that respect played a central role in many welfare recipients’ lives and within the welfare office. Feeling ‘disrespected’ in a work setting appeared to be at the heart of many participants’ stories of quitting or getting fired. In addition, showing respect was, in many ways, the key to building relationships with participants and in transmitting—and convincing them to use—dominant cultural capital. Respecting welfare recipients involves more than respecting their basic rights, or understanding their socioeconomic position. It also involves respecting their styles of presentation, their tastes and preferences—essentially, their subjugated cultural capital. My data from CCC suggest that achieving this level of respect and trust with welfare-reliant women is crucial for empowering women to pursue new opportunities and to make the strategic decisions necessary for them to have the success in the labor market that nearly all welfare-reliant women say they want.

Conclusion

The encouragement welfare participants in CCC received to “pimp the system,” stands in sharp contrast to the welfare programs described by other ethnographers. By highlighting an exception to predominant modes of welfare reform implementation, this study offers an alternative way to think about and evaluate welfare programs. Instead of evaluating welfare programs by the degree to which they are “work first” or by the extent to which they have lowered the welfare rolls, I argue that we should focus on the availability and accessibility of dominant economic, social, and cultural capital in welfare programs. In addition, I have argued that each form of capital has dominant and subjugated subtypes, and that empowering welfare programs acknowledge and respect the dominant and subjugated capital welfare-reliant women already have.

Without outcome data, it is impossible to say whether CCC’s empowering welfare program yielded better “results” in terms of long-term economic gains for participants. Yet even if the dominant capital transmitted in CCC’s welfare offices did not lead to improved chances in the labor market (though I believe it did), this capital and the way instructors transmitted it to welfare-reliant women still empowered them. To be empowered means to believe that one can be an agent in one’s own life—to be hopeful and confident in one’s ability to improve one’s life circumstances. Personal empowerment and self-efficacy are key to making positive life changes, just as community empowerment is crucial for positive social change. Empowering welfare programs have the potential to empower both individuals and communities.

Ideally, an empowering approach would not have to operate against the grain of repressive and restrictive regulations. However, even given current restrictions, there are many things that counties and individual welfare programs (or other antipoverty programs) can do to be more successful at empowering participants. First, individual welfare programs can maximize the economic capital they provide to participants by being as generous as possible with transportation monies and other work supports. Workers can acknowledge that most participants need subjugated economic capital—hidden income—to survive. And they can overlook all but the most egregious cases of welfare fraud.

Second, individual welfare programs and workers should foster positive, long-term relationships (social capital) with participants, as well as between participants. Supportive, responsive welfare workers who understand the constraints welfare-reliant women face, and who do not blame families for their poverty, are crucial to this goal. This is something that individual workers can do, even in quite repressive programs. Supervisors can play a key role in encouraging workers to relate to participants in this way, as well. Most importantly, instructors of mandatory welfare classes should create a supportive atmosphere where participants build trusting relationships with one another, and with the instructor(s). Also helpful is an acknowledgment of the varied relationships participants may have outside of the welfare office, and the benefits these relationships may bring to their lives. Respecting these relationships and encouraging participants to utilize them—as well as encouraging them to end negative relationships—may also be helpful.

Finally, individual welfare programs can do their best, within the confines of local laws, to promote education and training programs, and to allow participants to use the maximum amount of time allowed to increase their education. In addition, they should teach job search skills—ensuring that all participants have clean resumes, know how to fill out applications, and have had practice interviewing. Instructors can talk with participants about what employers expect in terms of appearance and behavior on the job, but they must remember that this form of dominant cultural capital is often—but not always—already held by welfare participants. Those with successful work experience can help instruct those with less about employer expectations, and how to retain employment once found. Participants can be encouraged to debate the pros and cons of complying with different workplace norms. It is important that instructors have some understanding of participants’ subjugated capitals—and that they respectfully deploy this in the classroom. By acknowledging and valuing participants’ subjugated cultural capital, instructors can create a learning environment where participants are more open to thinking about what employers will expect in the labor market. By teaching workplace expectations and skills for dealing with issues that may arise on the job as tools to be used in order to keep one’s job, instructors can present these soft skills as a choice, and thus put participants in control of their own behavior and decisions. Opportunities to complain about the norms, and to discuss the options jobseekers and workers face, could be particularly beneficial. Instruction on workers’ rights and the legal recourse employees have if employers deny these rights, would further empower participants. Thus, instead of teaching participants to be compliant workers—a perspective that may be (and should be) resisted—instructors can teach participants to be smart workers—to know what to do to keep one’s job if they decide that is the most important goal, and also to know how to protect themselves from illegal exploitation.

Given the recent economic crisis, soaring unemployment rates, and the decrease in the availability of welfare (DeParle 2009), it is tempting to ignore the inner workings of welfare programs for the bigger picture. If the “best” welfare programs still leave families poor and mothers jobless, do differences in approach even matter? Certainly, empowering discourses, short-term educational programs, and respectful welfare workers are not sufficient. But these variations, though arguably small in the grand scheme of things, are significant to the women who live day to day within the confines and discourses of welfare programs.

Beyond welfare programs, this study and the concepts of dominant and subjugated capitals also have important implications for other settings, including other antipoverty programs as well as local charities and community development organizations. In addition, subjugated and dominant capitals and the deployment of the former to aid in empowerment are relevant for educational settings. At a time when American schools are in particular crisis in terms of funding, test scores, and rates of graduation—particularly for black, Latino, and low-income students—acknowledging, respecting, and utilizing students’ subjugated capital might go a long way toward “reaching” and engaging students often labeled as “at risk.” That educators should be respectful of their students is a taken for granted assumption of good pedagogy. However, this study suggests that being respectful in particular ways and of particular aspects of students’ capital is important.

The adoration of Mr. James and his success in motivating welfare participants to pursue education highlights the potential benefits of having instructors who look like, talk like, and understand the lives of the students they are teaching. Mr. James made going to college seem subversive—it was both “pimping the system” and learning about one’s own history. It was doing what the “white power structure” did not want poor blacks to do. Susan’s connection to participants and ability to get them to share deeply about their lives is further indication of the important role teachers who come from similar backgrounds as the students can play. Bill, on the other hand, shows the potential for teachers who differ from the students they teach to find ways to show their respect for students’ subjugated capitals and to try to mobilize these resources to benefit students. Meanwhile Ms. Johnson shows, in some ways, that having teachers who look like and come from the same communities as their students is not enough. While participants who got to know her well genuinely liked her, she often appeared to others to be lacking in respect for participants and their subjugated capitals. Her hyper-professional dress, demeanor, and speech—all aspects of dominant cultural capital—created a gulf between her and participants that was sometimes hard to cross.

Future research might explore different educational settings to discover whether instructors who are successful in motivating students and achieving learning goals are, in fact, mobilizing students’ subjugated capitals. If this is the case, as this study suggests is likely, we can then focus more on understanding how teachers can do this—particularly in situations where the teacher does not share the subjugated capitals of the students.

Ultimately, what we learn from CCC is that empowerment is not only about outcomes—in the case of welfare programs, helping women get and keep jobs. It is about how welfare-reliant women (or others) feel about themselves, their lives, and each other. Welfare offices do not have to be sites of distrust and negative social capital (see Wacquant 1998). The case of Contra Costa County illuminates the possibility of community building within welfare offices. While the Lewiston and Strafford offices were certainly sites of repression and surveillance at times, they were also sites of community, support, and hopefulness among women. That CCC’s welfare program and particularly its instructors were able to create a space and atmosphere where women began to trust one another is significant, and shows the potential for welfare offices to be multifaceted institutions where both individual and community empowerment are possible.