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 THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES

In the United States, the causes and even the meanings of poverty are disconnected from the
causes and meanings of global poverty. The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States
provides an authoritative overview of the relationship of poverty with the rise of neoliberal
capitalism in the context of globalization.
Reorienting its national economy towards a global logic, United States domestic policies
have promoted a market-based strategy of economic development and growth as the obvious
solution to alleviating poverty, affecting approaches to the problem discursively, politically,
economically, culturally, and experientially. However, the handbook explores how, rather
than alleviating poverty, it has instead exacerbated poverty and pre-existing inequalities—pri-
vatizing the services of social welfare and educational institutions, transforming the state from
a benevolent to a punitive state, and criminalizing poor women, racial and ethnic minorities,
and immigrants.
Key issues examined by the international selection of leading scholars in this volume include:
income distribution, employment, health, hunger, housing, and urbanization. With parts focus-
ing on the lived experience of the poor, social justice and human rights frameworks—as opposed
to welfare rights models—and the role of helping professions such as social work, health, and
education, this comprehensive handbook is a vital reference for anyone working with those in
poverty, whether directly or at a macro level.

Stephen Nathan Haymes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and
an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies Program
and the Department of International Studies at DePaul University, Chicago. Professor
Haymes’ areas of research interest are Africana philosophy, postcolonial theory, forced migra-
tion, and education, conflict, and development. Currently, he is working on a project related
to place-based education and eco-justice with displaced Afro-descendent communities and
a Colombian Human Rights NGO. He serves as the co-editor of The Journal of Poverty:
Innovations on Social, Political and Economic Inequalities, a quarterly peer review publication of
the Taylor & Francis Group.

María Vidal de Haymes, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Social Work and Director of
the Institute for Migration and International Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. She is
the co-editor of The Journal of Poverty: Innovations on Social, Political and Economic Inequalities. She
teaches courses in areas of social welfare policy and migration studies and her research addresses
the economic and political incorporation of Latino immigrants in the United States; the impact
of migration on family relationships, roles, and functioning; forced migration; the role of faith-
based organizations in the pastoral and social accompaniment of migrants; child welfare; and
social work education.

Reuben Jonathan Miller, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of
Michigan. His research, writing, and advocacy work focus on the well-being of former prison-
ers living in large urban settings and the ways in which criminal justice and social welfare policy
is experienced daily by urban poor populations.
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK
OF POVERTY IN
THE UNITED STATES

Edited by Stephen Nathan Haymes,

María Vidal de Haymes, and Reuben Jonathan Miller
 First published 2015
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2015 Stephen Nathan Haymes, María Vidal de Haymes,
and Reuben Jonathan Miller
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the contributors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without
intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Routledge Handbook of Poverty in the United States / edited by Stephen
Haymes, Maria Vidal de Haymes and Reuben Miller.
pages cm
1. Poverty—United States. 2. United States—Economic conditions. 3. United
States—Social conditions. 4. United States—Economic policy. 5. United States—
Social policy. I. Haymes, Stephen Nathan. II. De Haymes, Maria Vidal. III. Miller,
Reuben Jonathan.
HC110.P6R68 2014
362.50973—dc23
2014009636

ISBN: 978 0 41 567344 0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978 1 31 575551 9 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by GreenGate Publishing Services, Tonbridge, Kent
This book is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and colleague, Alfred L. Joseph.
‘This Handbook is a treasure trove. Yes, it marshals the data on U.S. poverty, providing an
indispensable reference guide. Even more valuably, it theorizes U.S. poverty anew, demon-
strating how U.S. destitution and its “surplus populations” are shaped by neoliberalism’s global
projects and logics, its economic mandates and powers of enforcement. The Handbook is thus
also a compendium of knowledge for all who fight to end poverty. This is the book I want my
students to have as they work in impoverished communities. It is also the book that all scholars
of poverty and globalization will need to keep ready to hand.’
Mark Lewis Taylor, Religion and Society, Princeton Theological Seminary
 CONTENTS

List of figures xiv

List of tables xv
List of appendices xvii
Editor biographies xviii
Notes on contributors xix

General introduction
Stephen Nathan Haymes, María Vidal de Haymes,
and Reuben Jonathan Miller 1

PART I
From the production of inequality to the production of destitution:
the U.S. political economy of poverty in the era of globalization 5
Introduction 7
María Vidal de Haymes, Stephen Nathan Haymes, and Michael Lloyd

1 Beyond coincidence: how neoliberal policy initiatives

in the IMF and World Bank affected United States poverty levels 11
Pamela Blackmon

2 The discursive axis of neoliberalism: debt, deficits, and austerity 19

Shawn Cassiman

3 Deindustrialized small cities and poverty: the view from Camden 26

Andrew Seligsohn and Joan Maya Mazelis

4 Transnational factors driving U.S. inequality and poverty 33

Rubin Patterson and Giselle Thompson
 Contents

5 Globalization and the trends in inequality of poverty

in the United States in the last decade 43
Ashish Singh

6 The house always wins: how state lotteries displace American

tax burdens by class and race 56
Kasey Henricks and Victoria Brockett

7 Predatory financial services: the high cost of being poor

in America 75
Howard Karger

8 Consumer credits as a quasi-welfare system for failed neoliberals’

trickle-down policies between the 1980s and 2000s 83
Intae Yoon

PART II
Discourses of poverty: from the “culture of poverty”
to “surplus population” 93
Introduction 95
Stephen Nathan Haymes and Eduardo Vargas

9 The problematic conceptualizations and constructions of poverty:

select global analysis 101
Ali A. Abdi

10 Neoliberal economics and undergraduate poverty education 108

Kevin D. Blair and Gabriel A. Santos

11 The importance of context to the social processes around

material hardship 120
Colleen M. Heflin

12 Welfare dependency and poverty: neoliberal rhetoric

or evidence-informed choice? 130
Philip Young P. Hong and Brenda Crawley

13 Babies as barriers: welfare policy discourse in an era of neoliberalism 143

Linda Houser, Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss, and Richard C. Fording

14 We are the 99 percent: the rise of poverty and the decline

of poverty stigma 161
Joan Maya Mazelis and Brendan M. Gaughan

viii
 Contents

PART III
From the welfare state to the neoliberal state:
from regulating to imprisoning the poor 171

SECTION I
Transformation of the welfare state: education 173
Introduction 175
Stephen Nathan Haymes and Emily Shayman

15 Neoliberalism and African Americans in higher education 179

Kimya Barden

16 How neoliberalism subverts equality and perpetuates poverty

in our nation’s schools 190
T. Jameson Brewer and Paul S. Myers

17 Invisible students and the issues of online education 199

An Chih Cheng

18 Poverty reduction through education: an analytical framework

for cash transfers for education 208
Elena Delavega and Monit Cheung

19 Students that lag or a system that fails? A contemporary look

at the academic trajectory of Latino students 218
Jessica Martone

20 The new two-tiered education system in the United States: expanding and
commodifying poverty and inequality 226
Kenneth J. Saltman

SECTION II
Transformation of the welfare state: cash transfers, housing,
nutrition, and health 233
Introduction 235
María Vidal de Haymes, Erin Malcolm and Celeste Sánchez

21 Neoliberal globalization: social welfare policy and institutions 239

Michael J. Holosko and John R. Barner

22 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act

of 1996 (PRWORA) 249
Richard K. Caputo

ix
 Contents

23 Anti-poverty policies and the structure of inequality 259

Eiko Strader and Joya Misra

24 Mixed-income communities and poverty amelioration 268

James C. Fraser and Deirdre Oakley

25 Countering urban poverty concentration in the United States:

the people versus place debate in housing policy 275
Anupama Jacob

26 Privatizing the housing safety net: HOPE VI and the transformation

of public housing in the United States 285
Kimberly Skobba, Deirdre Oakley, and Dwanda Farmer

27 Poverty de-concentration priorities in low-income housing tax

credit allocation policy: a content analysis of qualified
allocation plans 296
Monique S. Johnson

28 Neo-liberalism and private emergency food networks 307

Deborah A. Harris and Jamilatu Zakari

29 Examining food security among children in households participating

in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP):
implications for human rights 316
Margaret Lombe, Von E. Nebbitt, Mansoo Yu, Andrew Reynolds,
and Aakanksha Sinha

30 The influence of a neoliberal world view on health care policy 330

John Orwat, Michael P. Dentato, and Michael Lloyd

SECTION III
Transformation of the welfare state: criminalizing of the poor 343
Introduction 345
Reuben Jonathan Miller and Emily Shayman

31 Managing the neoliberal city: “quality of life” policing

in the twenty-first century 349
Katherine Beckett and Steve Herbert

32 The rise of incarceration among the poor with mental illnesses:

how neoliberal policies contribute 357
Jessica K. Camp and Eileen Trzcinski

x
 Contents

33 Class, crime, and social control in the contemporary United States 367
Spencer Headworth

34 A people’s history of legal aid: a brief sketch 378

Shaun Ossei-Owusu

35 Surviving gender-based violence in the neoliberal era: the role

of the state in transforming poor women from victims to survivors 387
Cesraéa Rumpf

36 Systemic and symbolic violence as virtue: the carceral punishment

of African American girls 398
Enora R. Brown

37 The paradox of entrepreneurship as a policy tool for economic

inclusion in neoliberal policy environments 406
Colleen Casey

PART IV
Global poverty and the lived experiences of poor communities
in the United States 415
Introduction 417
Reuben Jonathan Miller and Alexis Silvers

38 Social ties among the poor in a neoliberal capitalist society 421

Joan Maya Mazelis

39 Paths into homelessness: an examination of structural factors 428

Christine George, Susan Grossman, Judith Wittner, and Michael Sosin

40 Examining racial–ethnic and gender disparities in poverty

among the elderly 436
Jin Kim

41 Ableism, poverty, and the under-celebrated resistance 444

Sara Lichtenwalter and Christopher Magno

42 Breaking the silence: homelessness and race 456

David Wagner and Pete White

43 The effects of neoliberal capitalism on immigration and poverty

among Mexican immigrants in the United States 463
David Becerra

xi
 Contents

44 The neoliberal diet: fattening profits and people 472

Gerardo Otero, Gabriela Pechlaner, and Efe Can Gürcan

45 Grounding grandma: a qualitative discussion of home maintenance

policies for aging in community 480
Lawren E. Bercaw

46 Poverty, health, and Asian non-linearity 489

Shweta Singh, Shveta Kumaria, and Kathryn Berg

PART V
Organizing to resist neoliberal policies and poverty:
activism and advocacy 497
Introduction 499
Reuben Jonathan Miller and Jennifer Miller

47 The poverty of “poverty”: re-mapping conceptual terrain in

education and counseling beyond a focus on economic output 503
Joby Gardner, Darrick Tovar-Murray, and Stanley Wilkerson

48 Legitimizing and resisting neoliberalism in United States community

development: the influential role of community
development intermediaries 512
Leigh Graham

49 Too legit to quit: gaining legitimacy through human rights organizing 522
Jennifer R. Jewell

50 Neoliberalism, state projects, and migrant organizing 531

Jacob Lesniewski and Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro

51 From the self to the social: engaging urban youth in strategies

for change 538
Amira Proweller and Karen Monkman

52 Migrant civil society: shaping community and citizenship

in a time of neoliberal reforms 547
Pascale Joassart-Marcelli and Nina Martin

xii
 Contents

PART VI
Reframing poverty in the era of globalization:
alternatives to a neoliberal economic order 555
Introduction 557
Stephen Nathan Haymes and María Vidal de Haymes

53 Creating a sustainable society: human rights in the United States

welfare state 559
Phyllis Jeroslow

54 Returning to the collective: new approaches to alleviating poverty 567

Susan Roll and Sue Steiner

55 Why we cannot all be middle class in America 576

Lakshman Yapa

Index 584

xiii
 FIGURES

5.1 Poverty trend by race and ethnicity, region, family-type,

and nativity: United States, 2002–11 45
5.2 Gap between Blacks and Whites in unemployment–population ratio,
unemployment rate, job losers, and average weeks of unemployment:
United States, 2002–11 50
5.3 Number of workers displaced in millions: United States, 2001–11 51
6.1 Individual, corporate, and social insurance taxes as a share of GDP,
1934–2009 58
6.2 Timeline of U.S. lotteries by first year of operation 61
6.3 Expenditure breakdown of lottery revenues, fiscal year 2011 (in billions) 62
8.1 Consumer credit debt changes between 1943 and 2012 88
23.1 Poverty status for groups in the United States, 2011 259
23.2 Pre- and post-tax and transfer poverty rates 263
26.1 Atlanta’s public housing and HOPE VI redevelopments as of 2007 291
26.2 Unit type through HOPE VI redevelopment in Atlanta 292
29.1 Conceptual model showing influence of SNAP on food security 319
29.2 Interaction of IFS and HFS in predicting CFS 326
37.1 The relationship between social capital, education, labor,
and economic resources 408
44.1 The percentage contribution of the three main food sources
to total daily per capita caloric intake in the United States 475
44.2 Percentage increases in United States food supply, 1985–2009 476
44.3 Percentage of vegetable oils and animal fats in United States food supply 476

xiv
 TABLES

5.1 Inter-racial disparity in distribution of poverty: United States, 2002–11 47

5.2 Inequality in distribution of poverty by region, family-type,
and nativity: United States, 2002–11 48
5.3 Characteristics of unemployment: United States, 2002–11 49
5.4 Characteristics of long-tenured displaced workers: United States, 2001–11 52
5.5 Unemployment rate, average weeks of unemployment, and median
weekly earnings for Hispanics and Asians: United States, 2002–11 54
5.6 Median weekly earnings by race: United States, 2002–11 55
5.7 Characteristics of long-tenured displaced workers—Hispanics
and Asians: United States, 2002–11 55
6.1 Number of state tax reforms throughout the United States, 1978–1981 59
6.2 Sources of local and state revenue: selected years, 1972–2005
(in percentages) 60
6.3 National overview of lottery states A–M: total revenues, sales per capita,
prizes, administrative costs, and available proceeds to public services,
fiscal year 2011 63
6.4 National overview of lottery states N–W: total revenues, sales per capita,
prizes, administrative costs, and available proceeds to public services,
fiscal year 2011 65
6.5 National overview of states A–M: lottery-funded public services,
fiscal year 2011 67
6.6 National overview of states N–W: lottery-funded public services,
fiscal year 2011 68
6.7 Ever played the lottery, frequency of play, and outcomes of net loss 70
6.8 Outcomes of frequent lottery play, by race and socioeconomic status 71
11.1 Determinants of food insufficiency 124
11.2 Determinants of bill hardship 125
11.3 Determinants of home hardship 127
12.1 Descriptive statistics of dependent variables 133
12.2 Descriptive statistics of independent variables 134
12.3 Individual logistic regression models explaining various aspects of poverty 136

xv
 List of tables

12.4 Full logistic regression models explaining various aspects of poverty 138
21.1 Social welfare expenditures as percentage of U.S. gross domestic
product, 2003–2007 242
21.2 Comparison of key tenets of social liberal and neoliberal paradigms 243
23.1 Annual expenditures and caseloads of six major programs, 2010 261
27.1 Proportion of spatial criteria relative to overall LIHTC scoring criteria
in qualified allocation plans 302
27.2 Proportion of poverty de-concentration criteria relative to spatial
criteria in LIHTC qualified allocation plans 302
29.1 Demographic characteristics of SNAP and informal food support users 322
29.2 Correlations of SNAP and informal food support study variables 323
29.3 Multivariate regression models predicting child food security 325
29.4 Multivariate regression models predicting child food security
with the interaction term 325
32.1 Selected economic characteristics for the civilian noninstitutionalized
population by disability status in 2011 362
32.2 Predicted percentage of family poverty for working aged individuals
(aged 18–61) with mental disabilities in 2010 362
32.3 Average monthly income earned among individuals aged 18–61
with mental disabilities in CPI-adjusted dollars in 2010 362
32.4 Percentage of individuals with mental disabilities aged 18–61 employed
at the same job for the past year in 2010 363
40.1 Poverty status of persons 65 years and over, by race, Hispanic origin,
and sex: 2002–2011 437
40.2 Life table describing the risk of poverty during retirement
for persons aged 65 and over 440
40.3 Life table describing the risk of poverty during retirement
for persons aged 65 and over 441
42.1 Racial and ethnic population breakdowns and the racial disparities
in homelessness 459
45.1 Existing U.S. home maintenance policies and programs 483
45.2 A sample of existing local home maintenance policies and programs 485

xvi
 APPENDICES

5.1 Unemployment rate, average weeks of unemployment, and median

weekly earnings for Hispanics and Asians: United States, 2002–11 54
5.2 Median weekly earnings by race: United States, 2002–11 55
5.3 Characteristics of long-tenured displaced workers—Hispanics
and Asians: United States, 2001–11 55

xvii
 EDITOR BIOGRAPHIES

Stephen Nathan Haymes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the College of Education and is
an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies Program
and the Department of International Studies at DePaul University. Professor Haymes’ areas of
research interests are Africana philosophy, postcolonial theory, forced migration, and education,
conflict, and development. Currently, he is working on a project related to place-based educa-
tion and eco-justice with displaced Afro-descendent communities and a Colombian Human
Rights NGO. He serves as the co-editor of The Journal of Poverty: Innovations on Social, Political
and Economic Inequalities, a quarterly peer review publication of the Taylor & Francis Group.
María Vidal De Haymes, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Social Work and Director of
the Institute for Migration and International Social Work at Loyola University Chicago. She is
the co-editor of The Journal of Poverty: Innovations on Social, Political and Economic Inequalities. She
teaches courses in areas of social welfare policy and migration studies and her research addresses
the economic and political incorporation of Latino immigrants in the United States; the impact
of migration on family relationships, roles, and functioning; forced migration; the role of faith-
based organizations in the pastoral and social accompaniment of migrants; child welfare; and
social work education.
Reuben Jonathan Miller, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of
Michigan. His research, writing, and advocacy work focus on the well-being of former prison-
ers living in large urban settings and the ways in which criminal justice and social welfare policy
is daily experienced by urban poor populations.

xviii
 CONTRIBUTORS

Ali A. Abdi is a Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Global Citizenship Education
and Research (CGCER) in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of
Alberta. His areas of research include citizenship and human rights education, social and cultural
foundations of education, and postcolonial studies in education.

Kimya Barden is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern Illinois University’s Inner City

Studies Education Program. Dr. Barden earned her Ph.D. in social work at Loyola University
Chicago’s School of Social Work. A Chicago native, she is a youth program developer and
qualitative scholar. Her research interests include African American young adult development,
racial socialization processes, and youth violence management.

John R. Barner, MSW, Ph.D., is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Human
Services at the University of North Georgia. He has written, presented, and published interna-
tionally across many topics, including law and violence, social work education, globalization,
immigration, and emergent social movements. His work has appeared in the British Journal of
Social Work, the Journal of Policy Practice, Qualitative Social Work, Social Work Education, the Journal
of Family Violence, and Mortality.

David Becerra, MSW, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Arizona
State University. His research focuses on the adverse effects of poverty and inequality among
Latinos.

Katherine Beckett is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Law, Societies, and
Justice Program at the University of Washington. Her recent research projects have explored
the consequences of criminal justice expansion for social inequality, the role of race in drug law
enforcement, and the transformation of urban social control practices in the United States. She
is the author of numerous articles and three books on these topics, including, most recently,
Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America, published in 2010 by Oxford University Press
and a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Book Award.

xix
 Notes on contributors

Lawren E. Bercaw is a Ph.D. candidate at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social
Policy and Management and serves as a research analyst within the Aging, Disability, and Long-
Term Care division at RTI International. Her primary research interests center around the
intersection between housing policy and aging issues.

Kathryn Berg is a doctoral candidate at the University of Buffalo’s Social Welfare Program. She
has a Master’s in Social Work in Women’s and Gender Studies from Loyola University Chicago.

Pamela Blackmon is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Pennsylvania

State University, Altoona. Her research focuses on the policies of the international financial
institutions, and she is currently examining the role of export credit agencies in international
trade and finance. Her articles have been published in Third World Quarterly, International Studies
Review, Women’s Studies, and Central Asian Survey. She has contributed previously to edited vol-
umes that address the policies of the financial institutions in The International Studies Compendium
Project (2010) and most recently as a contributor to The Handbook of Global Companies (2013).

Kevin D. Blair is a Professor of Social Work at Niagara University where he teaches courses
in social work methods and poverty. Dr. Blair directs the Vincentian Poverty Studies minor
at Niagara. His current research focuses on improving undergraduate poverty education at
American universities.

T. Jameson Brewer is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Policy, Organization

and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he studies the impli-
cations of educational policies that seek to privatize and commercialize public education and
the impacts that those policies have on the profession of teaching and disadvantaged students.
Prior to his studies, he taught high school social studies in the inner city Atlanta Public Schools.

Victoria Brockett is an Academic Advisor in the Department of Education at Valparaiso

University. Her research interests include racial justice, public sociology, and the intersection
of inequality.

Enora R. Brown is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies

and Research in the College of Education at DePaul University. Her publications include the
co-edited volume The Critical Middle School Reader and a range of articles and book chapters on
critical studies in human development, educational policy reform, and youth identity. Her cur-
rent research focuses on critical discourse analyses of youth in school culture, with an emphasis
on identity, race, and social class.

Jessica K. Camp, Ph.D., LMSW, is a recent graduate from the Wayne State University Social
Work Doctoral Program. She works as an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University
of Michigan—Flint. Her research focuses on challenging poverty and inequality in the United
States, especially among working-age adults in recovery from mental health and substance abuse
disorders.

Richard K. Caputo, Ph.D., is a Professor of Social Policy and Research, Wurzweiler School of
Social Work, Yeshiva University, New York City. He has authored six books and edited two,
including Policy Analysis for Social Workers (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014), Basic Income Guarantee
and Politics: International Experiences and Perspectives on the Viability of Income Guarantee (New York:

xx
 Notes on contributors

Palgrave, 2012), and U.S. Social Welfare Reform: Policy Transitions from 1981 to the Present (New York:
Springer, 2011). He has many peer-reviewed journal articles and serves as an Associate Editor for
the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. Dr. Caputo also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal
of Poverty, the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Families in Society, and Marriage and Family Review.

Colleen Casey, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the
University of Texas at Arlington. She has a Ph.D. in Public Policy Analysis and Administration,
with an emphasis on urban and community development policy. Her research focus is on urban
community and economic development policy, with a particular focus on access to credit,
social capital, and social networks.

Shawn Cassiman is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Dayton. Her
research, community activism and teaching are concerned with oppression and resistance. She
is currently working with the United States BIG (Basic Income) group, as she conceptual-
izes policy as a form of resistance. Her articles can be found in journals, such as The Journal of
Poverty, and Lo Squaderno among others. For more information: https://udayton.academia.edu/
ShawnCassiman

An Chih Cheng, Ph.D., received degrees in Educational Psychology (Ph.D.) and Program
Evaluation (MA) from the University of Texas at Austin, and Applied Neuroscience (MS) from
the University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Educational Policy
Studies at DePaul University. His work focuses on young children’s multimodal literacies and
assessment of the efficacy of online education.

Monit Cheung, MA, MSW, Ph.D., LCSW, is a Professor and Chair, Clinical Practice
Concentration, and Principal Investigator of the Child Welfare Education Project at the
Graduate College of Social Work, University of Houston. Dr. Cheung has been teaching at the
graduate level since 1986 after she received her doctoral degree from the Ohio State University.
She has been a practitioner in clinical social work for 37 years and has published extensively in
the field of child sexual abuse and child protection. She also wrote an article about her experi-
ence as a sponsored child which was published in the Journal of Poverty.

Brenda Crawley is an Associate Professor Emerita in the School of Social Work at Loyola
University Chicago. She is a Fulbright Scholar. Her areas of interest include policy analysis,
structural causes of poverty, and international social work.

Elena Delavega, Ph.D., MSW, is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of
Memphis. Her research focus centers on understanding and eliminating poverty through policy
analysis and interventions grounded in critical theory and French post-structuralism.

Michael P. Dentato, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Loyola
University Chicago. Dr. Dentato’s research centers around sexual minority health dispari-
ties and risk behavior attitudes, substance use and addiction disorders, and LGBTQ lifespan
development.

Dwanda Farmer, Ph.D., is the Principal Consultant at The CED Doctor, LLC, in Baltimore,
Maryland. The firm specializes in community economic development projects including afford-
able housing, commercial development, and small business enterprise. Dr. Farmer has extensive

xxi
 Notes on contributors

experience in developing programs and projects in low-income communities with government

funding including: New Market Tax Credits, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and Housing
and Urban Development and Community Development Block Grants. She has worked as a
CED practitioner for nearly 20 years and has attracted more than $40M to community devel-
opment projects in low-income communities. She is one of a dozen individuals to obtain a
doctorate in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University.

Richard C. Fording is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the
University of Alabama. He is the author or co-author of articles appearing in a variety of jour-
nals, including American Political Science Review, American Sociological Review, American Journal of
Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. He is the co-author of Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal
Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (University of Chicago Press).

James C. Fraser is an Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University in the Department of

Human and Organizational Development.

Joby Gardner, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in DePaul University’s College of Education

and Director of the Program in Curriculum Studies. His research interests include youth cul-
tures, youth development, the institutional experiences of incarcerated and non-dominant
youth, and the preparation and support of teachers as change agents. Currently, he is working
on a project on re-enrolling youth in Chicago Public Schools after incarceration.

Brendan M. Gaughan completed his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Rutgers University in

Camden, New Jersey, in 2012. He worked with Dr. Joan Maya Mazelis as a teaching assistant
and research assistant during college and has continued as a research collaborator after gradua-
tion. His research interests include poverty, inequality, social capital, and social stigmatization.

Christine George, Ph.D., is a Research Associate Professor, Loyola University Chicago,

Center for Urban Research and Learning. Dr. George’s research, which is primarily within
the context of community–university participatory collaborations, focuses on homelessness,
domestic violence, and the delivery of social welfare services. She teaches social policy and
urban sociology at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has also been involved in research
in the area of women and poverty for many years.

Leigh Graham is an Assistant Professor of Urban Policy at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and
on the Doctoral Faculty in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center at the City University
of New York. Her scholarship on community development conflict and change is grounded in
practice in New Orleans, New York City, and Boston, and has been published in The Journal of the
American Planning Association, Housing Policy Debate, and Economic Development Quarterly.

Susan Grossman, Ph.D., is an Associate Dean and Professor, Loyola University Chicago,
School of Social Work. Dr. Grossman joined the faculty of the School of Social Work in 1997.
She teaches social policy and research in the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral programs. In
addition, she is an Associate Faculty Member of the Women’s Studies/Gender Studies Program
and the Center for Urban Research and Learning at Loyola. Dr. Grossman’s research focuses
on the needs and service use of victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and abuse. She
has also been involved in research on homelessness for many years and is interested in the area
of women and poverty.

xxii
 Notes on contributors

Efe Can Gürcan is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Simon Fraser University. His
research interests lie in the areas of political sociology, development and food studies, Latin
America, and Middle East. His works have been or will be published in journals such as
Rural Sociology, Dialectical Anthropology, Latin American Perspectives, Capital & Class, Review of
Radical Political Economics, and Socialism & Democracy. His book, Challenging Neoliberalism at
Turkey’s Gezi Park, will be published in January 2015 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Deborah A. Harris is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Texas State University. Her research
interests include poverty and social inequality, rural sociology, and the sociology of food. Her
newest book, Taking the Heat Women Chefs and Gender Inequality in the Professional Kitchen, will
come out in 2015 Rutgers University Press..

Spencer Headworth is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Northwestern University and Graduate

Research Coordinator at the American Bar Foundation. His research interests include crime and
social control, law, inequality, organizations, and professions. His dissertation examines the emer-
gence and development of specialized units tasked with controlling fraud in public benefit programs.

Colleen M. Heflin is an Associate Professor at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the
University of Missouri. Her interdisciplinary research program focuses on understanding the
survival strategies employed by low-income households to make ends meet, the implications of
these strategies on individual and household well-being, and how federal program participation
influences well-being. A central focus of her work has been on understanding the causes and
consequences of material hardship.

Kasey Henricks is a Law and Social Science Fellow at the American Bar Foundation and Ph.D.
Student of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago. His research interests lie in understanding
how race and class inequalities are reproduced over time through institutional arrangements
sponsored by state fiscal policy.

Steve Herbert is a Professor of Law, Societies, and Justice and Geography at the University of
Washington. He is the author of Policing Space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department,
Citizens, Cops and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community, and (with Katherine Beckett)
Banished: The New Social Control in Urban America.

Michael J. Holosko, Ph.D., MSW, is the Pauline M. Berger Professor of Family and Child
Welfare at the University of Georgia School of Social Work. He has published extensively in
the areas of evaluation, research methods, social work practice, child family services, and geron-
tology. He has taught in schools of social work (primarily), nursing, and public administration
in many countries of the world including: the United States, China, Hong Kong, Sweden,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Philip Young P. Hong, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and a
faculty associate of the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St.
Louis. His main academic interest is in poverty and workforce development. He is currently
partnering with local workforce development initiatives to develop bottom-up strategies for
empowering low-income individuals and families in their quest to achieve self-sufficiency.
Findings from his study on psychological self-sufficiency promises to inform empowerment-
based workforce development interventions and policy development.

xxiii
 Notes on contributors

Linda Houser is an Assistant Professor and Ph.D. Program Director at Widener University’s
Center for Social Work Education, an Affiliate Fellow at the Center for Women and Work
at Rutgers University, and a policy practitioner in the areas of employment, caregiving, and
health. Her research and practice focus is on financial, workplace, and caregiving security for
women and families.

Anupama Jacob, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Azusa
Pacific University. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on poverty measurement in the United States at
the University of California, Berkeley.

Phyllis Jeroslow is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Welfare at the University
of California, Berkeley, where she researches comparative welfare state policies and govern-
ment investments in early childhood. She has taught public policy topics related to children
and youth in the Department of Child and Adolescent Development at San Francisco State
University, and has served for many years as a training and curriculum specialist at the California
Social Work Education Center, University of California, Berkeley.

Jennifer R. Jewell co-founded Women in Transition (WIT), a grassroots organization run by

and for poor people, when she was homeless and living on welfare. Learning to make the system
work for her, she completed her degree in social work and eventually earned her Ph.D. She is
an Associate Professor and the Director of the Undergraduate Program at Salisbury University.
Her areas of interest focus on privilege and oppression, community organizing, and contemporary
poor people’s movements. She is the proud mother of three children.

Pascale Joassart-Marcelli is an Associate Professor of Geography at San Diego State University

where she teaches and conducts research on immigrant and refugee integration, community,
and urban governance. Her current research focuses on the relationship between food, ethnic-
ity, and place, with an emphasis on food justice and alternative food practices in immigrant
communities and low-income neighborhoods.

Monique S. Johnson is a Senior Loan Officer with Virginia Community Capital where she
manages relationships with developers and community partners, and structures financing trans-
actions that produce social and economic impact across the state. She has been recognized locally
and statewide as a “Top 40 Under 40” community leader and nationally as a Young Leader
of Affordable Housing by Affordable Housing Finance Magazine. Monique serves on numerous
non-profit boards and committees. She is an adjunct professor at Virginia Commonwealth
University and expects to complete her Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration with an
Urban Policy Concentration in 2014.

Howard Karger, Ph.D., is a Professor and Chairperson, Department of Family Studies and
Social Work, Miami University. He has published widely in national and international jour-
nals. His books include Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy (winner of the 2006
Independent Publishers Award in Investment/Finance/Economics); (with D. Stoesz) American
Social Welfare Policy; (with D. Stoesz and L. Costin) The Politics of Child Abuse and Neglect in
America; (with R. Fisher) Social Work and Community in a Private World; and (with D. Stoesz and
T. Carrilio) A Dream Deferred: How Social Work Education Lost Its Way and What Can Be Done.

xxiv
 Notes on contributors

Jin Kim is currently an Assistant Professor and Policy Curriculum Specialist in the Social
Work Department in the social work program at Northeastern Illinois University. He received
a Ph.D. in social welfare and a minor certificate in applied economics from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison.

Shveta Kumaria is a doctoral candidate in the School of Social Work, Loyola University
Chicago. She holds a M.Phil degree in Clinical Psychology from the National Institute of
Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India. Her research interests include psycho-
therapy research, psychotherapy integration, and training and supervision in therapy.

Jacob Lesniewski is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at Dominican University’s Graduate

School of Social Work. His research focuses on worker centers and their role in improving the
conditions of work for low-wage workers through organizing, policy advocacy, and individual
service delivery. He teaches in the areas of community practice, history of the welfare state,
and social policy analysis. He also gives leadership to the University’s West Side Collaborative,
which seeks to build lasting and sustained partnerships with organizations and agencies on
Chicago’s West Side.

Sara Lichtenwalter, LSW, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor with Gannon University’s Social
Work Program. Her scholarship has focused on the structural factors that contribute to the
unyielding and enduring relationship between marginalized women and poverty, with a par-
ticular emphasis on mothers and caregivers, as well as women with disabilities.

Michael Lloyd, MSW, LSW, CADC, completed his Bachelor’s Degree from DePaul
University and his Master’s Degree in Social Work and Certification for Alcohol and Drug
Counseling at Loyola University Chicago in 2012. Mr. Lloyd has been a research fellow for
Dr. María Vidal de Haymes in the Institute on Migration and International Social Work at
Loyola for the last two years. He is currently a research assistant for Dr. Michael Dentato
focusing on LGBTQ treatment and practice issues. His areas of interest include HIV/AIDS,
addiction research, LGBTQ issues, and co-occurring disorders. Mr. Lloyd is currently
enrolled in the Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work Ph.D. Program and is
pursuing his LCSW certification.

Margaret Lombe, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the Boston College Graduate School of
Social Work. She is also a faculty associate at the Center for Social Development at Washington
University in St. Louis. Her area of expertise is international social development with an empha-
sis on social inclusion/exclusion and capacity building. Lombe has provided consultation to the
United Nations and has participated in a number of Experts Group Meetings on inclusion/exclu-
sion. She has also published extensively in peer-reviewed journals as well as book chapters.

Christopher Magno is an Assistant Professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Gannon

University. He earned his Ph.D. in Criminal Justice at Indiana University, Bloomington,
and is the 2013 recipient of Gannon’s three-year Cooney-Jackman Endowed Professorship.
He is the author of the forthcoming book Corruption and Revolution in the Philippines and, as
co-author, is writing a book entitled Radical Criminology for Everyday Life. His teaching and
research specializations include political crime, white-collar crime, terrorism, genocide, law
and society, environmental justice, restorative justice, alternative social control, and cross-
cultural and comparative criminology.

xxv
 Notes on contributors

Erin Malcolm holds a Bachelor and Master of Social Work from Loyola University Chicago.
She has worked as an Editorial Associate for the Journal of Poverty and the Routledge Handbook of
Poverty. Her research interests surround immigration and migration.

Nina Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She conducts research on immigration and local political con-
flicts, urban labor markets, and the management of non-profit organizations. Her work has
been widely published in Geography and Urban Planning journals, including Mobilities, Gender,
Place and Culture, and Environment and Planning A.

Jessica Martone, Ph.D., is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago’s School of Social

Work Ph.D. Program. Jessica is currently adjunct faculty in Loyola’s School of Social Work
and is a field liaison for the social work field program. Jessica held the Arthur J. Schmitt
dissertation fellowship from 2012 to 2013 and was a doctoral research fellow through the
Institute for Migration and International Social Work from 2009 to 2012. Jessica com-
pleted her Masters in Social Work at Loyola University Chicago in May 2009 with a focus
in migration studies. Jessica has been involved with immigration-related research projects
and her dissertation focused on Latino student academic achievement in the United States,
specifically looking at the transition to higher education.

Joan Maya Mazelis, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of

Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice and an affiliated scholar at the Center for Urban
Research and Education at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. Her teaching and
scholarship focus on urban poverty, inequality, stigma, social ties, and reciprocity.

Jennifer Miller holds a Master of Social Work and a Master of Arts in Women’s Studies and
Gender Studies from Loyola University Chicago. Her professional and academic interests
include immigrants and refugees, community organizing, and global health. Jenn has nearly
ten years of experience working in the government and non-profit sectors, and currently
serves as the Immigrant Family Resource Program Manager at the Illinois Coalition for
Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

Joya Misra is a Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, and editor of the journal Gender and Society. Much of her research explores how social
policies affect inequalities in employment, wages, income, and poverty cross-nationally.

Karen Monkman, Ph.D. (University of Southern California), is a Professor at DePaul

University. Her research interests relate to education and social justice; gender, class, ethnic-
ity, and race; and international/comparative education policy, migration, and globalization.
She is co-editor of Globalization & Education: Integration and Contestation across Cultures, 2nd
edition (2014).

Paul S. Myers is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Educational Policy, Organization and
Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include
educational governance and the schooling experiences of marginalized persons in light of the
involvement of markets in education; specifically, he is interested in the spread and effects of
education-related policy across contexts and other considerations therein.

xxvi
 Notes on contributors

Von E. Nebbitt, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Jane Addams College of Social Work
at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He holds a BA, MSW, and Ph.D. Dr. Nebbitt’s scholar-
ship and practice is on health-risk behaviors, violence, and mental health in African American
youth living in urban public housing. His research has been published in health, psychology,
and other social science journals.

Deidre Oakley, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Georgia

State University. Her research, which has been widely published in both academic and applied
venues, focuses primarily on how social disadvantages concerning education, housing, home-
lessness, and redevelopment are often compounded by geographic space. Since 2008 she has
been collaborating with Drs. Lesley Reid and Erin Ruel (both from Georgia State University)
on two complementary National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation
(NSF)-funded projects examining the impact of public housing elimination and forced relo-
cation in Atlanta. Dr. Oakley provided Congressional Testimony concerning public housing
preservation and the Neighborhood Choice initiative to the Financial Services Committee in
2010. She also guest edited, along with Drs. Jim Fraser (Vanderbilt University) and Diane Levy
(The Urban Institute), a symposium for Cityscape concerning public housing transformation
and mixed-income initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic, which was published in the July
2013 issue.

John Orwat, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Orwat teaches
and conducts research pertaining to health care policy. Dr. Orwat has several years of expe-
rience as a clinical social worker as well as directing health services research regarding the
impact of benefit design, the cost effectiveness of interventions, the impact of federal policy
changes, and other delivery system issues. He holds a Master of Arts from the School of Social
Services at the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. from the Heller School for Social Policy and
Management at Brandeis University.

Shaun Ossei-Owusu is a JD/Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. He

is from the Bronx, New York, and received his undergraduate degree from Northwestern
University and his master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been an
Exchange Scholar at the University of Chicago. His research interests include race, class, and
gender, poverty and urban inequality, law and society, the criminal justice system, and legal
history. His dissertation research explores the historical development of legal aid organizations
in the United States. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation,
the Law and Society Association, the American Bar Foundation, and the American Society of
Criminology.

Gerardo Otero, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Simon Fraser
University. He has published numerous scholarly articles, chapters, and books about the politi-
cal economy of agriculture and food, civil society, and the state in Mexico and Latin America.
His latest edited book is Food for the Few: Neoliberal Globalism and Biotechnology in Latin America
(University of Texas Press, 2008; reissued in paperback in 2010), which is forthcoming in
Spanish as La dieta neoliberal.

Rubin Patterson is a Professor and Chair of Sociology and Anthropology at Howard

University in Washington, DC. He is also a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology
at The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. His chief academic

xxvii
 Notes on contributors

and professional areas of interest are social inequality; environmental inequality and sustain-
able socioeconomic development. He is the author of the 2014 book (published by Temple
University Press) titled Greening Africana Studies: Linking Environmental Studies with Transforming
Black Experiences. Patterson also served for ten years as the founding editor of Perspectives on
Global Development and Technology.

Gabriela Pechlaner is a sociology instructor in the sociology faculty at the University of the
Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Her research interests include environmental
sociology and the sociology of agriculture and food, with a particular emphasis on the legal and
regulatory aspects of new technologies. She has published a number of solo and co-authored
articles in scholarly journals such as Anthropologica, Rural Sociology, Sociologia Ruralis, and The
Canadian Journal of Sociology. Her book Corporate Crops: Biotechnology, Agriculture, and the Struggle
for Control was released by the University of Texas Press in December 2013.

Amira Proweller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies

and Research in the College of Education at DePaul University. Her research interests are in
the cultural politics of urban education; youth culture and identity; gender/race/class in educa-
tion; social justice education; and qualitative research methods. She has published articles and
book chapters exploring youth culture and identity in education, with a particular focus on
gender. Her current research is a youth participatory action research project exploring intersec-
tions of power and privilege among Jewish teen girls.

Andrew Reynolds, MSW, M.Ed, is a doctoral student in Social Work at Boston College
researching youth and adolescence, parent involvement in schools, social vulnerability in youth,
and poverty and food security issues.

Susan Roll, MSW, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at California
State University, Chico. She teaches courses on multiculturalism, policy, and community prac-
tice. Susan is currently researching how we teach and learn about poverty.

Cesraéa Rumpf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Fayetteville

State University. Her research investigates the nature of formerly incarcerated women’s inter-
actions with the state and speaks to scholarship on punishment, poverty management, and
gender-based violence.

Kenneth J. Saltman is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at University

of Massachusetts–Dartmouth. He is the author most recently of The Failure of Corporate School
Reform (Paradigm, 2013) and The Politics of Education: A Critical Introduction (Paradigm, 2014),
and co-author of Toward a New Common School Movement (Paradigm, 2014).

Celeste Sánchez recently returned to the United States after several years of direct service
work with children and adolescents in Central America. She is currently pursuing an MSW at
Loyola University Chicago with a sub-specialization in migration studies. Her work in Latin
America and in the United States with unaccompanied minors have prompted her interest in
resiliency and migration.

Gabriel A. Santos is an Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology and Criminology at

Lynchburg College. Dr. Santos regularly engages in community-based research that aims to

xxviii
 Notes on contributors

incorporate sociological tools of analysis into grassroots efforts that engage homelessness, racism,
food deserts, and prisoner re-entry. He is the author of Redeeming the Broken Body: Church and
State After Disasters (Cascade Books, 2009).

Sanford F. Schram teaches at Hunter College, CUNY, in the Political Science Department
and the Public Policy Program at Roosevelt House. He is the author of Words of Welfare: The
Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty (1995) and co-author of Disciplining the
Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (2011).

Andrew Seligsohn is President of Campus Compact, a national coalition of 1,100 colleges

and universities promoting civic engagement in higher education. He holds a BA in Modern
Intellectual History from Williams College and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University
of Minnesota. He has published articles and chapters on political theory, constitutional law, and
youth civic engagement.

Emily Shayman, MSW, is a Doctoral Fellow within the Institute on Migration and
International Social Work at Loyola University Chicago and works as an Editorial Associate
for the Journal of Poverty. She also provides direct service as a school social worker. Her research
surrounds immigrant and refugee students within the public school system.

Alexis Silvers holds a Master of Public Policy from Loyola University Chicago. Her research
interests include political inequities and urban gentrification. She is Finance Director for the
Indiana Senate Democratic Caucus.

Ashish Singh has a Ph.D. in economics and is based in India. His areas of interest primar-
ily include economics of distribution, discrimination, social exclusion, and intergenerational
mobility. He also works on nutrition and child health-related issues. He is based at the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay in Mumbai, India.

Shweta Singh is a research and teaching faculty at Loyola University Chicago. Singh teaches
in the MSW and WSGS programs in areas of evaluation research, global feminism, social pol-
icy, and social media. She examines the concepts of identity and empowerment in her research
on women and girls from Asia. She has recently published Social Work and Social Development:
Perspectives from India and the United States.

Aakanksha Sinha, MSW, is a doctoral student at the Graduate School of Social Work,
Boston College, researching access to the basic needs of vulnerable children and low-income
families globally.

Kimberly Skobba is an Assistant Professor in Housing and Consumer Economics at the

University of Georgia. Her research focuses on the long-term residential mobility patterns,
also known as housing careers, of low-income households and the impact of rental assistance
programs on household and residential stability. She earned a Ph.D. and MA, both in Housing
Studies, from the University of Minnesota’s College of Design.

Michael Sosin, Ph.D., is the Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor in the School of Social Service
Administration at the University of Chicago. He is an affiliate of the Institute for Research
on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Population Studies Center at the

xxix
 Notes on contributors

University of Chicago. His fields of special interest include social welfare institutions, social
policy, social administration, substance abuse services, urban poverty, and homelessness. In
addition to his faculty appointments, Professor Sosin served as editor of Social Service Review, a
leading professional journal in the field of social welfare until 2014.

Joe Soss is the inaugural Cowles Chair for the Study of Public Service at the University of
Minnesota, where he holds faculty positions in the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public
Affairs, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of Sociology. His research and
teaching explore the interplay of democratic politics, societal inequalities, and public policy. His
most recent book, co-authored with Richard Fording and Sanford Schram, is Disciplining the
Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race (2011).

Sue Steiner, MSW, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Social Work at California State
University, Chico. She teaches courses on policy and community practice. Sue is the co-
founder of the Northern California Counties Time Bank.

Eiko Strader is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Sociology at the University of

Massachusetts, Amherst. She conducts research on gender inequality in labor markets, welfare
states, and population control policies across Western industrialized nations and in East Asia.

Giselle Thompson is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at York University in

Toronto. She completed a Masters in Sociology from the University of Toledo in 2014 with a
thesis entitled “IMF-induced Fiscal Austerity and Education in Jamaica.” Her research interests
include the sociologies of development, education and economics. She is particularly interested
in IMF structural adjustment programs, fiscal austerity and social spending in Jamaica, as well
as domestic

Darrick Tovar-Murray, Ph.D., is a full-time Associate Professor at DePaul University. He

teaches counseling courses for the Department of Counseling and Special Education in the
College of Education. His scholarly work focuses on multiculturalism, identity development,
vocational counseling, spirituality, and poverty.

Eileen Trzcinski, MSW, Ph.D., was a Full Professor at the Wayne State University School of
Social Work and a Research Professor at the DIW (German Institute for Economic Research)
until she passed away in March of 2013. With a dual Ph.D. in both social work and economics
from the University of Michigan, Dr. Trzcinski worked tirelessly during her lifetime to explore
the ways that policy can be used to challenge economic and labor market inequality. Best
known for her contribution to family and medical leave, she has left a permanent handprint on
the policies that defend the well-being of working families, women, and mothers.

Eduardo Vargas holds a BSW from Goshen College and a MSW from Loyola University
Chicago. He has worked in faith-based not-for-profit agencies as a city director and as a grant
writer. His research interests are: practice issues with Internally Displaced People (IDP), resil-
iency, and theodicy with populations that have experienced violent trauma.

Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where she
focused on immigrant political incorporation. Her current work identifies policy supports to
bolster teacher preparation to meet the needs of Illinois’ diverse English language learners.

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 Notes on contributors

Rebecca also worked in community development in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where she was
awarded a Fulbright scholarship to support research on microfinance programming.

David Wagner, Ph.D., is a Professor of Social Work and Sociology and an author of eight
books including Confronting Homelessness: Poverty, Politics, and the Failure of Social Welfare.

Pete White is the Founder and Co-Director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network,
a grassroots organization working to ensure the rights to housing, health, and security are
upheld in Los Angeles. A lifetime resident of South Central Los Angeles, he is committed to
fight for a Los Angeles that does not tolerate racial injustice, promotes an equitable distribution
of resources, and includes everyone. Pete believes that organizing and leadership development
are essential tools needed to achieve social change and racial justice.

Stanley Wilkerson is a native of Los Angeles. He relocated to Chicago to pursue his passion
of educating and cultivating the minds of youth. After multiple years of mentoring young
adults, he decided to pursue his Master’s Degree in Education with a concentration in School
Counseling. Stanley graduated with his M.Ed in School Counseling in June of 2013. He cur-
rently works as a Dean of Students at Urban Prep Charter Academy.

Judith Wittner, Ph.D., is a Professor of Sociology at Loyola University Chicago and an eth-
nographer specializing in gender studies. She studied anthropology at Columbia University
for two years, but left after the birth of her first child. Drawn back to school by the student
movements of the 1960s, she enrolled in Roosevelt University where she taught some of the
first women’s studies courses offered in Chicago. She received a Ph.D. from Northwestern
University in 1977.

Lakshman Yapa is a Professor of Geography at Pennsylvania State University. He teaches

courses on poverty and economic development. In 2008 he received the C. Peter Magrath
University Community Engagement Award. The award was made by the National Association
of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges for contributions to engagement scholarship
through the course, “Rethinking Urban Poverty: The Philadelphia Field Project.”

Intae Yoon, MSW, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at East
Carolina University. Yoon’s research interests include economic justice and financial assets
building for low-income families.

Mansoo Yu, MSW, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work and the
Master of Public Health Program at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research inter-
ests include health-risk behaviors, healthy and positive living, and health disparity across various
segments of the population. He teaches epidemiology, research methods, and health disparity.

Jamilatu Zakari received her Master of Arts degree in Sociology from Texas State University
in 2012. During her graduate studies, Jamilatu conducted research comparing the perceptions
of food choice from clients who received aid from both client choice food pantries and pre-
packaged food pantries. Other areas of research include: food insecurity, sustainability, poverty,
and the sociology of food.

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 GENERAL INTRODUCTION
Stephen Nathan Haymes, María Vidal de Haymes,
and Reuben Jonathan Miller

In the study of poverty in the United States, the causes and even the meanings of poverty are
disconnected from the causes and meanings of “global poverty” in the “Global South.” The
analysis of poverty has been exclusively domestic with little or no understanding of how the
integration of the U.S. political economy and culture into the global economy has shaped
the meaning and character of poverty in the United States. In other words, mainstream stud-
ies of U.S. poverty assume that the sources of poverty as well as the “discourses of poverty”
(a system of statements made about poverty) are uniquely “American.” In which case, little
or no attention is given to how globalization, referring specifically to global capitalism and
its institutions, both cause and construct the meaning of poverty in the United States and
throughout the world.
Rarely, if ever, is poverty in the United States understood in relation to global poverty, and
its association with the economic growth and development policies of global capitalism and its
global financial institutions. For example, the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund (IMF) assume that poverty reduction is linked to economic
growth and economic integration. The structural adjustment economic policies which nations
of the Global South must follow in order to qualify for new World Bank and IMF loans to
help them make debt repayments have common guiding principles which include export-led
growth; privatization and liberalization; lifting import and export restrictions; balancing their
budgets; cutting domestic social expenditures; and removal of price controls and state subsidies.
By following such a strategy, debt repayment and economic restructuring is insured at the
expense of reduced social spending on items such as health, nutrition, and education. In effect,
the neoliberal economic integration policies of the IMF and World Bank have demanded that
poorer nations lower the standard of living of their people.
Similarly, reorienting its national economy towards a global logic, U.S. domestic eco-
nomic policies have promoted a neoliberal market-based strategy of economic development
and growth as the obvious solution to alleviating poverty. The domestic strategy has followed
a similar path towards global economic integration, sharing many of the same elements of a
structural adjustment strategy, including privatization and liberalization, the lifting of import
and export restrictions, deregulation, and cuts in domestic social expenditures, while providing
tax cuts to the rich and corporate subsidies in the name of increasing economic investment,
development, and growth.
Developed and implemented through its global financial institutions, such as the World
Bank and the IMF, global capitalism’s prescriptive policy solutions assume that capitalism, as
a social and economic system, is able to reduce global poverty. This is promoted in spite of
the fact that contemporary global capitalism is unable to explain the persistence of poverty
and its failure to redress inequality. Intended to create jobs and improve income distribution,

1
 S. N. Haymes, M. Vidal de Haymes, and R. J. Miller

the neoliberal ideology that guides global capitalism’s solutions to global poverty have mostly
contributed to creating, producing, and exacerbating poverty in the Global South. More
specifically, neoliberal economic development and economic growth policies—cut backs in
government expenditure, economic stabilization structural adjustment, efficiency of markets,
economic liberalization, limited state intervention in the economy, the importance of a knowl-
edge economy, and human capital development—are viewed to be the solution to alleviating
poverty. Political economists critical of the neoliberal policies of globalization point out that
poverty does not emerge because of exclusion but because of poor people’s incorporation into
global political and economic processes. Paradoxically, with the rise of economic globalization
and incorporation of poor people, there has emerged a global human rights social movement,
and as such, a global moral community in the Global South, to redress the injustices and
undemocratic politics of global capitalism.
The Handbook of Poverty addresses the relationship of poverty to the rise of neoliberal capi-
talism in the United States in the context of globalization. That is, it explores how the logic
of globalization and its drive towards neoliberal market-oriented economic development and
growth are profoundly reshaping our understanding of poverty in the United States discursively,
politically, economically, culturally, and experientially. In Territory, Authority, Rights (2006),
Saskia Sassen describes globalization as an epochal transformative process that is “taking place
inside the national.” The national is “one of the key enablers and enactors of the micro-pro-
cesses of globalization—whether policies, capital, political subjectivities, urban space, temporal
frames, or other of a variety of dynamics and domains.” These processes, says Sassen, “reorient
particular components of institutions and practices—both private and public—towards global
logics and away from the historically shaped national logics” (p. 2). It is in the context of this
reorientation that The Handbook of Poverty examines poverty in the United States as part of the
epochal phenomenon of globalization and global poverty.
Bringing together a number of scholars in the professional and interdisciplinary fields as
well as the social sciences and humanities, The Handbook of Poverty explores how globaliza-
tion in the context of the U.S. political economy, rather than alleviating poverty, has instead
exacerbated U.S. poverty and pre-existing inequalities. Furthermore, The Handbook of Poverty
looks at how neoliberal economic reforms in the United States have privatized the services
of social welfare and educational institutions, transformed the state from a benevolent to a
punitive state, and criminalized the poor, women, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities, and
immigrants. Of particular interest here is also the unique way in which, within the context
of the United States, the ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconservatism discursively con-
verge in dominant statements or discourses about poverty and therefore policies to reduce
poverty. In fact, what The Handbook of Poverty contributes to the debate about poverty in the
United States is that the converging of both neoliberal and neoconservative ideologies has
given rise to policies whose objectives are not to alleviate poverty but to control and punish
the poor. Other related issues The Handbook of Poverty examines in the context of neoliberal
globalization in the United States are, for example, income distribution, employment, health,
education, imprisonment, hunger, housing, and the processes of urbanization of the poor.
While academic accounts of U.S. poverty have generally focused on issues related to inequal-
ity and access, the framework that The Handbook of Poverty will use to address these issues is
that of emerging new forms of poverty that are associated with the globalization of the U.S.
economy. These are new forms of poverty that render poor communities as destitute and, as
such, “surplus populations” in need of control and punishment. Another issue addressed is
related to the globalization and localization of human rights discourse in the United States. In
this regard, The Handbook of Poverty explores how and why poor communities in the United

2
 General introduction

States, and the NGOs that support them, have increasingly redefined their struggles for social
justice from a welfare rights to a human rights social movement.
The chapters in Part I of The Handbook of Poverty, “From the Production of Inequality to the
Production of Destitution: The U.S. Political Economy of Poverty in the Era of Globalization,”
examine how the reorientation of the U.S. economy towards the economic logic of neoliberal
global capitalism has restructured the political economy of poverty. The chapters in this part
explore the particular way in which poor communities under neoliberal economic policies are
incorporated into the U.S. political economy in contrast to earlier periods. Particular atten-
tion is given to how neoliberal restructuring dispossesses populations of people and produces
forms of destitution through uneven geographical development and the deterritorialization and
reterritorialization of geographically defined poor communities. The chapters in this part will
examine new emerging forms of “destitute poverty” experienced by the poor communities in
the United States. The chapters will show how this emerging form of poverty in the United
States is more consistent with the global processes and dynamics of the political economy of
global poverty.
The chapters in Part II, “Discourses of Poverty: From the ‘Culture of Poverty’ to ‘Surplus
Population,’” examine how the globalizing of the U.S. political economy contributed sig-
nificantly to the conditions that shifted the discourse about poverty in the United States from
a “culture of poverty” discourse to one of “surplus population.” The chapters in this part
investigate the discursive practices or the family of ideas, beliefs, and concepts that constitute
discourses about U.S. poverty, their corresponding policies, as well as the historical circum-
stances and genealogical conditions that have given rise to the shift from a “culture of poverty”
discourse to a discourse of “surplus population.” With the globalization of the U.S. economy
new forms of poverty are emerging that render poor communities destitute and, as such, “sur-
plus” or “redundant” populations. The term “surplus population” or similar terms like it to
describe “destitute poverty” signify a change in the condition and experience of poverty and in
particular how it is politically and ideologically represented in the United States. In which case,
the chapters in this part are also attentive to the ways in which the ideologies of neoliberalism
and neoconservatism converged in the United States to discursively and politically structure and
facilitate this shift in the discourse about poverty.
In Part III, “From the Welfare State to the Neoliberal State—From Regulating to Imprisoning
the Poor,” the chapters examine how globalization and its transformation of the state into a
neoliberal state created the conditions for the dismantling of the welfare state in the United
States. The chapters in Part III are divided into Section I: “Transformation of the Welfare
State: Education”; Section II: “Transformation of the Welfare State: Cash Transfers, Housing,
Nutrition, and Health”; and Section III: “Transformation of the Welfare State: Criminalizing
the Poor.” Each of the chapters investigates how neoliberal globalization in the United States
has restructured the state from a “benevolent” welfare state to a post-welfare punitive state.
Particular attention will be given to how the disciplining functions of the state are being chal-
lenged and transformed, from regulating—that is, by expanding relief programs to absorb and
control enough of the poor to restore order—to confining—by punishing and expanding the
criminal justice system into every aspect of poor people’s lives or by disciplining the poor by
inserting them into the market.
While poverty may be a universal phenomenon, its experiences vary and are often condi-
tioned by race, ethnicity, gender, age, disability, and health and immigrant status. The chapters
in Part IV, “Global Poverty and the Lived Experiences of Poor Communities in the United
States,” explore the diverse experiences of poverty in the United States. Particular atten-
tion is given to how that diversity is part of the political, economic, and cultural processes of

3
 S. N. Haymes, M. Vidal de Haymes, and R. J. Miller

globalization and global poverty. It is in this context that chapters in this part explore broader
ecological and health issues related to poverty such as, for example, hunger, violence, displace-
ment and homelessness, environmental destruction, and environmental racism and sexism, and
how these issues shape the experiences of poverty in the United States.
The helping professions, such as education, social work, health, and law, have been those
professions that have defined their work as providing services and advocating for the poor in
relationship to notions of social justice. In Part V, “Organizing to Resist Neoliberal Policies and
Poverty: Activism and Advocacy,” the chapters examine the limitations of the concept of social
justice as conventionally advanced by the helping professions in the United States, particularly
in the era of neoliberal globalization, global poverty, and human rights. The neoliberal struc-
tural adjustment policies of the United States, the dominance of global financial institutions, and
the transformation of the welfare state into a post-welfare state have given rise to extreme forms
of poverty, or what some have called “destitute poverty” in the United States. These neoliberal
policies have led to the emergence of forms of advocacy and activism that is focused on social
and economic rights of the poor. The poverty experienced today in the United States is ren-
dering more and more people and communities as surplus or redundant populations, which is
necessitating a shifting of rights-based discourse from civil or welfare rights to human rights, but
a human rights discourse and forms of advocacy and activism that address the inherent structural
violence of neoliberal global capitalism in the context of the United States.
Alternatives to the characteristic structural violence of the current neoliberal economic
order are proposed by the authors included in Part VI, “Reframing Poverty in the Era of
Globalization: Alternatives to a Neoliberal Economic Order.” Collectively, the authors call for
a replacement of the self-reliance ideology and the values and practices associated with market
fundamentalism with: a human rights, approach that strengthens the welfare rights-claims of
U.S. citizens; community-based options of support outside of the formal market-based system;
and a shift towards a post capitalist basic needs economy.

References
Sassen, Saskia. (2006) Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. New Jersey:
Princeton University Press.

4
 PART I

From the production of inequality to

the production of destitution
The U.S. political economy of poverty
in the era of globalization
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 INTRODUCTION
María Vidal de Haymes, Stephen Nathan Haymes, and Michael Lloyd

Neoliberalism represents a reassertion of the liberal political economic beliefs of the 19th cen-
tury in the contemporary era (Clark, 2005). In the United States, the dominant neoliberal
public philosophy that has emerged in recent decades is that of Market Fundamentalism, which
Block (2007) defines as “a vastly exaggerated belief in the ability of self regulating markets to
solve social problems.” Such a philosophy replaces a notion of society with the marketplace
and supports deregulation, tax cuts, and a retrenchment of public services (Block, 2007). The
authors in this part trace the reassertion of liberal economic beliefs, globalization, and the rise of
Market Fundamentalism in the United States through analysis of policies regarding debt, auster-
ity, taxation, employment, and the privatization of public services, an agenda that has resulted
in the deepening of poverty and economic inequalities in the United States.
In “Transnational Factors Driving U.S. Inequality and Poverty,” Rubin Patterson and
Giselle Thompson call attention to the growing poverty in the U.S. and a reversal of the more
than 150-year trend of generational gains in income and social mobility. They indicate that
approximately one hundred million Americans, one-third of the U.S. population, are poor
or nearly poor. They attribute these trends in inequality and poverty to the convergence of a
number of factors: the financialization of the economy, the transnationalization of capitalism,
deindustrialization, the automation of production, the deunionization of the workforce, rising
consumer debt, the democratization of higher education, and the racialization of people of
color for the purposes of electoral politics.
In “The Discursive Axis of Neoliberalism: Debt, Deficits, and Austerity,” Shawn Cassiman
continues the analysis of neoliberal globalization by examining the discursive constructions of
debt, deficits, and austerity within and in support of this system. Using Europe as an illustra-
tive example, she discusses the relatively recent turn toward austerity driven by the European
Commission, IMF, and European Central Bank. She extends her discussion to the United
States’ debt crisis and argues that it is an outcome of global capitalism—thus the response needs
to come from outside of that logic—and offers the Occupy Wall Street movement’s debt refusal
campaign as an alternative to the neoliberal austerity discourse.
Similarly, in “Beyond Coincidence: How Neoliberal Policy Initiatives in the IMF and World
Bank Affected U.S. Poverty Levels,” Pamela Blackmon discusses the rise of neoliberal policies
of the IMF and the World Bank during the 1980s. These policies were advanced on global
and domestic levels by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the United Kingdom and

7
 M. Vidal de Haymes, S. N. Haymes, and M. Lloyd

the United States respectively. On a global level, Blackmon argues that such policies resulted in
increased poverty in the countries that followed these policies. Blackmon explores the degree to
which a neoliberal shift occurred in U.S. domestic policies during the Reagan administration. She
concludes that the decreased funding and deregulation of education, changes in transfer programs
for the poor, and the decreases to top marginal income tax rates that characterized the Reagan-era
policies contributed to increases in income inequality and poverty in the United States.
Recognizing taxation as a political practice, Kasey Henricks and Victoria Brockett argue
that it is a vehicle of social control that organizes, maintains, and supports inequality over time.
In “The House Always Wins: How State Lotteries Displace American Tax Burdens by Class
and Race,” they focus on the role of lotteries in the United States and its social consequences
for public finance. In their analysis, they detail the fiscal trends, particularly those induced by
neoliberal policies, that created optimal conditions for lotteries to emerge as an alternative tax
strategy to finance public services. They conclude that a lottery-based taxation scheme shifts
the financial burden of public services away from elite interests to the racially and economically
marginalized populations that play the lottery the most, replacing more progressive sources of
state income, such as corporate and property taxes.
Similar to other authors in this part, Intae Yoon argues that the election of Ronald Reagan
to the presidency in 1981 heralded in an era of neoliberal policies that resulted in increased
income inequality and economic injustice. In “Consumer Credits as a Quasi-Welfare System
for Failed Neoliberals’ Trickle-down Policies Between the 1980s and 2000s,” Yoon focuses on
the deregulation of financial institutions, the dismantling of anti-trust laws, and deregulation
of consumer credit markets, which he argues resulted in the increased vulnerability of low-
and middle-income families and widening income gaps. The confluence of these policies and
trends created a context in which low- and middle-income families turned to consumer credit
as a quasi-safety net, while deregulated financial institutions expanded consumer credits to all
income strata for more profits. Also focusing on consumer credit and financial institutions,
Howard Karger examines how the poor are often steered towards fringe services, such as short-
term loans, check cashing, car loans, and tax refund services offered by peripheral financial
institutions. These financial services are characterized by high user fees and extortionate interest
rates, which Karger concludes are predatory in nature since they further impoverish borrowers,
rather than provide financial products that help to build assets and increase household wealth.
In this chapter, Karger provides an overview of some fringe economy services and the impact
of neoliberal ideas on predatory lending, and concludes with possible approaches to restrain the
depletion of resources from the already poor.
The chapters in this part contributed by Ashish Singh and Andrew Seligsohn and Joan Maya
Mazelis examine the effects of globalization and neoliberal policies on their analysis of trends
of employment and public service provision at national and local levels. In “Globalization and
the Trends in Inequality of Poverty in the United States in the Last Decade,” Singh exam-
ines inequality and poverty in the United States within the context of globalization, through
an analysis of changes in the unemployment–population ratio, unemployment rate, loss of
employment (and subsequent re-employment), and average weeks of unemployment. The
findings of her analyses indicate increases in poverty for all racial and ethnic groups and family
types, as well as native and foreign born, in all regions. While Singh’s analysis indicates rising
rates of poverty for all racial and ethnic groups, as well as family types, she found that the gap in
poverty between Blacks and Whites, as well as across family types, significantly increased during
2002–2011. Furthermore, she found that all of the unemployment indicators included in her
analysis increased considerably for the same time period, with the exception of re-employment
of displaced workers, which significantly decreased.

8
 Introduction

In “Deindustrialized Small Cities and Poverty: The View from Camden,” Andrew Seligsohn
and Joan Maya Mazelis provide a case study of the rise and collapse of Camden, New Jersey, to
reveal the relationship between processes of globalization and what they term as the “immis-
eration in the emerging neoliberal order.” As a small, successful economic industrial city in
the first half of the 20th century, Camden has been experiencing a serious decline since the
1980s, marked by a significant loss in population, jobs, and tax-base. Seligsohn and Mazelis
note that precisely at the moment that unemployment generated demand for city services, the
government capacity to respond had deteriorated. They characterize Camden city government
as privatizing most services through outsourcing nearly all of its key functions to a non-profit
development entity that is driven by powerful interests in the city and region. This is a move
that challenges democratic processes by shifting control of the city away from public institutions
under popular control to private institutions dominated by regional business and political elites.

References
Block, F. (2007) “Confronting market fundamentalism: Doing ‘Public Economic Sociology.’” Socioeconomic
Review 5(2), 326–334.
Clarke, S. (2005) “The neoliberal theory of society.” In A. Saad-Filho and D. Johnston (eds) Neoliberalism:
A critical reader, London, Pluto Press, pp. 50–59.

9
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 1
BEYOND COINCIDENCE
How neoliberal policy initiatives in the IMF and
World Bank affected U.S. poverty levels1

Pamela Blackmon

Introduction
The dramatic increase in poverty levels in the developing countries from the 1980s to the
1990s has been well documented by economists and social scientists (Wheeler, 1984; Stewart,
1995; Huber, 2005). Scholars have also found that much of the increase in poverty in devel-
oping countries was due to changes in policies at the IMF and the World Bank (Edwards and
Dornbusch, 1994; Edwards, 1995; Haggard et al., 1995;). These new policy directives for
developing countries focused on structural adjustment initiatives broadly defined to include
privatization, deregulation, and overall measures for these countries to embrace more market-
oriented reforms as opposed to relying on governmental programs.
The policy shift at the institutions has also been attributed to the rise of Ronald Reagan in the
United States and the concurrent rise of Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. What has
been little addressed is how policy changes at the IMF and the World Bank might also be reflected
in similar U.S. governmental policies toward poverty. For example, many socio-economic indi-
cators in the United States have declined over the last 20 years, especially following the 1980s.
Data in a recent paper show that for the country’s least-educated whites, life expectancy has fallen
by four years since 1990 (Olshansky et al., 2012). To what degree were shifts toward neoliberal
policies of the international financial institutions of the IMF and the World Bank also seen in shifts
in U.S. domestic policies? This chapter will explore the relationship between changes in U.S.
domestic policies regarding poverty and the role of the United States as a powerful actor in the
development and implementation of policies in the IMF and the World Bank.
The chapter will be organized as follows. The first section will review the ways in which
structural adjustment policies resulted in increases in poverty for the countries that followed
them, especially in the developing countries. The next sections address the relationship
between similar policies implemented in the United States and subsequent rises in U.S. poverty
as seen in an analysis of specific policies that are believed to have contributed to the increases
in U.S. poverty and growing income inequality. These policies include the 1982 Educational
Consolidation and Improvement Act, reduced federal spending for and deregulation of educa-
tion, changes to transfer programs, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. The final section provides
some concluding remarks about the policy changes that have contributed to higher levels of
poverty in the United States.

11
 P. Blackmon

Problems with structural adjustment policies

The underlying framework of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) included a focus on policies such
as privatization, deregulation, and an overall decrease in the level of governmental involvement in
the economic realm. These were policies required by the IMF and the World Bank in return for
loans and debt restructuring agreements for most of the countries in Africa and Latin America dur-
ing the 1980s. As part of austerity measures, countries also reduced money for social expenditures
in areas such as health, education, and welfare (Huber, 2005, p. 79). However, during the 1980s
poverty rose dramatically in Africa and Latin America, whereas prior to this timeframe, poverty had
been gradually decreasing in these regions. From 1985 to 1989 the number of people in poverty in
sub-Saharan Africa rose from 191 million to 228 million; in Latin America and the Caribbean the
number of people in poverty rose from 91 million in 1980 to 133 million in 1989 (Stewart, 1995,
p. 1). Thus, the implementation of these types of structural adjustment and austerity policies was
deemed at least partly responsible for the rising poverty and inequality in these regions by the end of
the 1980s (Stewart, 1995; Huber, 2005, pp. 79–81; Blackmon, 2009).
These types of structural adjustment policies have also been referred to as the “Washington
Consensus,” a phrase coined by John Williamson because these policies were developed as a consen-
sus based on “the political Washington of Congress and senior members of the administration and the
technocratic Washington of the international financial institutions, the economic agencies of the U.S.
government, the Federal Reserve Board, and the think tanks” (Williamson, 1990, p. 7). Williamson
(1990, p. 11) even noted that expenditures on health and education as proper objects of government
expenditure “fell under a cloud during the early years of the Reagan administration.” Thus, the
political support for the implementation of these types of free-market neoliberal policies came from
the leadership change in two of the more powerful member states of the IMF and the World Bank:
Ronald Reagan as U.S. president in 1980 and Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom in May 1979 (Blackmon, 2010, p. 4023). Indeed, these leaders came to power promising
these types of free market economic policy reforms in their own countries as well as for countries that
would need loans from the IMF and the World Bank (Stiglitz, 2003, p. 13; Sachs, 2005, pp. 81–82).
The United States is arguably the most influential member state of the IMF and the World
Bank based on its larger voting percentages which translate into influence in policy decision
making in the institutions (Woods, 2003; Blackmon, 2008). Indeed, Joseph Stiglitz has asserted
that there was a “purge” at the World Bank during Reagan’s tenure to oust a distinguished
group of development economists including Hollis Chenery, who did not share Reagan’s focus
on free market ideology as the proper framework for developing countries (Stiglitz, 2003,
p. 13). The following section explains how similar neoliberal free market-style policies were
implemented in the United States and how these policies also contributed to growing levels of
U.S. poverty, through the deregulation and defunding of the U.S. educational system, decreases
in funding for transfer programs, and changes to income tax rates.

Structural adjustment: U.S. style

Terrel Bell, as the first Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, described Reagan’s goals
for education during his term as follows: reduce “substantially” federal spending for education;
strengthen local and state control of education; and encourage the establishment of laws and
rules that would offer greatly expanded parental choice and that would increase competition for
students among schools in a newly created public and private structure patterned after the free
market system that motivates and disciplines U.S. business and industry.
(Bell, 1986, p. 488)

12
 Beyond coincidence

Bell also noted that Reagan wanted to end the Department of Education and replace it with a
new agency that would have less power within the federal government.
While the Department of Education was not disbanded (largely due to push back from the
U.S. Congress), there were many policies enacted that would fundamentally change the U.S.
educational system to make it more “competitive and accountable” and thus more similar to
that of the free market system. David Clark and Mary Anne Amiot (1981, p. 258) explained
that the basic education policies of the Reagan administration were derived from the over-
all goals of the administration’s domestic policy platform which was designed to cut taxes,
deregulate federal programs, reallocate budget priorities, and reduce expenditures. The follow-
ing sections will describe how the policy initiatives under the 1982 Educational Consolidation
and Improvement Act and the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk were used to achieve the
administration’s goals of substantial reductions in federal funding for education. Specific reduc-
tions in federal spending for education and data indicating changes in high school graduation
rates during these time periods will also be reviewed.
The 1982 Educational Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) decreased the amount
of federal aid to schools and reduced the power of the federal government by giving states more
control over how money was spent on education through providing block grants to states.2 This
1982 Act was also a distinct change from the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(ESEA) passed in 1965 under President Johnson which was designed to increase federal fund-
ing to school districts in addition to promoting the desegregation of schools. In fact, two years
after ESEA was passed, the amount of money that the federal government provided to school
districts through the U.S. Office of Education’s Annual Budget increased from $1.5 billion to
$4 billion (Hanna, 2005).
The block grant and consolidation program was part of the Reagan administration’s “decen-
tralization” policy (Clark and Amiot, 1981, p. 258). The change to block grants outlined in
Chapter 2 of the ECIA was designed to allow states to decide which areas needed the most
funding. The reasoning behind this change was that states could make these decisions better
than the federal government because the states were more familiar with the needs of their
students. However, even though states could receive larger Chapter 2 grants by having urban
schools with larger enrollments of higher-cost students, urban school districts received compar-
atively smaller grants under Chapter 2 because state education agencies directed more resources
to suburban areas for political (higher voting areas) and economic (higher tax paying) reasons.3
Other problems that were projected with the block grant approach in providing more flexibil-
ity for states included the belief that resources would probably be reduced for the disabled and
disadvantaged: the primary groups that had been protected by the government through federal
funding. To quote the Urban Institute’s Report of the first 18 months of policy and program
changes in federal education policy under Reagan, “the federal government would not be pro-
viding a significant proportion of funds for elementary and secondary education, nor would it
have a clear purpose in its funding” (Lewis, 1982, p. 157).
Second, the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Reform from
Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education decreed that the U.S. educational
system was failing because public schools were no longer focused on pushing students to excel.
The publication relied on comparing standardized testing results (SAT scores) to show that the
average scores of students had fallen from 1963 to 1980. Recommendations included introduc-
ing a nationwide system of standardized tests which would now determine whether schools
would continue to receive federal aid. If schools did not increase their scores, they would lose
federal aid.4 This line of reasoning is very much in line with the context of the free market
system in its framework to both motivate and discipline educators and school administrators by

13
 P. Blackmon

setting up a system of rewards and punishments designed to be the motivating factors in order
to achieve the goals. Also in 1983, the federal contract for administering the ever-increasing
rounds of testing was given to the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and taken away from the
Educational Commission of the States (ECS).5

Impacts of decreases in educational revenue

Proposed reductions in federal spending for education by Reagan for 1981 and 1982 were
already described as “unprecedented” in that the Reagan administration was able to redirect
12 percent of the fiscal year 1981 education budget, and proposed cutting 6 percent from the
fiscal year 1982 budget (Clark and Amiot, 1981, p. 258). This was a strategy used through-
out Reagan’s tenure in that he consistently requested less money for the Department of
Education than Congress had allocated or appropriated in the previous year (Verstegen and
Clark, 1988). For example, in 1981 Congress had approved $14.8 billion for the Department
of Education (DE) while Reagan requested only $13.5 billion; in 1982 Congress approved
$14.8 billion for DE, while Reagan requested $12.4 billion; and in 1983 Reagan’s budget
request for DE was the lowest of his presidency at $9.95 billion, and this amount was almost
33 percent below the previous year’s spending total (Verstegen and Clark, 1988, p. 135).
During the Reagan administration, real funds for education declined by nearly $15 billion
from 1981 to 1988 (Verstegen and Clark, 1988, p. 136).
Programs in elementary and secondary education from 1981 to 1988 saw some of the biggest
percentage declines: special programs (−76 percent); bilingual education (−54 percent); and
impact aid (−63 percent). The subtotal in declines for elementary/secondary was −28 percent
from 1981 to 1988. Higher education registered the highest percentage losses in educational
research (−70 percent) and in the office for civil rights (−33 percent). However, programs in
higher education that were geared toward a “market and business system” registered percentage
increases from 1981 to 1988: programs such as guaranteed student loans (+29 percent) and loans
and construction (+81 percent) (Verstegen and Clark, 1988, p. 137). Educational research fell
by 70 percent during this time period, and only declines in “special programs” (−76 percent)
at the elementary and secondary levels fell by larger percentages. Verstegen and Clark (1988,
p. 136) note that this decline in research was unprecedented and that in some ways it was in
conflict with the goals of an administration that had argued that the federal government should
be involved in collecting data, conducting research, and providing “reliable information about
the condition of education.” This seemed to be the main point of the 1983 publication A
Nation at Risk. After examining the program decreases under the Reagan administration, the
authors of this study conclude that “when programs had weak or negligible groups of constitu-
ents or when the programs had minimal yearly continuation costs” their budgets were reduced
(Verstegen and Clark, 1988, p. 136). Apparently the study area of dropouts and delinquencies
fell into this category because this area received no new funds at all for collection of data in
1985, although previously, in 1980, 33 awards had been set aside for areas of research into
“school problems” (U.S. GAO Report, 1987, pp. 3, 31–36). The following section reviews the
findings of a recent article on high school graduation rates from 1946 to 1985 and compares the
changes in these rates with changes in funding for education during the time period.
Data on U.S. graduation rates differ widely depending on whether the high school status com-
pletion rate is used or whether the 17-year-old graduation ratio is used, and both are compiled
by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES). Heckman and LaFontaine (2010) rec-
oncile the differences between these estimates and present some very interesting results about the
trends in U.S. high school graduation rates. Using multiple sources of data they track high school

14
 Beyond coincidence

graduation rates in four-year intervals from 1946 to 1985. First, they illustrate that from 1966 to
1970 high school graduation rates increased from previous levels in 1961–1965. Their data also
show steady increases in the graduation rate for the years 1971–1975. In fact, they conclude that
the graduation rate “peaked in the early 1970s” (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2010, p. 254). Recall
that the ESEA passed in 1965 under President Johnson was designed to increase federal funding
provided to school districts in addition to ending desegregation. From 1966 to 1970, the gradua-
tion of Blacks increased to 69.2 percent, up from 63.9 percent from 1961 to 1965 (Heckman and
LaFontaine, 2010, p. 254, Table 3). Thus, there appears to be at least some positive relationship
between federal funding for education and high school graduation rates.
Graduation rates decline from 1976 to 1980 and the rates stay at about the same levels for
1981–1985 data (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2010, p. 256, Figure 4). What explains the decline
in graduation rates, especially during the 1980s? One explanation is that more students opted
to earn their GED instead of completing high school. Indeed, Heckman and LaFontaine (2010,
p. 260) cite studies that “link high-stakes testing and stiffer educational standards to increased
GED test taking.” It is highly probable that the “high-stakes testing” involves at least in part the
standardized tests adopted based on A Nation at Risk.
The decline in high school graduation rates is especially disturbing since increasing educa-
tion is one of the best tools against falling into poverty in addition to the fact that education
is one of the primary paths out of poverty, especially for minorities. Indeed, declining high
school graduation rates lead to smaller college attendance and completion rates and further
declines in the skills of the U.S. work force (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2010). The following
section will review income inequality and the changes in household income in the United
States during the Reagan administration to illustrate how fiscal policy changes, specifically
the Tax Reform Act of 1986, also contributed to growing levels of U.S. poverty and income
inequality since the 1970s.

Poverty and income inequality rises

Wage inequality, income inequality, and poverty increased in the United States during
the 1980s (Hanratty and Blank, 1992; Katz and Murphy, 1992; Piketty and Saez, 2004).6
In many cases, policy changes during the Reagan administration provide at least part of
the explanation for the increases in these socio-economic indicators. First, poverty rates in
the United States had been falling during the 1970s. Using the U.S. definition of poverty,
poverty rates for nonelderly families fell from 10.1 percent in 1970 to 9 percent in 1979 but
increased to 11.6 percent in 1986 (Hanratty and Blank, 1992, fn. 1). The female-headed
family poverty rate was at about 38 percent in 1979 (and had been decreasing since 1976
from about 40 percent) but reached a high of about 42 percent in 1984, before leveling
off at 41 percent in 1985–1986 (Hanratty and Blank, 1992, p. 239). Factors believed to
have contributed to increases in U.S. poverty during the 1980s include an increase in
wage inequality (which will be addressed below) and changes to transfer programs such as
Unemployment Insurance, Food Stamp Programs, and Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC) (Hanratty and Blank, 1992, pp. 245–246). Specific changes implemented
in 1981 reduced the eligibility of the poor for these programs by requiring states to include
the income of step-parents against AFDC eligibility (Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act
of 1981). This tax legislation also required that welfare agencies consider that persons
eligible for both the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and AFDC receive the EITC
throughout the year (as opposed to the end of the year), thereby reducing benefits from
AFDC and food stamps (Hotz and Scholz, 2003, pp. 151–152).

15
 P. Blackmon

An additional factor that is believed to have contributed to the increase in U.S. poverty dur-
ing the 1980s is the increase in wage inequality (Hanratty and Blank, 1992). Specifically, that
increased wage inequality is due to changes in the demand for more educated and more skilled
workers over jobs requiring physical labor in the United States, resulting in changes in the U.S.
wage structure (Katz and Murphy, 1992, p. 36). This trend is likely to lead to higher levels of
poverty for less-skilled workers, especially given data showing the decline in high school gradu-
ate rates, thus diminishing the probability that non-high school graduates (or GED earners)
would continue on to college (Heckman and LaFontaine, 2010). Indeed, the wage differential
seems to operate in a cyclical effect since an additional explanation for the decline in graduation
rates is that during the 1980s the real wages of both those completing high school and those
dropping out of high school declined (Autor et al., 2005).
Wage inequality certainly plays a role in overall rising income inequality and increases
in poverty, all of which are impacted by education level. Piketty and Saez (2004) examine
trends in income inequality in the United States in order to understand increases in income
inequality since the 1970s. They present some interesting findings from their data, especially
concerning changes in wage inequality measured by top wage shares. They find that “a sig-
nificant part of the gain (of top income shares) is concentrated in 1987 and 1988 just after
the Tax Reform Act of 1986 which sharply cut the top marginal income tax rates” (Piketty
and Saez, 2004, p. 7). Their analysis of the data shows that, from 1970 to 1984, the top 1
percent share of wage earners increased from 5 percent to 7.5 percent but, from 1986 to
1988, the top shares of wage earners increased substantially from 7.5 percent to 9.5 percent
(Piketty and Saez, 2004, p. 21). Again, they attribute at least part of this “sharp increase” to
the large top marginal tax rate cuts of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (Piketty and Saez, 2004,
p. 21). The stated purpose of the Tax Reform Act was to make the tax system more equi-
table; however, the equity component was limited, “as considerable efforts were devoted
to keeping the reform from altering the distribution of the tax burden across broad income
classes” (Auerbach and Slemrod, 1997, p. 589).
The cumulative effects of the policies during the Reagan administration can be seen in the
differences in life expectancy between groups of the U.S. population based on level of edu-
cation and its socio-economic status correlates of income and wealth. Indeed, a recent study
that examined trends in these disparities from 1990 to 2008 found widening differences in life
expectancy due to race and educational differences. Specifically, the study found that hav-
ing fewer than 12 years of education has a “dramatic negative effect” on the life expectancy
of Whites, and that among all racial and ethnic groups “an additional four years of educa-
tion beyond high school yields a pronounced longevity advantage” (Olshansky et al., 2012,
p. 1807). While education is crucial to upward mobility through higher-paying jobs requiring
more skills, education has direct benefits on health through the ability to cope better with stress
and the adoption of healthier lifestyles (Olshansky et al., 2012, p. 1808). Indirect benefits of
education include easier access to social positions, and leading a more privileged life (Olshansky
et al., 2012, p. 1808). Thus, more years of education or income also leads to longer life and
fewer negative health events (Crimmins and Saito, 2001).

Conclusion
Many studies have found a relationship between structural adjustment or neoliberal policies
advocated by the IMF and the World Bank during the 1980s and increasing poverty in the
countries that followed those policies. The United States as the most powerful member state
of the IMF and the World Bank was instrumental in making changes at the institutions to

16
 Beyond coincidence

ensure that these types of market-oriented policies would be implemented. This chapter has
provided evidence to show that similar types of market-oriented policies were also imple-
mented in the United States during the Reagan administration and that they had similar
impacts in increasing poverty levels. Education funding was decreased substantially during the
Reagan administration, and the only programs that did not register percent decreases were
those with market incentives such as student loans. The 1982 Educational Consolidation
and Improvement Act decreased federal aid for education in addition to a change to provide
block grants to states, thereby reducing the role of the federal government in determining
how money would be spent.
Most of these policy changes affect outcomes in other areas, which makes them even more
problematic. Decreased funding for and deregulation of education has at least in part contrib-
uted to lower high school graduation rates, which lead to lower college completion rates. These
trends have contributed to higher levels of poverty since higher-paying jobs in the United States
require more years of education, thus contributing to increases in wage inequality. Growing
disparities in income inequality are also related to the latter phenomenon, but a significant part
of the gain for the high-income earners was followed by the Tax Reform Act of 1986.
Finally, the importance of education as seen in greater longevity and a healthier life for U.S.
citizens should provide the impetus for policy makers to focus on policies designed to increase
the years of education for U.S. citizens. Indeed, it seems clear that increasing the educational
levels of U.S. citizens is a key component in the path out of poverty.

Notes
1 I would like to thank Makayla Zonfrilli for research assistance.
2 The Reagan Years: Block Grants and Local Control—accessed at http://www.archives.nysed.gov/
edpolicy/research/res_essay_reagan_achvmnt_gap.shtml, November 9, 2012.
3 The Reagan Years: Block Grants and Local Control—accessed at http://www.archives.nysed.gov/
edpolicy/research/res_essay_reagan_achvmnt_gap.shtml, November 9, 2012.
4 The Reagan Years: Federal Aid and Test Scores—accessed at http://www.archives.nysed.gov/
edpolicy/research/res_essay_reagan_anational_risk.shtml, November 12, 2012.
5 The Reagan Years: Testing and Dropouts—accessed at http://www.archives.nysed.gov/edpolicy/
research/res_essay_reagan_testing_dropouts.shtml, November 12, 2012.
6 Buss (2010) concludes that while the rich got richer from 1987 to 2007, the relative status of the
poor worsened during the same time period.

References
Auerbach, A., and Slemrod, J. (1997). The Economic Effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Journal of
Economic Literature 35(2): 589–632.
Autor, D., Katz, L., and Kearney, M. (2005). Rising Wage Inequality: The Role of Composition and
Prices. NBER Technical Working Paper 11625.
Bell, T. (1986). Education Policy Development in the Reagan Administration. Phi Delta Kappan 37(7):
487–493.
Blackmon, P. (2008). Rethinking Poverty through the Eyes of the International Monetary Fund and the
World Bank. International Studies Review 10(2): 179–202.
Blackmon, P. (2009). Factoring Gender into Economic Development: Changing the Policies of the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Women’s Studies 38(2): 213–237.
Blackmon, P. (2010). International Economic Institutions and Global Justice. In Robert Denemark et al.,
eds. The International Studies Compendium Project. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Buss, J. (2010). Have the Poor Gotten Poorer? The American Experience from 1987 to 2007. The Journal
of Poverty 14(2): 183–196.
Clark, D., and Amiot, M. (1981). The Impact of the Reagan Administration on Federal Education Policy.
Phi Delta Kappan 63(4): 258–262.

17
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the clouds that hang on their summits in loving embrace,
until they are lost to view in the pale tints of the evening
sky, leaving the central view open to the sea, 120 miles to
the coast, where the bluff at Port Durban can be
distinguished overlooking the intervening country with its
plains and hills.

It was here, at the Bushman’s Pass, 9000 feet high, that the
sad affair with Langalibalele’s tribe occurred. A number of
them had been at the diamond-fields, where they had
procured guns for wages. No Kaffirs in Natal are allowed to
have guns, except a few hundred, by special licence, and
the sale of gunpowder is all in the hands of the
Government, white men even not being allowed more than
ten pounds a year, and they cannot import guns without a
special permission from the Government.

The entire immunity of Natal, from its first annexation, from

Kaffir wars, which have caused so much waste of blood and
treasure at the Cape, is owing chiefly to this wise law, which
is so rigidly enforced that a number of guns were seized
which had been made in Natal, at a cost of 2 pounds 10
shillings each. The barrels were gas-pipes, whilst good
muskets could have been imported at 5 shillings each. All
the Cape wars have been caused by the omission of this
simple precaution.

The Natal border Zulu chief Langalibalele had been a rebel

from his youth upwards. He rebelled against Panda, the
Zulu king, and barely escaped into Natal with a few
followers, leaving all his cattle behind. Shortly after he
returned, killed the keepers of the cattle, and took them
into Natal. There he was given about the best “location” on
the beautiful spot here described in the Drakensberg. Many
refugees from Zululand joined him, and his tribe became
powerful. But they were always restless and contumacious.
At last about 250 of them brought back from the diamond-
fields the guns which they had received for wages, and
when called upon to give them up refused to do so, or even
—as subsequently allowed—to send them in to be
registered, and they insulted the messengers sent by the
Government. A force was consequently marched into the
location, and as the whole tribe was about to depart into
the Zulu country with the cattle, a proceeding which was
against all Kaffir law, the passes of the mountains were
occupied, to prevent their escape, by volunteers, and the
soldiers were kept below. To the Bushman’s Pass a force of
about twenty of the Natal carbineers (cavalry) was sent up.
The pass, 9000 feet high, was so steep that they could not
ride, but had to lead their horses, in doing which Colonel
Durnford (killed at Isandhlwana), who commanded the
party, was pulled down a rock by his horse, and his
shoulder dislocated. It was pulled in at once, but being a
delicate man the pain and fatigue overcame him entirely,
and he was obliged to remain behind, while the rest went
on and bivouacked on the pass. During the night, young
Robert Erskine, son of the Colonial Secretary, went down
twice to his assistance, taking brandy, etc., and eventually
he got him on to his horse and up to his men. Early next
morning a part of the tribe, with the cattle, came up, the
rest having passed before, and occupied the rocks around,
being armed with guns.

Unfortunately, the Governor of Natal had got it into his head

that he was a born soldier, and had accompanied the
soldiers who were below. As the captain of the volunteers
knew no drill, and could not move the men, the Governor—
who was weakly allowed by the colonel in command to
dictate—sent Major Durnford, an engineer—who knew no
more than the captain about manoeuvring men—in
command, and to this folly added a mad injunction “not to
fire first!” in obedience to which Durnford allowed the tribe
to keep coming up. Erskine, who had been private secretary
to the former governor, and who knew the tribe well, having
lived among them sketching, and having had twenty-five of
them working for him at the diamond-fields, offered to go
down the pass and remonstrate with the chiefs who were
below. Major Durnford would not allow it, saying that he
had saved his life, and it was certain death. The tribe kept
coming up and lining the rocks, calling out, “You’ll never see
your mother again! That’s my horse! That’s my saddle!” etc.

At last a cowardly fellow, a drill-sergeant, formerly in the

Cape Mounted Rifles, who had been allowed to join the
force as dry-nurse, persuaded the men that they would all
be killed, and they sent their captain to Durnford to say so,
and that as he would not allow them to fire they would not
stay. On which Durnford called out, “Will nobody stand by
me?” when Erskine said, “I will, major,” and another, Bond,
said so, as also did one more. Durnford then said, “If you
will not stand by me you must go;” and not knowing the
cavalry word, the drill-sergeant gave the word, “Fours right!
right wheel! Walk! March!” As they filed past the rocks, the
Zulu in command called, “Don’t fire until they have passed,”
and they then fired and shot down the whole rear section,
and the rest galloped off, except Durnford, who was
drinking at the source of the Orange river. His bridle was
seized by two Zulus, and one wounded him in the shoulder.
Although one arm was disabled, with the other he shot
them both, and escaped.

At the same time the Kaffir interpreter, who fought gallantly,

was killed, and Erskine also, whose horse was shot down,
was shot through the head and heart, in the source of the
Orange river. One of the four, whose horse had been shot
down, caught Erskine’s horse, which had got up again, and
escaped on him for a space. The horse then fell dead, and
two of the men dismounted and covered him, shooting
some of the Zulus who were coming on. He caught
Durnford’s spare horse running by, and after some delay
and danger from a shower of bullets, succeeded in getting
Erskine’s saddle on to the horse, and escaped. Durnford
tried in vain to rally the men, and they went helter-skelter
down the pass, the captain—afraid to ride down—being
sledged down on his stern.

The bodies were allowed to remain there several days,

although there was not a Zulu near, and then they were
buried by Durnford under a large cairn, erected with rocks,
interspersed with the beautiful heaths and flora growing
around. Erskine’s body was found in the source itself of the
Orange river. The people erected a handsome monument to
their memory in the market-square at Maritzburg, and
another to those who fell at Isandhlwana—about thirty.
Thus, out of a troop of fifty, thirty-three of the Natal
volunteer carbineers fell in these two affairs owing, on both
occasions, to the grossest mismanagement. Ne sutor ultra
crepidam!

The tribe was afterwards hunted for two months in these

mountains by volunteers only, and captured with their chief,
Langalibalele, who was sent to the Cape, and kept more
comfortably than he ever was in his life, in a nice house and
grounds, with entire freedom to move about, his only
grievance being that he was not allowed more than three of
his wives, the cause of this distressing privation being
simply that the balance would not come. An absurd
proposition was sent out by the Home Government lately
that he should be allowed to return to Natal, but it was
promptly quashed by that Government. Coelum non
animum mutant qui trans mare currunt, as was proved in
the case of Cetewayo’s restoration, “who had learnt and
forgotten nothing.”
This, if it can be called one, is the only rebellion ever
known, or likely to be known, in Natal, where the Kaffirs are
thoroughly loyal. Shortly before this a little raid was made
into Natal by one of Moshesh’s sons, when two natives were
killed and some cattle lifted. A force was sent up, too late,
and en route the Colonial Secretary and Secretary for
Native Affairs, who were sitting in a waggon, were watching
a tribe, when they diverted, and forming regularly into line
their orator ran out, and running as they do up and down
made an oration, “There’s the Government in the waggon!
What’s the meaning of this? Why is this land invaded? Why
are our people killed and our cattle stolen? Why were we
not called out sooner? Was it that we are not trusted?
Wow!! There sit under that waggon Langalibalele’s people!
Who are they? Dogs! that we used to hunt down; and would
again, if not prevented by the Government.”

Sir T. Shepstone did not even condescend to address them

himself, but in a few words, through an interpreter, told
them they were quite loyal, had the approval of the great
Queen, and could pass on, which they did, moving off by
companies from the right, like soldiers, and singing a war
song, making the earth tremble with their stamping. (On
such occasions extraordinary licence of speech is allowed by
the Zulus.) All these tribes would fight well for us at first if
there were to be a rising outside, but after a bit they would
join their own kind, as they both feel and say that white and
black blood can never mingle because we despise them.

The great change in climate and vegetation is very

perceptible on leaving fair Natal for the cold, dreary, open,
and inhospitable Free State. Harrysmith, in 1863, was a
poor, dull, sleepy town, only supported and kept alive by a
few transport riders on their way to the Transvaal and the
small villages of the Free State. But after the annexation of
the former State by the British Government in 1877, it soon
became a town of importance, and being on the main road
from Natal, large and well-built stores, houses, churches,
and schools soon put life into its inhabitants. Thanks to
British gold for turning a howling wilderness into a land of
promise!

I remained two days to gain news and information about

the locality, and the various roads to the north; game being
plentiful in all directions, principally blesbok and springbok,
wildebeest or gnu, quaggas, hartebeest, and others. The
ostrich was also plentiful. I decided to follow the game up,
taking the advice of my Natal friend, who had recently
returned from his shooting excursion. I took the road
leading east, and less frequented than the others, which
eventually leads to the newly-formed town of
Wakkerstroom, on the eastern border of the Transvaal, and
also north from that town to Lydenburg, now the gold
centre. Anxious to make the most of my time, as I had to
return to Natal before starting on my grand explorations to
obtain a fresh driver and two Kaffirs, I was constantly in the
saddle after anything that crossed my path, travelling
slowly on, shooting as much game as we required for the
road. To shoot more would be mere waste, although the
Boers make a practice of killing as many as they can for the
sake of the skins, leaving the dead animals to be devoured
by lions, wolves, or any other animal.

One night, as we were outspanned on the bank of a dry

sluit, close to a small but thickly wooded koppie (hill) and
large blocks of stone, we were disturbed by hearing the roar
of two or more lions, within a very short distance of our
camp. Not having made any preparation to receive visitors
of this kind, we were all soon on our feet with rifles. The fire
had gone out, but the stars gave some little light, sufficient
to see all safe, particularly my horse. We were all on the
watch, peering into the darkness, when we saw two lions
cross over from the opposite bank and enter the near
koppie. I was told before starting, by several old hunters,
never to shoot at a lion when near, if it can be avoided,
unless certain of killing; for if only wounded he would attack
before you could reload.

Our anxiety was for the safety of our oxen and horse,
fearing they might get away and be caught by the lions. I
made the two Kaffirs collect a few sticks, and with what was
left from last night made a fire, which threw a light into the
bushes, where we saw our two friends enter, and shortly
after I saw a pair of eyes shining like fire from out of the
wood within thirty yards. If I could have depended on my
Kaffirs, all being armed, he would certainly have had the
contents of my rifle, but knowing them to be bad shots
when cool, and that they would have been worse than
useless in time of danger, to my great disgust was I obliged
to stand and watch only. As they left the koppie, they made
a circuit of my camp, but at a greater distance. Taking the
two rifles from the young Kaffirs, placing them against the
fore-wheel of the waggon, to be ready at a moment’s
notice, I could not resist so fine a chance of a shot in the
open, only fifty yards distant; the light of the fire giving out
a good glare, I had a full view, and fired, and found I had
wounded one—the thud of the bullet is sufficient to know
that. My driver, a fine Zulu, and young Talbot, had their
rifles ready in case he charged, which he did, in short
bounds. As he neared, they both fired and both hit, but not
sufficiently to kill him; but he was unable to move, as his
hind-quarters were rendered powerless. Reloading, we
walked up, and I gave him a bullet as near the heart as I
could, when he fell over; the other we saw moving away
into the darkness—a fine full-grown lion with dark mane.
This was the third lion that had fallen by my rifle. The little
affair detained us the following day, skinning and pegging
out to dry in the sun, in addition to several other skins of
the game shot on the road, eleven in all. When a skin is
taken from an animal, I sprinkle a little salt over it, then roll
it up, to be pegged out at a convenient opportunity.

The next day we made a fresh move towards a lofty isolated

hill in the Free State, which we reached in two inspans, and
crossing a stony sluit, outspanned under a few trees, close
to some very ancient stone walls built without mortar. They
were square and some twelve feet high. The open plains
were full of game of many kinds. Wishing to explore this
hill, early in the morning after coffee I took my rifle to climb
to the topmost ridge, letting John have the horse to get a
springbok. After rambling about the hill, scanning the
country all round, I was coming down when I nearly
stumbled on a wolf (hyena), which must have been asleep
amongst the stones. I was within twenty feet when I fired,
killing him at once. Not far away were two large black
eagles; the report of the rifle seat them soaring away into
space. About half-way down the hill I saw two stones that
had evidently been cut into shape by a mason; they looked
like coping-stones, with well-marked lines, and perfectly
square. I took their measure and a sketch of each, both of
them exactly a foot in length and six inches wide. They
evidently belonged to some ancient building, but when? is a
question not so easily solved. But other stone huts two
days’ trek beyond were clearly erected by a race long since
passed away; they were circular, with circular stone roofs,
and nearly two feet thick, of partly hewn stone, beautifully
made; a stone door with lintels, sills, and door-plates.
Kaffirs have never been known to build in this way. Between
each hut there was a straight stone wall, five feet in height,
with doorways and lintels, communicating with each square
enclosure, perfect specimens of art. They were, I believe,
erected by the same people who worked the gold-mines,
the remains of which we frequently find in the Transvaal and
the Matabele, and beyond, where so many of their forts still
remain. In the Marico district there are two extensive
remains of these stone towns, which must, from their
extent, have occupied many years to complete. The outer
wall that encloses the whole is six feet thick, and at the
present time five feet high. Several large trees are growing
out and through the roof of some of them. They are how
the abode of the leopard, jackal, and wolf, and so hidden by
bush they, are not seen until you are close upon them.
Broken pieces of pottery are the only things I have
discovered. The present natives know nothing of them; they
are shrouded in mystery. Many remains of old walls are
standing, showing that at one time this upper part of the
Free State must have been thickly populated. At this
outspan I killed a yellow snake, three feet in length, with
four legs, but not made for locomotion. I heard there were
such in Natal, but this is the first I have seen. When he
found he could not make his escape, he curled himself into
a circle, with his head raised to strike similar to other
snakes. I consigned him to a bottle of spirits. I also shot
one of those beautiful blue jays, as there were many in this
district.

I pass over my shooting exploits, as there is nothing worth

recording, each daily trek being almost a repetition of the
last, until we arrive in sight of Wakkerstroom, a poor
village, a few houses, flat roofs, single floors, built in an
open country near a lofty hill, which stands on the main
road from Natal to Lydenburg; we remained only a few
days, then went north, as far as Lake Crissie, an open piece
of water, no trees or bushes near; a solitary sea-cow is the
only occupant of this dismal-looking place. In this district
the Vaal river rises, and many small branches meet, until
the veritable river is formed. The elevation at the lake was
5613 feet, and on a hill a few miles north I found the
altitude above sea-level to be 6110 feet, an open grass
undulating country as far as the eye could see, except on
the east, where the mountain range that forms the
Quathlamba is seen in the distance. I retraced part of the
road, and turned south-east, over the hills leading to where
Lunenburg now stands, and on towards Swaziland, which is
an independent native territory, thickly populated and very
mountainous; there are rich gold-mines there now, and
some of the mountains attain an altitude of 8000 feet.

The greater part of the summer months, a mist envelops

the hills, but it is a very healthy part of Africa, and horse
sickness is rarely known to exist, consequently many horses
are bred here. Passing Kruger’s post, through Buffel forest,
which is hilly, and splendid timber trees cover the entire
country, the scenery is grand and wild; quartz reefs crop
out in all directions, sandstone, shale, and in some places
limestone overlap the granite formation, which compose
these lofty ridges of the Drakensberg; shale, which
indicates the existence of coal, is frequently seen in the
valleys, and along the Pongola river and its several
branches.

I left Harrysmith on the 20th September, 1863, arriving on

the banks of the Pongola river on the 16th October. In that
time I had treked 350 miles, being delayed on the road
shooting and exploring.

The people at Wakkerstroom wanted to know what I was

doing in the country, as I did not handel (trade), and was
not a smouser, the term applied to those who went about
the country in waggons to sell and buy. They would not
believe I came into the country for pleasure and to shoot,
but I was set down as an English spy, as I took notes and
made sketches of the country. When I showed them a small
drawing of the town with the hill at the backhand people
walking about, they held it upside down, and said it was
mooi (pretty). Most of the Boers are very slow in
comprehending anything, the women are much quicker, and
turned the picture round, and knew it at once, as also some
Kaffir girls, pointing to the figures, naming whom they
represented with expressions of delight. Some of the girls
seem to have a natural gift for drawing and the beauties of
nature, pointing out with their finger various objects, and
explaining to those around what the drawing represented. I
have often thought that many of these bright Kaffir girls
might make good artists with proper training. Mrs Colenso
taught some to draw, paint, and play and sing. When they
were about sixteen their father came for them, and they,
quite delighted, ran off, stripped off their clothes, and went
off naked, and never returned, just like some wild pigeons I
had once tamed. They are also quite alive to the ridiculous:
in the sketch were two horses playing, one standing with his
fore-feet in the air; this caught their attention at once,
causing great amusement, and imitating their action. They
belonged to the Mantatees or Mahowas tribe, which is
divided into many kraals under various chiefs, all subject to
the head chief Secocoene, who lives on the north of
Lydenburg. The Pongola skirts the Swazi, or, as it is
sometimes called, the Amaswasiland, a very mountainous
country; the people are Zulus, their habits and mode of
fighting being the same. Many of these people came to my
waggon with milk, which I took in exchange for tobacco and
beads. The men are a fine manly race, and the women,
many of them, good-looking, but very scanty in their dress,
which is only a little strip of beads an inch wide. The Swazi
country is situated between the eastern boundary of the
Transvaal and the Amatonga, which is the northern part of
Zululand, up to the Portuguese settlement in Delagoa Bay
on the east side. It is governed by an independent chief,
their laws and language being the same as the Zulus. The
country has every indication of being rich in gold, some
specimens of quartz I obtained from reefs running through
the country looked very promising. The Pongola Bush, as it
is called, is a beautiful forest of fine timber trees. Some of
the most valuable are the Bosch Gorrah, of a scarlet colour,
fine grain; Ebenhout, a sort of ebony; Borrie yellow,
Bockenhout, no regular grain; Assagaai, used for spear
handles; Wild Almond, Grelhout, Saffraan, Stinkwood,
Speckerhout, Wild Fig, Umghu, Witgatboom, Tambooti;
White Ironwood, very hard, and many others of great use
for many purposes. The Pongola river is very pretty;
passing down through a richly-wooded district, with its
tributaries, flowing east and then north it joins the beautiful
river Usutu, which enters the south side of Delagoa Bay.
The Usutu river drains the greater portion of the
Amaswasiland with its many branches; it rises on the east
side of the Veldt and Randsberg, that is the continuation of
the watershed from Natal, already described, which
separates the waters of the South Atlantic and the Indian
Ocean, some of the springs of the Usutu rising within a few
miles of the upper springs of the Vaal, near Lake Crissie.
The principal tributaries of the former river are the
Umtaloos, Lobombo, Assagaai, Impeloose, Umkonto, and
Umkompies, all uniting in the Swazi country; then it flows
east, through a beautiful break in the Lobombo Mountains,
and enters Delagoa Bay, as before described. For beauty of
scenery and picturesque views, with the deep glens,
ravines, and thickly wooded kloofs of every variety of tint,
few views in Africa will surpass them, and some day, when
the country is prospected, if the Swazis will permit it, I
believe it will be found to be a rich gold-bearing country,
both alluvial and in the quartz. I went several times into the
river-beds to prospect, the natives following me, watching
my actions, but of course not knowing what I was looking
for. As the time was drawing short I left the Pongola, and
treked down to Eland’s Neck, where the country was more
open, and on a small branch of that river, close to a very
pretty waterfall, are many fine tree-ferns, that grow to a
great size. Here we were again in the clouds on the
Elandsberg, at an elevation of 6000 feet, and overlooking
Zululand, with the distant mountain in the background. With
my boys to feed—and no small quantity satisfies them—the
rifles were in constant use, and in an unknown country it is
never safe to go any distance from the waggon without one.
The Zulus have no other weapons than the assagai or
knobkerrie. Wolves were nightly visitors; several we shot,
but not a lion was to be seen or heard. There were many
leopards and panthers in the mountains, but they did not
trouble us. My driver being a Zulu as well as the other boys,
I got on very well with the people at the kraals I passed,
and the girls came without any fear. In fact we always got
on well with them, having provided myself with brass wire
and beads, the principal articles in demand, as clothes they
do not wear. They are exceedingly clean in their persons,
and very fond of bathing. One afternoon I saddled-up, and
started for the open to get a buck. Passing through the
bush to the river, I came upon nearly fifty black women
bathing in the stream. Some scampered out on the other
side, then stood and looked at the white man; the greater
number kept in the water splashing about, for it was not
deep enough to swim, and laughing and cheering, showing
their beautiful white teeth, not in the least afraid. It is true I
had been nearly a week outspanned near their two separate
kraals, and they were daily at my waggon with milk, so that
I was to a certain extent known to them, few white men
being seen down so far in that part of Zululand.

November 30th.—It was time to make a move homewards.

I therefore prepared for a start, and the following morning
took the road towards Natal, stopping at Deepkloof on my
way, leaving on the right some very picturesque and lofty
hills; not a farm-house to be seen. Having shot plenty of
game for the road to last many days, by turning it into
biltong, pushed on early the next morning, passing down
one of the most stony and difficult passes to be met with in
Africa, running against trees, which had to be cut down,
breaking one of the oxen’s horns, which had got fixed in the
branches of a tree, and with difficulty I saved the waggon
from being smashed. The view from this hill, looking west,
was very fine, an open plain beneath us with lofty hills on
the right and left, open to the south and west, where a
distant view of the lofty peaks of the Drakensberg could be
seen; the distance in a straight line being over eighty miles;
so clear is the atmosphere they did not seem more than
half that distance.

The next day about noon I came to a Boer farm, where we

procured some milk, a little butter, and some meal. The
comfortless manner in which these people live is surprising,
and the dirt displayed about the premises would shock
many a poor labourer at home. The old Boer asked, which is
always the first question put after shaking hands, “What’s
your name? where from? what have I up to handel (sell)?”
After replying, “Then what’s the news?” This is the usual
salutation at every Boer farm, and considering their
isolation, a very practical one. Coffee is then handed round,
and the tobacco-bag produced, to fill your pipe, as a matter
of course. The old Boer complained sadly of the heavy
storms that had passed over the country, and loss of cattle
from lightning, the old vrow putting in a word occasionally;
their three buxom daughters sat on boxes, looking at the
stranger as if he were some unknown kind of animal from a
strange land.

We crossed a small branch of the Buffalo river, leaving the

Belslaberg mountains, covered with bush, on our right. At
the back of this range is a mineral spring on the White river,
which is a tributary of the Pongola, the water being warm
when it issues from the ground.
On the morning of the 4th of December, 1863, I started for
Natal, on my backward journey, and treked over an open
country in two inspans, and arrived in the evening on the
banks of the Buffalo river, which divides Natal from the Zulu
country, and outspanned for the night, as I never travel
after dark for two reasons: the first, I cannot see the
country, and the second, that I always meet with some
accident in travelling a road not known—breaking
desselboom, axle, or some part of the waggon, sticking in
mud-holes that would be avoided in daylight. The Buffalo is
a fine stream, rising in the Drakensberg, passing the town
of Wakkerstroom, and falling into the Tugela twenty miles
below the town of Weenen, where it forms a broad stream
to the sea, dividing Zululand from Natal. At the outspan
there was a Boer with his waggon waiting to go through,
the water being too high to cross; but it was going down,
having risen from the heavy rains, and an accident having
happened to his waggon by the bullocks turning round when
treking in the night, from fright probably by a wild beast,
and breaking the desselboom; but on my arrival I found the
young Boer and his vrow sitting by their camp-fire, taking
their evening coffee, and after the usual shaking of hands
was asked to sit, and a Bushman girl was told to give me a
cup of coffee; afterwards, of course, a smoke.

Having made my waggon ready for the night, and looked

after the boys and oxen, I took my evening meal with John;
then walked over to the Boer waggon for a chat, where we
remained until bed-time, which was nine o’clock. Sitting
listening to the Boer’s various tales of Zulu fighting, and
hunting, and other anecdotes, I found he lived on a farm
some little distance beyond this outspan; his name was
Uys, rather a pleasant kind of man for his class. Probably
the father of Piet Uys, the hero of the Zulu war.
The next morning at sunrise I had a look at the river, which
was not much lower; but an exciting scene was taking
place; a flock of about 300 sheep was being swum through,
which occupied all the first part of the morning. I was
astonished to see how well they took to the water when
they were in, the difficulty lay in getting them in: some
would turn back, others go down the river; what with the
bleating of the sheep, the shouting of a dozen Kaffir boys
and their two Boer masters making a perfect din of sounds;
however, with only the loss of two sheep, they got them
safely over, and as the water was falling fast, everything
was made ready to cross. My friend Uys took the lead. The
banks on both sides being very steep, the breaks had to be
screwed home to bring the waggons safely down to the
water. Each waggon had a forelooper, a Kaffir, to take the
fore-tow of the front oxen to keep them straight towards
the opposite drift, otherwise they might take it into their
heads to go down stream, and all would be lost. On his
return from one of his expeditions on the east coast, Mr St.
Vincent Erskine, the traveller, on reaching Natal bought a
horse, and as he had to swim several rivers he put his
journal for safety into a waggon. It was carried down a
river, the oxen and a white girl lost, and his journal. Long
searches were made for it by numbers of Kaffirs, when the
river went down, in vain. Two years afterwards it was found
in its tin case, quite legible, being in pencil. It was in a bush
so far above the river that no one had thought of looking for
it.

We reached the bank safely on the opposite side, which is

Natal, and treked on in a westerly course for a few miles,
where we outspanned, and then went on again for a long
trek, as there was nothing further to delay us, and the next
day we continued on to a very pretty opening, close to the
river Ineandu; the lofty Drakensberg range on our right,
with its beautiful rugged outline, and deep kloofs, was
grand to look upon. Game was more plentiful here than we
had seen for some time, and we also found lions were not
wanting to keep up the excitement during the night-watch.
As we arrived late, there was nothing to do but have our
fires, cook some tea and a slice of a young springbok over
the red embers, with a little salt, mustard, and pepper,—a
supper not to be cast on one side. We were rightly
informed, and cautioned not to let the oxen and horse stray
in the bush, but kept them near and in sight, for lions had
considerably increased of late and had done much damage
in carrying off oxen when out in the Veldt. Mr Evans, the
merchant, once saw forty all together. We therefore made
everything fast before going to sleep, and collected wood
for fires, if it were necessary to light them during the night.
My horse would have been a great loss; he was excellent
when out after game, for, on dismounting and throwing the
rein over his head to hang on the ground, he would not
move from the spot until you returned from following up
game where a horse could not go. As there was no moon
the night was getting dark, and while we were sitting round
the camp-fire, listening to the boys’ tales of some hunting
expeditions they had been in, we were reminded that our
friends the lions were not far away. In the stillness of night,
when all is silent, the sounds made by a lion close at hand
in a thick bush surrounding the camp, the deep tones of his
growls, make every one start, and look around to see if all
is safe, and put more wood on the fires, to throw light into
the bush, and take our rifles which had been left in the
waggon. Although we could not see them, we knew they
were close at hand; others were heard in the distance, and
would no doubt come nearer; sleep was out of the question,
as a vigilant watch was necessary, in case they might make
an attack on our oxen. Wolves also began to enliven the
night-air with their sounds, and occasionally a jackal was
heard. With the exception of a few scares, when they came
too close to the waggon, the night passed off very well, and
a lovely bright morning succeeded. We inyoked the oxen,
and treked at daylight—saddling up the horse, I rode into
the bush, but could see nothing except their footprints in
the sand.

From this outspan to Ladysmith occupied five days. The

country over which we travelled was very pretty, and in
many places hilly. Ladysmith is another small town, where
we remained the morning, and then started for the farm,
and arrived on the 20th of December, 1863, in time to
spend the Christmas with the old people.

Ladysmith is now the terminus of the railway, 180 miles

from D’Urban. It is to be continued at once to Newcastle,
passing through a rich coal district 100 miles, where it will
be only about fifty miles from the nearest gold-fields. Natal
only asks the Imperial Government to enable it to borrow
the money at three per cent, for this great strategical work,
which besides reaching the Transvaal, would afford the only
coaling-station in South Africa.
 Chapter Three.
Final departure for the unknown land—The happy
hunting-ground.

Christmas day, 1863; on the banks of the Tugela river,

Natal; 96 degrees in the shade, 149 degrees in the sun;
9:30 a.m.; a cloudless sky, with scarcely a puff of air to
relieve the oppressive heat. No greatcoats, thick gloves,
mufflers, or snow-boots are needed on Christmas Day in
these southern climes. The thinnest of thin clothes, and
those but few, can be worn with comfort. I envy the native
tribes their freedom from dress in such weather. But so it
must be, I suppose; we are but children of circumstances,
and must abide by the rules of society. Not always. The
celebrated Mr Fynn went naked among the Kaffirs for years,
as also did Gordon Cumming.

But with all this glorious sunshine, sultry and Oppressive

atmosphere, Christmas is not Christmas as we know it in
Old England, where friends meet friends in all the warmth of
overflowing love and hospitality round the well-filled board,
and the social gatherings round the hearth, with song and
dance, and Christmas-tree. We live in its memory when it
comes upon us in this far-away land, hoping against hope
that at its next anniversary we may be united again with
those dear to us, and join in the festivities of merry
Christmas in our native land. Father Frost, with his snow-
white mantle, is a welcome guest at this season of the year;
without him we know not what real Christmas is.

In this warm clime we endeavour to realise that Christmas

is upon us, but how can we reconcile the fact with the
thermometer at noon standing 106 degrees in the shade,
flies, ants, mosquitoes, and countless other insects buzzing
round you, fighting after your food and filling the dishes,
until you can scarcely make out what is in them! Such is
Christmas in a subtropical land.

However, with all these drawbacks, my friends on the farm,

who were colonists of eight years standing, did their best to
keep up the old customs; their two daughters and one son
—all born in England—with myself, and the old people,
comprised our little family party. Plum-pudding, mince pies,
venison, and fowls were served up in the old style, with
good English bottled ale, and sundry fruits afterwards. We
managed to pass away Christmas Day with many pledges of
good luck and success to all absent friends in glasses of
some real old whisky which I had in my waggon. Two Zulu
girls attended, with a bunch of long ostrich feathers each, to
keep off the flies during meals, otherwise flies as well as
food would have passed into the mouth.

But the day was not to terminate as brightly as it

commenced. Soon after four p.m. dense clouds were rising
over the lofty Drakensberg mountains in heavy massive
folds, rising one after the other in quick succession,
spreading out, expanding over the clear sky above,
enveloping the mountain tops, blending together earth and
sky, a grand and beautiful sight, with the quick flashes of
lightning and the distant rumble of the thunder. We watched
with intense interest and admiration its rapid approach until
we were warned by the hurricane that preceded it that the
house was the safest place. Having made everything fast
without, we waited its arrival. Those who have never
witnessed a tropical thunderstorm can have but a faint idea
of its violence, and in no place in Africa is it more so than in
Natal. They are renowned for their rapid appearance and
destructive effects.
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