Synopses & Reviews
Not Working chronicles the devastating effects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation that ended welfare as we know it. For those who now receive public assistance, “work” means pleading with supervisors for full-time hours, juggling ever-changing work schedules, and shuffling between dead-end jobs that leave one physically and psychically exhausted.
Through vivid story-telling and pointed analysis, Not Working profiles the day-to-day struggles of Mexican immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, showing the increased vulnerability they face in the welfare office and labor market. The new “work first” policies now enacted impose time limits and mandate work requirements for those receiving public assistance, yet fail to offer real job training or needed childcare options, ultimately causing many families to fall deeper below the poverty line.
Not Working shows that the new “welfare-to-work” regime has produced tremendous instability and insecurity for these women and their children. Moreover, the authors argue that the new politics of welfare enable greater infringements of rights and liberty for many of America's most vulnerable and constitute a crucial component of the broader assault on American citizenship. In short, the new welfare is not working.
Review
"The book's major scholarly contributions include a diaspora approach linking both sides of the Atlantic, an emphasis on the mental and human dimensions of slave workers, and evidence for multiple contributions of slave workers in making the American plantation." "This volume is a significant contribution to a number of different fields, and it is on the cutting edge of Atlantic history, exploring an almost seamless integration of African, African American, and indeed American life."
“Historians of African Americans have known for a long time that they were brought to the Americas to labor, but until Frederick Knight’s comprehensive and fascinating account, that labor had never been fully examined. By looking at African labor and especially agricultural skills, Knight shows that a great deal of the work that African Americans did as slaves had its roots in African agricultural processes. Knight’s chapter on the production of indigo is particularly telling on this point, and shows that Africans’ skill was perhaps as important as their muscle in furthering the New World’s agricultural development. While others have explored elements of the role of Africans as skilled farmers before, Knight has brought all this and more together in a compelling and convincing re-evaluation of Africans and their descendants’ role in American life.”
“Working the Diaspora is a welcome contribution to the study of labor and culture under slavery. Spanning the colonial through the antebellum period, Knight argues that Africans brought much more than brute strength to their work in sugar, rice, tobacco and indigo fields. By carefully contextualizing his study of labor practices in the Americas in the African past, Knight offers a compelling argument for the crucial role of African knowledge in the building of staple crop agriculture in the Americas. In a study that is archivally deep and analytically rich, Knight significantly expands our understanding of the role of African expertise in the creation of the black Atlantic.”
“A brave and wide-ranging work that synthesizes the increasing knowledge about African and American links and expands that knowledge considerably in new and convincing ways.”
Review
“
Working the Diaspora is a welcome contribution to the study of labor and culture under slavery. Spanning the colonial through the antebellum period, Knight argues that Africans brought much more than brute strength to their work in sugar, rice, tobacco and indigo fields. By carefully contextualizing his study of labor practices in the Americas in the African past, Knight offers a compelling argument for the crucial role of African knowledge in the building of staple crop agriculture in the Americas. In a study that is archivally deep and analytically rich, Knight significantly expands our understanding of the role of African expertise in the creation of the black Atlantic.”
- Jennifer L. Morgan, author of Laboring Women: Gender and Reproduction in New World Slavery
Review
“With this book, Marchevsky and Theoharis make a distinct contribution to the welfare reform debate by addressing a topic that has received less attention in the literature, namely how welfare reforms have impacted immigrant. Not Working is particularly timely as immigrants become more visible as they move to less traditional U.S. regions to find work and the immigration debate rages.”
-Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare,
Review
“Original and insightful. Not Working is a powerful book, connecting theories of the state, citizenship, and globalization with first rate ethnography. It is an instant classic and will remain the definitive book on immigrant women and welfare reform for some time.”
-Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo,author of Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence
Review
“This is a scholarly, professional critique of social science research paradigms generally, and poverty knowledge industry and associated applied policy research in particular:”
-Choice: Highly recommended,
Review
“A smart, engaging, and groundbreaking study that exposes the racist underpinnings of welfare reform. A model of stellar scholarship and a must read for anyone seeking to understand poverty in relation to the meaning of American citizenship today.”
-Arlene Davila,author of Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City
Review
“This highly significant contribution assures that Latina immigrants will no longer be invisible in scholarly research on welfare reform. This superb ethnography establishes a clear connection to the political, legal, and economic realities that is needed in reassessing the success stories of welfare reform. It should be read by all those concerned with social inequality, poverty, and justice in America.”
-Mary Romero,author of Maid in the U.S.A
Review
"This volume is a significant contribution to a number of different fields, and it is on the cutting edge of Atlantic history, exploring an almost seamless integration of African, African American, and indeed American life."-Simon P. Newman,American Historical Review
Review
"Goes a long way toward giving enslaved African labor deserved recognition for having shaped the Atlantic world." -Journal of World History,
Review
"Working the Diaspora is one of few books about American slavery to take Africa seriously...Knight deserves high praise for telling the story."-Walter Hawthorne,New West Indian Guide
Review
"In breaking new interpretive ground, Knight's work deserves serious consideration by Atlantic World specialists. Its interdisciplinarity, transnationality, and keen interpretative edge should be models for future works on the African Diaspora in the Americas. Working the Diaspora will certainly be an important work for years to come."-Journal of African American History,
Review
“Historians of African Americans have known for a long time that they were brought to the Americas to labor, but until Frederick Knights comprehensive and fascinating account, that labor had never been fully examined. By looking at African labor and especially agricultural skills, Knight shows that a great deal of the work that African Americans did as slaves had its roots in African agricultural processes. Knights chapter on the production of indigo is particularly telling on this point, and shows that Africans skill was perhaps as important as their muscle in furthering the New Worlds agricultural development. While others have explored elements of the role of Africans as skilled farmers before, Knight has brought all this and more together in a compelling and convincing re-evaluation of Africans and their descendants role in American life.”
-John K. Thornton,author of Africa and Africans in the Formation of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680
Synopsis
From the sixteenth to early-nineteenth century, four times more Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. While this forced migration stripped slaves of their liberty, it failed to destroy many of their cultural practices, which came with Africans to the New World. In
Working the Diaspora, Frederick Knight examines work cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, from West and West Central Africa to British North America and the Caribbean.
Knight demonstrates that the knowledge that Africans carried across the Atlantic shaped Anglo-American agricultural development and made particularly important contributions to cotton, indigo, tobacco, and staple food cultivation. The book also compellingly argues that the work experience of slaves shaped their views of the natural world. Broad in scope, clearly written, and at the center of current scholarly debates, Working the Diaspora challenges readers to alter their conceptual frameworks about Africans by looking at them as workers who, through the course of the Atlantic slave trade and plantation labor, shaped the development of the Americas in significant ways.
About the Author
Alejandra Marchevsky is associate professor of liberal studies at California State University, Los Angeles.
Jeanne Theoharis is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York and co-editor (with Komozi Woodard) of Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements (NYU Press).