Sandra Morgen is Professor of Anthropology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Oregon. She is author of books including Into Our Own Hands: The Women's Health Movement in the United States, 1969–1990 and coeditor most recently of Security Disarmed: Critical Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Militarization. Joan Acker is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Oregon and author of Class Questions: Feminist Answers and Doing Comparable Worth: Gender, Class, and Pay Equity. Jill Weigt is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University–San Marcos.

• PrologueIntroduction: Questioning the Success of Welfare Reform1. History and Political Economy of Welfare in the United States and Oregon2. Velvet Gloves, Iron Fists, and Rose-Colored Glasses: Welfare Administrators and the Official Story of Welfare Restructuring3. Doing the Work of Welfare: Enforcing "Self-Sufficiency" on the Front Lines4. Negotiating Neoliberal Ideology and "On the Ground" Reality in Welfare Work5. The Other Side of the Desk: Client Experiences and Perspectives on Welfare Restructuring6. Life after Welfare: The Costs of Low-Wage EmploymentConclusion: Reforming Welfare "Reform"Appendix: Situating OurselvesNotesBibliographyIndex

"This is a wonderfully thoughtful and illuminating book. For more than a decade, Sandra Morgen, Joan Acker, and Jill Weigt peered into the workings of the Oregon welfare system after the implementation of the draconian reform of 1996. The result is a closely observant picture of just what went on. We learn about the real human costs to mothers and children of the much-heralded shift to 'work first' and 'personal responsibility.' We also learn about the pressures on the staff of the local agencies as they tried to adapt a neoliberal policy designed in Washington to the exigencies of the lives of the poor and troubled people they were mandated to help."—Frances Fox Piven, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, coauthor (with Richard Cloward) of Regulating the Poor and Poor People's Movements