Evidence in Socio-Cultural Anthropology: Limits and Options for Epistemological Orientations

Social Analysis, Volume 53, Issue 2, Summer 2009, 177–190 ©
Berghahn Journals
doi:10.3167/sa.2009.530211
EvidEncE in Socio-cultural
anthropology
Limits and Options for Epistemological Orientations
Andre Gingrich
Abstract: This article identifies what Sir Edmund Leach once
called
‘amongitis’ as one of socio-cultural anthropology’s major
problems that
make interdisciplinary dialogues on evidence-based
epistemological top-
ics difficult. Topics of wider and larger scale, however, can and
should be
addressed if anthropology brings out more fully its implicit
epistemologi-
cal strength of a dialogical relationship between objectivism
and subjec-
tivism. The current conditions of a globalizing world actually
transform
this possibility into a necessity. In order to face this need, a
new realism
is proposed that is capable of dealing with the conditions and
challenges
of a second modernity. Two ranges of epistemological sources
are sug-
gested that may inform such a new realism. One range is based
in the

traditions of Western philosophy, while the other is rooted
outside the
secularized or theological legacies of monotheism.
Keywords: evidence, new realism, objectivism, particularism,
second
modernity, skepticism, subjectivism
Any assessment of the epistemological basis for socio-cultural
anthropology
and ethnography requires a consideration of the nature of
evidence in these
fields (Engelke 2008). What assumptions prevail with regard to
evidence, and
what can we say about corresponding practices? In the first
section of this
article, I approach these questions by summarizing briefly the
differences of
relevant legacies in some neighboring disciplines. As we will
see, I believe that
socio-cultural anthropology’s dialogical, fieldwork-based
orientation places it
in a unique position to overcome a subjectivist-objectivist
dichotomy that pre-
vails in some of these related fields. In the article’s second
section, I examine
several specific epistemological legacies of socio-cultural
anthropology that
have been actively engaged in this dialogical enterprise during
recent decades.
178 | Andre Gingrich
This leads me to identify some of the challenges of what has

been called a
‘second modernity’, which we are said to be about to enter. In
the third and
final section, I inquire about the epistemological and evidence-
related contents
of the challenges imposed upon us by this second modernity and
explore the
available options for reinvigorating our epistemological skills.
Leaving ‘Amongitis’ Behind
Most authors who deal with the subject will agree that
epistemology is con-
cerned with human knowledge—with its conditions, its
possibilities, and its
limits. In the present context I thus focus on the conditions, the
possibilities,
and the limits of ethnographic and anthropological knowledge.
Unavoidably,
this involves answers to questions such as “knowledge about
what, and about
whom?” Here is where the notion of evidence enters our
discussion, either
implicitly or explicitly. Epistemological implications can and
should be consid-
ered from various other angles as well, but addressing them
through a perspec-
tive on evidence helps to emphasize the empirical foundations
of socio-cultural
anthropology. In one way or another, the discipline has always
been embedded
in ethnographic fieldwork and rooted in ethnography. For this
very reason, it is
clear what kind of evidence is most important to ethnography
and, by implica-
tion, to socio-cultural anthropology: the ‘particular’ case. We

teach with it and
about it. We use and interpret it for our publications. Our field
notes, field dia-
ries, interview recordings, visual documentation, and so on,
relate to the unique
cases that most of us study. These field-based materials are
informed and prear-
ranged by the researcher’s curiosity and research interests. They
are elaborated
on the basis of intersubjective fieldwork interactions, and,
ideally, they also are
stored and maintained in ways that keep them accessible for
intersubjective
assessments by other members of the research community.
Because our field-
based evidence relates to particular cases, I call it ‘micro-
evidence’.
Since our usual micro-evidence relates to the particular, we
often hesitate
when colleagues from other disciplines—historians or
archeologists, linguists
or economists, biologists or medical scholars—ask us what kind
of evidence
socio-cultural anthropology might have to offer regarding this
or that kind of
problem that they are investigating. I see two main sets of
underlying reasons
for our caution.
The first set of reasons has to do with our reluctance to
communicate
the kind of ‘macro-evidence’ that is often expected from us by
colleagues in
other fields. We usually prefer to offer particular examples,
which may or may

not confirm those colleagues’ questions. Edmund Leach (1962)
once jokingly
remarked that most socio-cultural anthropologists suffer from a
contagious dis-
ease that he called ‘Amongitis’—that is, our tendency to answer
macro-ques-
tions from others by replying that “among the Nuer” (or “among
the Kachin” or
“among the so-and-so”), things are organized in this or that
way. ‘Amongitis’,
of course, is a nickname for implicit particularism and, at the
same time, for
implicit Popperianism. The implicit logic behind this attitude
would argue that
Evidence in Socio-cultural Anthropology | 179
either there are, perhaps, no universals at all—which is implicit
particular-
ism—or if there are any plausible theories about universals,
then one negative
example is enough to falsify them—which corresponds to
Popper’s methodol-
ogy of critical rationalism. (I shall continue to use the term
‘Popperianism’ as a
shorthand reference to this specific version of neo-positivism,
which is particu-
larly popular among natural science theorists in the tradition of
Sir Karl Popper
and among anthropologists inspired by the work of Ernest
Gellner.)
Because of socio-cultural anthropologists’ well-known
reluctance to answer

questions about macro-evidence in any other way than by
referring to particu-
lar examples, we have gained the increasingly problematic
reputation of deliv-
ering no evidence at all. A scholarly discipline runs into the
danger of under-
mining its own standing if it remains careless about such a
reputation—that is,
if it communicates nothing but particular cases. The danger
increases in an era
when humanity is facing global problems and challenges, and
while anthro-
pology continues to claim expertise about human diversity and
the human
condition at large. I have argued elsewhere (Gingrich and Fox
2002) that, to
a certain extent, new forms of anthropological comparison
might be one way
to improve our skills in processing micro-evidence toward the
formulation of
conceptualizations and theories along an intermediate scale or
range. These
‘medium-range’ methodological operations, it was pointed out,
are based pri-
marily upon qualitative and comparative assessments. This is
why they have
very little in common with the sociological tradition of medium-
range theories
in the legacy of Robert Merton and others, but share the social
science tradition
of ‘grounded theory’ approaches.
These medium-range conceptualizations and empirically
saturated hypoth-
eses are thus related to groups of cases that we might label
‘meso-evidence’. As

in the case of micro-evidence, the identification, choice, and
arrangement of
meso-evidence is also informed by the researcher’s—or the
research team’s—
interests, questions, or hypotheses. Meso-evidence introduces
additional levels
of abstraction into the particular examples of micro-evidence,
thereby trans-
forming it toward a level of interpreted abstraction that allows
comparability.
These processes of excluding and including medium ranges of
circumstances
and classes (or sets) of examples thus define the empirical basis
for the elabo-
ration of medium-range concepts and theories.
Later in this article, I follow João de Pina-Cabral (this volume)
by arguing
that the time also seems right for addressing in new ways, and
in a number
of carefully selected fields, the question of socio-cultural
universals, or what
could be called macro-evidence. Again, macro-evidence is
created along with the
questions we pose (see also Hastrup 2004). Processing new
forms of meso- and
macro-evidence, on the basis of our existing expertise in micro-
evidence, not
only would enhance our potential for communicating with other
academic fields,
but also could improve our reputation. More importantly,
addressing meso- and
macro-evidence in careful and self-reflexive ways would also
substantiate our
own discipline’s theorizing, which has not exactly been thriving
in recent years.

In addition to ‘Amongitis’, or what I have called our implicit
particularism
and implicit Popperianism, our continuing reluctance to
communicate about
meso- and macro-evidence across disciplinary boundaries also
has to do with
a second set of factors. Implicit particularism and implicit
Popperianism are
safe because they are rooted in our own empirical practices: we
prefer to speak
only about what we know for sure. At the same time, however,
we are also well
aware that even the particular case examples that we know so
well depend, to a
larger or smaller extent, on what others have told us during our
fieldwork. Our
micro-evidence itself is contingent upon other subjectivities.
Because we are so
conscious of the weight of subjective factors in our micro-
evidence, we display a
healthy and critical skepticism toward meso- and macro-
evidence, which often is
presented as if it consisted of nothing but objective facts. To my
mind, this skepti-
cism represents a potential strength, despite the fact that it is
currently perceived
as our weakness. Socio-cultural anthropology has a very long
record of assessing
subjective and objective factors in relation to each other. It is
because scholars

in some other disciplines do not have the same kind of critical
self-awareness
practiced by anthropologists that communication across
disciplinary boundaries
tends to be difficult. In short, our ‘bad reputation’ with regard
to evidence has
to do not only with our insistence on the safety of micro-
evidence (and ensuing
attitudes of implicit particularism and Popperianism), but also
with our skepti-
cism toward the alleged objectivism of micro- and macro-
evidence, and with our
critical awareness that objectivism tends to distort reality.
I will use the terms ‘objectivism’ and ‘subjectivism’ here along
the lines elab-
orated in the early works of Pierre Bourdieu (1972) and Bruno
Latour (1988),
that is, in the sense of implicit and inherent epistemological
ideologies that
inform research practices. These ideologies tend to accept
evidence only under
the condition either that evidence is objectified (in the case of
objectivism)
or, alternatively, that it is an authentically subjective expression
(in the case
of subjectivism). The two categories imply problems of their
own, of course,
which I will not discuss here. For the time being, I use these
terms for a very
brief illustration of major differences in epistemological
legacies between socio-
cultural anthropology and neighboring fields. I will employ the
two examples of
biological anthropology and linguistic anthropology to highlight
this point.

Physical or biological anthropology exemplifies perhaps the
most explicit
objectivist record concerning evidence. In this sub-discipline,
more-or-less hard
data relate to hypotheses and to accessible and replicable
conditions of generat-
ing those data. There can be little doubt that biological
anthropology largely fol-
lows an objectivist legacy. Still, science studies (and many
socio-cultural anthro-
pologists working in that field) have confirmed and clarified
what Thomas Kuhn
and Paul Feyerabend had theorized previously—that even the
most refined
objectivist epistemologies cannot flatly ignore the subjective
element. Ever since
the theorizations of Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg,
more refined epis-
temologies from the world of the natural sciences have included
key topics such
as the ‘unknown’, the ‘necessary imprecision’, and, in general,
the ‘researcher’s
perspective’ (Knorr-Cetina 1981, 1995; Mol [2002] 2005).
Linguistic anthropology and its intersections with discourse
analysis, media
studies, and studies of performative arts, on the other hand,
unavoidably have
to rely largely on a subjectivist record of dealing with evidence.
Indeed, an

individual act of performance through body or speech may
never be dupli-
cated under comparable conditions. Likewise, its interpretation
may very well
depend upon one researcher’s very specific perspective—to
such an extent that
very little ‘evidence’ may remain accessible for others. But that
small remain-
ing part is important. It includes documentation and scholarly
debate about
the contents and the conditions of documentation. In fact, few
researchers in
linguistic anthropology—or performative art, for that matter—
would be pre-
pared to give up that remaining part. A minimum record has to
exist that can
be assessed by others through intersubjective means and by
reference to an
empirical foundation. The subjectivist legacy certainly prevails
in this field, but
a minimum of objectivist reference is retained (Duranti 2001,
2004).
We thus may identify in biological anthropology a dominant
discourse of
objectivism, with irreducible, minor, and implicit elements of
subjectivism,
which is quite typical for a general life science orientation. By
contrast, we
may refer to a dominant discourse of subjectivism, with
irreducible, minor, and
implicit elements of objectivism in linguistic anthropology,
which is typical of
a more general humanities orientation.
If we insist—as I think we should—that socio-cultural

anthropology, at least
in its European version, is part of the social sciences, it thereby
becomes clear
that an apparent weakness of our field actually represents
potential strengths
and advantages. In fact, the social science legacies of socio-
cultural anthro-
pology differ in important ways from what I have just outlined.
Indeed, the
cases of biological anthropology and of linguistic anthropology
may serve as
examples for larger trends in the life sciences and humanities,
respectively. In
this sense, they exemplify dichotomies of relations between
objectivism and
subjectivism. In socio-cultural anthropology, however, the main
epistemologi-
cal legacy represents less a dichotomous arrangement than a
dialogical rela-
tionship between subjectivism and objectivism.
That dialogical legacy in our field makes us skeptical when
others appear
too enthusiastic about either the objectivist or the subjectivist
legacies in their
own record. I believe that this specific dimension of socio-
cultural anthropol-
ogy’s dialogical legacy thus offers us the chance to engage
others and to move
beyond the ‘-isms’. But in order to do this, we have to give up
the false security
of limiting ourselves to micro-evidence.
Toward a New Realism
In this second section, I begin to think through some of the

implications of what
I have identified in a Bakhtinian sense as a dialogical
relationship between objec-
tivism and subjectivism in our own epistemological legacy. As
an academic field,
socio-cultural anthropology emerged in the second half of the
nineteenth century
in a context that followed the model of the natural sciences.
Evolutionism and,
to an extent, the diffusionist interlude were elaborated along
objectivist forms
of logic. It has been argued that socio-cultural anthropology’s
so-called meta-
narratives of the twentieth century continued that logic by
further establishing
objectivism through new theoretical models that were
processing field data into
theories (Clifford and Marcus 1986). But this is true only to a
certain extent.
Actually, as soon as ethnographic fieldwork was established as
the discipline’s
key methodological procedure, an earlier monopoly of
objectivism became
decisively challenged. Since then, two epistemological elements
have remained
vital for our enterprise: (1) the ethnographer, from the outset, is
being exposed
to a socio-cultural context that differs decisively from his or her
own—one
that constantly questions and challenges the fieldworker’s own
epistemological

horizon; and (2) this challenge is pursued and promoted
primarily through local
worldviews that usually include other epistemological horizons.
By definition, then, the ethnographer has to enter into a
constant self-
reflexive dialogue with subjective alterities, even if the
ethnographer’s own
epistemological horizon remains the most solid version of
objectivism. In
socio-cultural anthropology’s formative phases of evolutionism
and diffusion-
ism, elements of fieldwork did occur, as in the case of Lewis
Henry Morgan
or the Torres Straits expedition. However, fieldwork’s
epistemological status
remained marginal during that developmental era, and an
exclusively objectiv-
ist monopoly prevailed. As soon as ethnographic fieldwork was
introduced, a
dominant objectivist legacy entered into a continuously
dialogical relationship
with subjectivist elements (Young 2004).
This dialogical relationship has shaped socio-cultural
anthropology’s so-
called grand narratives of modernity, or what we may now call
its ‘first moder-
nity’. The merits of this dialogical legacy should not be
underestimated: native
views and self-reflexivity in the field have constantly imposed
themselves as
limiting factors on any excessive objectivist extreme.
Simultaneously, field-
work’s empirical roots and the logic of everyday life in the field
have func-

tioned as factors that serve to limit any excessive subjectivist
extreme. By and
large, objectivism and subjectivism have kept each other in
check through this
dialogical relationship. This is valid for the period of socio-
cultural anthropolo-
gy’s so-called meta-narratives of our first modernity, when an
objectivist legacy
dominated that dialogical relationship. I would argue that it has
continued to
be true during the past two decades of our postmodernist phase,
when, by
contrast, a subjectivist legacy dominated that dialogical
relationship. The result
has been that extremism on either side has never survived much
more than
one generation of scholarship in our field. This becomes quite
evident if we
consider, for instance, Marvin Harris’s cultural materialism as
an excessively
objectivist endeavor, or, for that matter, if we remember
Clifford Geertz’s claim
that ethnography is nothing but ‘faction’ as an excessively
subjectivist agenda.
The short life spans of extremes such as these again underline
the vitality of
the dialogical relationship inside anthropology’s practice (Barth
et al. 2005).
Although the epistemological vitality of objectivist-subjectivist
dialogues
inside our field are hard to deny in practice, their theorizing is
still underdevel-
oped. We lack major epistemological debates and instead often
compensate by
importing epistemological theorizing from other fields. At

present, this leaves
us with an apparent paradox. We have seen that, thanks to its
own legacies,
anthropology is far better positioned than other disciplines to
move beyond
the ‘-isms’ of objectivism and subjectivism, and that this
represents a great
opportunity. At the same time, we appear to import too much
from elsewhere
without theorizing the epistemological implications of this
borrowing, at the
risk of transforming ourselves from an active into a passive
agent in interdis-
ciplinary interactions. We thus are entering a phase not only of
great risks but
also of great opportunities for socio-cultural anthropology.
To my mind, this intra-academic phase of risks and opportunity
represents
but one dimension of larger public and global transformations.
In line with many
others, such as sociologists Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (2002) and
Ulrich Beck (2007)
and anthropologists Ulf Hannerz (1996) and Arjun Appadurai
(1996, 2006), I see
these transformations as the emergence of a second modernity,
one that includes
multiple and alternative trajectories in this globalizing world. If
we accept this
assessment, then socio-cultural anthropology’s reorientation
requires a serious

reassessment of its epistemological foundations. My own
position in this discus-
sion about broadening and reinvigorating socio-cultural
anthropology’s episte-
mological basis is to propose a ‘new realism’ and, as part and
parcel of that new
realism, new practices of processing meso- and macro-evidence.
These forms of
evidence help to substantiate our frequent claims about the
‘wider significance’
of particular cases. They also support the ways in which we
conceptualize and
theorize that wider significance in and for the world we inhabit.
A new realism, therefore, does not imply a return to the old
forms of objec-
tivism, to Popperian or other forms of neo-positivism. Instead,
new realism
introduces a maximum of qualitative research and of self-
awareness about
the power of social and ideological constructions and
representations into the
research process itself, as much as into the interpretation of
results. At the
same time, new realism addresses the problems of the world we
inhabit, a
world that is globalizing and has, in fact, been globalizing for
quite a while.
In this globalizing world of multiple trajectories and complex
transnational
connections, the human condition is again central to our
enterprise. If more
and more people are connected by processes that begin and end
beyond local
contexts, then our epistemologies, as much as our empirical
practices, must of

necessity move beyond the particular and address the medium-
range cases of
wider—and sometimes even of global or ‘universal’—
dimensions of the human
condition. A new realism therefore moves beyond the
documentation of frag-
ments and combines anthropology’s original question about
human diversities
and commonalities with those about human life and human
subjectivities in
the present and in the future.
Two Modes of Reinvigorating Anthropology’s Epistemology
In this last section, I would like to suggest two non-exclusive
and mutually
supportive modes of reinvigorating our epistemological basis
for the purpose
of facing the challenges of a second modernity along the lines
of a new realism.
These two modes seek merely to expand, strengthen, and
continue elements
that already are part of what I have called our dialogical
epistemological legacy.
One of these two modes is situated inside European and Western
cultural tradi-
tions. The other is not.
The first of these two modes is inspired by the legacy of
European and
wider Western social theory and philosophy. Any epistemology

for socio-
cultural anthropology must have some relation to the broader
context of
social theory and philosophy. Indeed, it would be difficult to
envision an
epistemology for socio-cultural anthropology that had no
connection at all
to the larger academic enterprises of which we are part. In one
way, then,
strengthening our broader epistemological foundations inside
transnational
and global academic worlds is a timely development that will
bring us closer
to dialogical opportunities with others. But the global academic
world itself
sometimes experiences short-lived trends and cycles of fashion,
particularly
so in the humanities and social sciences. A small discipline such
as socio-cul-
tural anthropology has to be especially careful not to become
too dependent
on them. To some extent, these fashions in the humanities and
social sciences
are a response to the fact that philosophy has lost much of its
previous status
as a meta-science for other academic fields. Some intellectuals
experience
this as a great loss and are searching for substitute ontologies. I
count myself
among those who, by contrast, are convinced that the demise of
philosophy’s
former status need not be seen as a deplorable crisis that has to
be overcome
by waves of fashionable substitute ontologies. Instead, I sense
the opportu-
nity for a period of newly liberated cross-fertilization among a

plurality of
disciplines. In these new contexts, Western philosophy is just
one among sev-
eral interesting disciplines with good potential for inspiring
epistemological
debates in socio-cultural anthropology. The reverse is also true:
anthropology
might indeed inspire philosophy.
In these new contexts, a short examination of major inspirations
from
European and Western philosophy and social theory indicates
three significant
trajectories that stand out. First is the inspiration from language
philosophy, in
general, and from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy, in
particular. A number
of socio-cultural anthropologists are continuing earlier
endeavors, such as
those of Rodney Needham (1975), by absorbing Wittgensteinian
orientations.
Among them are Veena Das (1998, 2007), in some of her recent
work about
the constitution of local subjectivities, and Thomas Csordas
(2004), in his
work on embodiment and physical experience. I have developed
an attitude
of friendly skepticism toward these endeavors. I can see why,
for subjectivity-
centered approaches, Wittgenstein’s later work may indeed
provide some fun-
damental epistemological orientation. Still, this work continued
to be almost
exclusively focused on language and language-based forms of
representations,
which I find difficult to accept as an exclusive trajectory for the

new realism
that I think is our central challenge.
Second, several scholars in the social sciences have become
engaged with
various combinations of pragmatism. By definition, pragmatism
orients toward
the real world by pursuing central questions about social effects
and the results
of social intentions. In this sense, pragmatist epistemologies
seem to be much
more straightforward and successful in addressing key
anthropological concerns
regarding the empirical dimensions of ethnographic fieldwork.
Moreover, some
versions of pragmatism have absorbed significant dimensions of
phenomeno-
logical epistemologies, and pragmatism has a somewhat less
relativistic take
on language than does Wittgenstein. One may remain doubtful
about some of
the ethical foundations of pragmatism, which tend to be
somewhat incoher-
ent and eclectic. Still, pragmatism’s evident intersections with
anthropology’s
fieldwork concerns—and also with an orientation toward a new
realism—are
clearly attractive to many in our field. Various socio-cultural
anthropologists
have in fact embraced one or another version of pragmatism,
among them

João de Pina-Cabral, several former postmodernists, and some
Scandinavian
scholars, including Kirsten Hastrup (2004, 2005). I find a
degree of sympathetic
skepticism toward pragmatism to be appropriate.
The third philosophical trajectory, phenomenology, has been
gaining
increasing attention among quite a few socio-cultural
anthropologists. To some
extent, this seems to be connected to our cyclical search for
fashionable sub-
stitute ontologies, as mentioned above. Something similar, in
fact, can be said
about growing interests in Wittgensteinian and pragmatist
epistemologies. But
what is less explicit there is more conspicuous among those who
embrace
Heidegger’s phenomenological work—without any question
mark—as the ulti-
mate truth in epistemological reasoning. Steven Feld and Keith
Basso’s (1996)
edited volume Senses of Place is a case in point. In it, a number
of very coher-
ent local ethnographic studies of a particularist kind are
combined with a
universalist Heideggerian epistemology and ontology. As I have
already argued
in “Conceptualising Identities” (Gingrich 2004), a basic
reliance on Heidegger
tends to lead toward a new particularism legitimized by a
universalist ontology
that asks few other questions than those about difference. This
emphasis on
difference, together with Heidegger’s problematic record in the
Nazi period,

leads me to a position that is neither friendly nor sympathetic
toward this tra-
jectory for socio-cultural anthropologists. Heidegger and
phenomenology in its
entirety, however, are not identical with each other—as much as
Heideggerians
would want us to believe that they are.
In fact, there is a whole realm of phenomenology that stands
apart from
Heidegger’s specific way of reasoning. That other, wider realm
of phenomenol-
ogy has a lot to offer to socio-cultural anthropology. In addition
to Hannah
Arendt’s work, we can look to much of the earlier and some of
the more recent
German phenomenological traditions, including Husserl, Schütz,
and Walden-
fels, but also to the crucial French phenomenological tradition,
from Sartre to
Merleau-Ponty to Levinas. A broad and heterogeneous group of
socio-cultural
anthropologists has been working for some time now with
phenomenologi-
cal approaches, ranging from eminent scholars in neighboring
fields, such as
Achille Mbembe (2001), to anthropologists Paul Rabinow
(1997) and Alessan-
dro Duranti (2006) and several contributors to this volume,
including Christina
Toren (2002). These phenomenological orientations combine
well with micro-
evidence, but it remains to be seen whether they will also
develop their poten-
tial toward a new realism. Still, it seems obvious that the
phenomenological

inspiration is bound to stay with us for quite a while.
I see advantages and opportunities in this development—in
particular,
empirical openness, temporality, and intersubjectivity. In most
of its versions,
phenomenology is in fact quite open to the empirical record,
which fits well
with socio-cultural anthropology’s own roots in micro-evidence.
In fact, phe-
nomenology has been actively absorbing subjective experience
and empirical
inspiration, as in the work of Alfred Schütz and his concept of
Lebenswelten
(life-worlds). In turn, this openness to empirical routine in
research itself, and
as a field of research, has been picked up by critical theory, as
in Jürgen Haber-
mas’s (1981) notion of a “colonization of lifeworlds” being a
central feature in
current phases of globalization.
Temporality had been crucial for Husserl’s endeavors from the
outset. In his
sense of the term, temporality relates not only to the historical
rhythms produc-
ing the conditions of the present, but also to the experiential
modes of duration
in subjective agency itself (Gingrich, Ochs, and Swedlund
2002). In turn, com-
pressions of time and space and a shift toward charging the
present with the

goals and dangers of the future are two fundamental movements
toward a sec-
ond modernity (Harvey 1990). In this perspective,
phenomenology’s emphasis
on temporality represents a very clear asset in facing the
challenges of global-
ization, especially in contrast to the more limited kind of help
that would be
offered in this regard from pragmatism, let alone Wittgenstein.
Both its empirical, life-world-centered orientation and its
emphasis on tem-
porality thus strengthen and upgrade socio-cultural
anthropology’s established
epistemological competencies in terms of a new realism.
Intersubjectivity,
however, the third among these three major advantages, relates
most clearly
to my present concern with meso- and macro-evidence. Here I
would like to
confine myself to phenomenology’s crucial link between
intersubjectivity and
evidence. That link was elaborated by critical theorists during
the 1950s and
1960s, when Adorno and Horkheimer pointed out during the
Positivismusstreit
of German sociology that their criticism of Popperianism and
objectivism by
no means implied an abandonment of research evidence as such.
In spite of
critical theory’s explicit and well-argued point, this insight
became somewhat
lost during the postmodern moment, which is why we have to
retrieve it, put it
back into the central epistemological position to which it
belongs, and organize

our academic practices accordingly.
My point is that intersubjectivity is central to our academic
endeavor as
social scientists and as socio-cultural anthropologists. If the
evidence we pres-
ent on the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels is not
intersubjectively accessible,
together with our research interests that generated the evidence,
then our
research is a failure. Intersubjectivity thus lies at the core of
our academic cul-
ture. Abandoning intersubjective scrutiny would transform our
practices into
something that would more closely resemble art than academic
research. What
has been said by Adorno ([1970] 1995) and others about art as
an independent
and equivalent source of insight and understanding remains
valid, of course,
and I am convinced that many spheres of transition between the
arts and aca-
demic research yield productive results—from Lévi-Strauss’s
([1955] 1993) lit-
erary excursions in Tristes tropiques to some good examples of
the present. Still,
art deals with aesthetic and experiential criteria of
intersubjectivity, whereas
academic research deals with criteria of logical coherence and
intersubjectively
accessible evidence. So although I acknowledge all creative

potentials of art
and all productive transition zones between art and academic
research, I would
maintain that fluid boundaries are not the same as no boundaries
at all. There
is some difference between art and academic research, and
intersubjectively
available evidence is one of its markers (Waldenfels [1990]
1998).
The intersubjective qualities of evidence therefore allow us to
establish new
norms and practices of democratic and pluralistic scholarship.
These norms
and practices ensure basic standards of quality as much as they
require a maxi-
mum of freedom and diversity of research. We have been living
far too long
in tacit complicity with Clifford Geertz’s dictum that in our
field, anyone can
do what he or she wants to do and then call it anthropology.
This is accept-
able only for those who seriously believe that in socio-cultural
anthropology it
is impossible to decide, after debate and reflection, if some
evidence is more
appropriate than others and if some insights are better suited to
understanding
a problem than others. If we do not support such extreme
subjectivism, the rest
of us will have to move on to a new culture of academic
intersubjective plural-
ism in which, after debate and reflection, appropriate and
adequate evidence
will be maintained and inadequate evidence will be left aside.
Intersubjectivity

thus encourages scholarly debates about concepts, theories,
methods, and evi-
dence in a field in which they have been absent far too long,
due to changing
fashions and tastes and to the intellectual star cult.
On the basis of improved scholarly debate, it will be much
easier to assess
which kind of meso- and macro-evidence is inspiring,
productive, and useful,
and which is not. If anybody can write up his or her piece of
micro-evidence
and call it anthropology, while the others shrug their shoulders
in response
(because we all do nothing but ‘faction’, anyway), then meso-
and macro-evi-
dence will not stand a chance. If, however, we discuss and
debate a volume
such as Shamanism, History, and the State—an excellent study
co-edited by
Nicholas Thomas and Carolyn Humphrey (1994)—and if, 15
years later, we
still think that it contains valid material and insights on the
medium-range
phenomenon of shamanism in its various particular settings
(because a whole
load of studies since then have basically confirmed and further
elaborated
what Thomas and Humphrey demonstrated), then we can and
should use this
material for our field’s meso-evidence on shamanism.
Intersubjectivity, in my view, invigorates the possibilities and
potentials for
comparison and for becoming explicit about the solid macro-
evidence we have.

But some would argue that to be more explicit about macro-
evidence is both
unlikely and unrewarding. Can this be true? Did Arnold van
Gennep, almost
100 years ago, really say everything that there is to say about
ritual on a very
general level, for instance? I believe he did not. I think most
socio-cultural
anthropologists would agree that no human society exists
without rituals. And
most would also agree that a vast amount of evidence has been
produced during
the past century that contains more than just a plethora of
particular examples.
It might be difficult to accommodate our different theoretical
preferences in its
interpretation, but I remain convinced that the identification of
a few socio-
cultural universals not only is possible on the basis of existing
forms of micro-
and meso-evidence, but also is necessary because of the new
interest in global
questions. Best practices in intersubjectivity among the
scholarly communities
would be an indispensable prerequisite for such an exercise in
macro-evidence
on ritual. The same can be said about kinship or myth or any
other major
concept of the anthropological repertoire. The time has come,
therefore, also to
consider macro-evidence.

At the beginning of this section, I mentioned two modes of
elaborating
our epistemological basis: a Western one and a non-Western
one. After add-
ing a caveat on the first, Euro-American mode, I will present a
self-reflexive
concluding remark about the second mode. I have articulated my
sympathy
for strengthening phenomenological elements in socio-cultural
anthropology’s
epistemological reorientation, because, to my mind, it helps us
to cope with
some of the requirements of evidence in the second modernity
we now face.
My caveat is intrinsic to this sympathetic attitude. From Husserl
to Arendt,
and from Merleau-Ponty to Levinas, phenomenology has not yet
been able to
transcend the objective-subjective distinction in any satisfactory
manner. It is
true that phenomenology performs the dialogical movement
between object
and subject more elegantly, and more pervasively, than most
other approaches.
But in its elaborate and refined ways, phenomenology still
remains caught
up inside that basic distinction between subject and object. In
this sense,
phenomenology indisputably remains part of our specific,
Western European
and Eastern Mediterranean cultural heritage. The distinction
between object
and subject goes back not only to Hegel and to Descartes. Their
philosophies
were the secularized versions of what Maimonides and

Augustine had already
conceptualized many centuries earlier, through the theological
distinctions
between the creator and the created or creation. The monotheist
legacy of cre-
ator and created still informs those secular legacies in which the
object-subject
distinction remains central—and phenomenology is one of them.
I am therefore convinced that in addition to more sophisticated
and improved
imports from European philosophy and social theory, it also
will be rewarding
for socio-cultural anthropologists to connect our epistemology
in new ways
to the non-European intellectual records that exist. This has
already been
realized to an extent since the introduction of ethnographic
fieldwork, which
absorbs ‘the native’s point of view’ and native epistemologies
by implication.
Perhaps now is the time to broaden and strengthen that central
element in our
own epistemological legacy as well. We have engaged with
particular local
epistemologies wherever we have carried out ethnographic
fieldwork. In more
than one way, however, we have for the most part ignored the
non-monotheist
epistemological and philosophical traditions that are not based
upon one cre-
ator—traditions in which the dichotomy between subject and
object is not as
central as it continues to be in most Western traditions. Perhaps
now is also the
right time to envision a comparative anthropology of

epistemologies.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank João de Pina-Cabral (Lisbon) and
Christina Toren (St Andrews)
for the inspiration they provided through editing this special
issue and by conven-
ing the conference that preceded it. The editorial assistance of
Joan K. O’Donnell
(Harvard) is gratefully acknowledged. I am also most grateful
for discussions with
Alessandro Duranti (Los Angeles), Kirsten Hastrup
(Copenhagen), John Coma-
roff (Chicago), and Eva-Maria Knoll (Vienna) on various
aspects and a first draft
of this article, as well as for an anonymous reviewer’s
comments. Parts of this
article’s first section are based on an earlier presentation at a
panel sponsored by
the Wenner-Gren Foundation at the 2003 meeting of the
American Anthropological
Association, and parts of the second and third section also were
presented and dis-
cussed in February 2008 on the occasion of a guest lecture at
the Central European
University in Budapest.
Andre Gingrich directs the Austrian Academy of Sciences’
Institute for Social
Anthropology (ISA) and has been a panel chair at the European
Research Council’s

Advanced Scholars Grant since 2008. He has lectured in the US,
the Middle East,
and several European countries. His areas of ethnographic
fieldwork include Saudi
Arabia, the Yemen, and Austria. Among Gingrich’s recent
publications are “Honig
und Tribale Gesellschaft: Historischer Hintergrund, sozialer
Gebrauch und traditionelle
Erzeugung im südlichen Hijaz” (2007), in a collection edited by
Walter Dostal;
Neo-Nationalism in Europe and Beyond (2006), co-edited with
Marcus Banks; and
One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and
American Anthropology
(2004), co-authored with Fredrik Barth, Robert Parkin, and
Sydel Silvermann.
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Economic Inequality and Economic Crisis:
A Challenge for Social Workers
Gertrude Schaffher Goldberg
To social workers, extreme economic inequality is primarily a
violation of social justice,
but this article shows how growing economic inequality since
the mid-1970s was not
only unjust, but also dysfunctional to the U.S. economy and
linked to the recent econom-
ic crisis with its devastating effects, particularly on the social
work clientele. The article
identifies interrelated changes in ideology, the market economy,
and government policies
since the mid-1970s; contrasts the political economy of this
period with the preceding
post-World War II decades when the trend was toward a "shared
prosperity"; and shows
how increased economic inequality and political consequences
that undermined democ-
racy itself contributed to the economic meltdown. The analysis
has implications for the
direction of social reform and for broadening the constituency
of social movements in
pursuit of the social work mission of social justice. How social
workers can contribute to
such movements and to a reduction of economic and political
inequality is explored.
KEY WORDS; economic crisis; economic inequality; political
economy; social justice; social movements
I n everyday practice social workers encounter—and try to

counter—the effects of severeeconomic inequality. Dauy we
witness the
devastating effects of economic crisis—loss of jobs
and shelter, increasing hunger, and decline in
income and living standards. Social workers may
be on the shorter end of the stick, our jobs threat-
ened by cutbacks, our earnings too low to sustain
middle-class lifestyles. Social workers, however,
usually do not consider economic inequality from
another angle: its harmful effects on the economy.
This article shows how increasing economic in-
equality has contributed to economic dysfunction
and economic crisis in the United States.
From the perspective of economic inequality,
the 65 years since World War II can be divided
into two periods: (1) the fint three decades
when inequality, though ever present, was dimin-
ishing and (2) the subsequent 30 years when its rise
culminated in economic crisis. The article begins
by contrasting the two periods with respect to the
distribution of income and wealth, wages, unem-
ployment, and poverty. It then describes the politi-
cal economy of the first period or the relationship
between the democratic system of government and
the capitalist economy. Although inequality re-
mained a fact of American ufe in the first period, it
was during this time that according to the British
economist Andrew Shonfield (1965), a "new
capitalism" emerged, one in which the advance in
national income benefited people unable to gain a
share of prosperity through their earnings. Shon-
field also called attention to "the conscious pursuit
of fuU employment" (p. 63), a policy that enabled
more people to earn higher incomes. In retrospect,

this era may have been an anomaly in the history
of capitalism, owing, in the case of the United
States, to the federal government's more active role
in the economy in response to the highly unusual
conditions that preceded it: the Great Depression
and World War II. Furthermore, competition with
the Soviet Union forced the leader of the "Free
World" to demonstrate the superiority of the "new
capitalism." With the demise of communism and
of competition, capitalism, like all monopolies, has
less need to please its constituents.
The trend toward "shared prosperity" came to
a halt in the niid-1970s when the nation took a
"great U-turn" (Harrison & Bluestone, 1985).
Some reasons for this reversal are identified, and
the consequent political economy, one more akin
to traditional capitalism, is described. Discussion
of the second postwar period shows how the in-
teraction between economic and pohtical inequal-
ity contributed to economic dysfunction and to
near coUapse of the economic system. A subse-
quent section focuses on the proximate causes of
the meltdown—the expansion of credit and the
doi: 10.1093/SW/SWS005 ® 20)2 National Association of
Sociai Workers 211
housing bubble, both fueled by rising economic
and political inequality, specifically, growing
control of government by wealth and a burgeon-
ing financial sector. The concluding sections
point to implications for social reform and action
by social workers.

RISING ECONOMIC INEQUALITY
Escalating economic inequality in the past 30
years comes as no surprise. Yet even those who are
cognizant of the economic divide can be shocked
by how wide it has become. We encounter egre-
gious inequality wherever we look—at wages,
income, wealth, poverty, and unemployment.
In the decades after World War II, real wages
rose steadily along with productivity (U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics [BLS], 2010, n.d.). Thus, the
nation's wealth was shared to a greater extent than
in previous eras. In contrast, between the U-turn
and the meltdown, output per person or produc-
tivity grew 85 percent while average hourly wages
fell 13 percent (in constant dollars) ßLS, 2009a,
2009b). The real value of the minimum wage
declined 30 percent between 1968 and 2006
(Bernstein & Shapiro, 2006).
Not everyone's wages suffered. While the
average worker lost ground, chief executive
officer (CEO) pay was skyrocketing. In 1978, the
average CEO took home 35 times more than the
average worker—itself no small divide. By 2005
the ratio had risen to 262 or sevenfold (Mishel,
Bernstein, & Allegretto, 2007).
At the peak of shared prosperity, in 1973, the
poorest 20 percent of households nonetheless had
only 4.3 percent of total income. By 2003, this
tiny share had shrunk 20 percent, whereas the
middle fifth or quintile lost even more ground.
The share of the top quintile grew at the expense
of the bottom 80 percent, and yearly since 2000,

it garnered about half the nation's total income
(U.S. Census Bureau, 2010b). By contrast, in the
earlier era, the incomes at the bottom increased
more than those at the top. Moreover, all quin-
tiles grew at a higher rate in the earlier period
than after the U-turn (see Figures 1 and 2).
Particularly egregious are the enormous and
disproportionate income gains of the top 1
percent of households. According to a report of
the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO)
(2010), the average after-tax income of these
richest Americans in 2007—-just prior to the
Figure 1: Change in Real Family Income,
by Quintile and Top 5%, 1949-1979
116
1L
Bottom 20%
100
1
Second 20«
111
11
114
11
991L
Top 20%

86
1
Top 5%Source: Analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data in
Economic Policy Institute, The State of
Working America 1994-95 (1994) p. 37
Figure 2: Change in Real Family Income,
by Quintile and Top 5%, 1979-2005
-1
Bonom 20%
less than
S24,616
9
Second 20%
S24.616-
S45,021
IS•
Middle 20%
S4S,O21-
S6S,304
25
1
Founh 20%
S68.304-

S103,100
53
11
rop20S6
$103,100
and up
81
11
Top 5%
SIS4,S00
and up
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables, Table
F.3.
financial collapse—was $1,319,700. This was an
increase of $976,120 over the 1979 average, com-
pared with increases of only 111,200 and $2,400
for the middle and bottom quintiles, respectively
(in 2007 constant dollars). Analyzing these data
from the CBO, Sherman and Stone (2010) of the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed
out that the gaps in after-tax income between the
richest 1 percent and the middle and poorest fifth
of the country more than tripled between 1979
and 2007. Sherman and Stone concluded that the
new data, along with prior research, "suggest
greater income concentration at the top of the
income scale than at any time since 1928" (p. 2)—
the eve of our prior, disastrous fmancial crash.

If the families who began at the bottom had
moved up the economic ladder, such mobility
would have brightened the picture of growing
inequality. Viewing the income mobility of
U.S. families over nearly four decades (1969 to
1996), Mishel et al. (2007) found that from one
212 Social Work VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3 JULY 2012
decade to the next, about haff who began in the
bottom quintüe tended to stay there, while another
21 percent to 26 percent landed in the second
lowest—a total of about three-fourths stiE in the
bottom 40 percent of the income distribution.
About the same percentages pertain to those who
began each decade in the top quintüe and either
stayed there or landed in the next highest quintüe.
Wealth is even more top heavy than income,
and it has become increasingly concentrated in
recent years. In one short interval—1995 to 2004
—when aggregate household net wealth nearly
doubled, almost all the net gains went to the top
quartOe of the income distribution p i , 2007). By
2004, the richest one-tenth owned 71 percent of
private wealth (Wolff, 2007). Top Heavy is the apt
titie of a study of the increasing inequality of
wealth in this country by Edward Wolff (1995), a
leading scholar of the subject.
During the period of shared prosperity, unem-
ployment, though not low, was less than it was in
ensuing decades, averaging 4.8 percent from 1949
to 1973, compared with 6.5 percent from 1974 to

2008 (Council of Economic Advisors, 1962,
2010). Unemployment not only spells lost income
for workers and increasing inequality; it also
means loss of potential output to the economy
(Ginsburg, 1995). Moreover, yean of relatively
high unemployment have contributed to stagnat-
ing wages. (When unemployment is high and
there are many more jobseekers than available
jobs, employers can hire the workers they need
without raising wages or providing attractive ben-
efits and working conditions.) The convene is
true when the labor market tightens. When un-
employment dipped slightly below 4 percent in
the 1990s—hardly fuU employment, particularly
for minority men—wages and benefits rose, espe-
cially for low-wage workers, and this occurred
despite counter-pressures from globalization
(Bemstein & Baker, 2003; Pollin, 2007). Unem-
ployment, of coune, reduces incomes and tax reve-
nues and increases government outlays to benefit
jobless workers, thus contributing to budget deficits.
Along with wages, income shares, and unem-
ployment, progress against poverty went into
reverse. The U.S. poverty rate was cut in half
between 1959 and 1973. Instead of falling with
rising total output and national income, the
poverty rate was almost 13 percent higher in 2007
than in 1973 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010c).
Inequality marches on: between 2008 and 2009,
the number of millionaires increased by 1.1
million (Spectrum, 2010) while the poverty count
rose by 3.7 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010c).
Poverty is expected to keep company with reces-
sion, but an increase in millionaires?

To meet the severe challenges of the Great
Depression and World War II, the federal govern-
ment exerted more control over the economy. As
a result, the American people became accustomed
to a government that was larger and more active
than it was prior to the Depression. Government
spending and taxing policies reduced the severity
of recessions and mildly redistributed income.
Social welfare measures enacted in the 1930s, par-
ticularly unemployment compensation, served as
economic stabüizers, expanding during recessions
and thereby reducing the contraction of consumer
spending that would otherwise have wonened a
downturn. New Deal regulatory poUcies, meant
to reduce the disastrous financial speculation that
led to the stock market crash of 1929, were main-
tained in the first postwar era. The progressive,
higher tax rates of World War II were continued
in peacetime, and rising real wages were the quid
pro quo for relative labor peace. "Say what you
want about the violations of free-market econom-
ics" (p. 64), wrote progressive economist Robert
Kuttner (2007), "a system that produced nearly
three decades of egalitarian economic growth at
an average annual growth rate of 3.8% cannot be
all bad" (p. 64). International comparison of the
two periods on such measures as unemployment
and growth in world economic output favor the
earlier one (Skidelsky, 2009). For example, the
growth rate of global gross domestic product was
one-third lower between 1980 and 2009 than
from 1951 to 1980.
Three Republican Presidents—Dwight Eisen-
hower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford—left

the New Deal and the Fair Deal, the New Fron-
tier, and the Great Society "virtually intact"
(Bums, 1989, see also, Griffiths, 1982). The fint
Republican president after 16 years of Democratic
rule, Eisenhower repealed none of the major New
Deal laws, and, in fact, disability insurance was
enacted under his aegis. Eisenhower is considered
conservative, yet one revisionist account of his
presidency emphasizes its public works programs
and holds that Eisenhower viewed his highway
program as both infrastructure improvement and
GOLDBERG / Economie înequatïty and Eeonomie Crisis 213
job creation (Wilson, 2009). Political scientist
Hugh Wilson considered this active labor market
policy akin to the employment of jobless worken
during the Great Depression. Unemployment
insurance, by contrast, is passive labor market
policy.
The period also saw incremental growth in the
welfare state, notably expansion of social insurance
through wider coverage of the elderly population,
initiation of disabihty and health insurance (Medi-
care), and indexing or adjusting retirement bene-
fits to rise in the cost of living. Toward the end of
the period, public assistance grew to include food
stamps, health care (Medicaid), and, for a time,
"welfare rights," an oxymoron before and after
this time. Government-subsidized housing also
grew in the 1960s. Nonetheless, even as income
support was expanding, pohtical scientist Harold
Wilensky (1965) dubbed the United States a

"reluctant welfare state." Wilensky wrote, "We
move toward the welfare state but we do it with
ill grace, carping and complaining all the way"
(p. xvii).
To call attention to progress in the decades fol-
lowing World War II is not to overlook the great
inequality that persisted, particularly for African
Americans. The black poverty rate was at its
lowest in 1973, when it was still 3.7 times the
white rate. From 1954 to 1973, black unemploy-
ment averaged 9.2 percent, twice the white
average (U.S. Department of Labor, 1974). Yet it
is important to point out that in the 1960s, the
pohtical and civO inequalities of race and gender
were reduced by such landmark measures as the
Civü Rights Act of 1964 (P.L. 88-352) and the
Voting Rights Act of 1965 (P.L. 89-110).
An important exception to the maintenance of
New Deal reforms—one that would facilitate
return to traditional, hard-edged capitalism—was
the successful attack on labor immediately after
World War II. The Wagner Labor Act of 1935
(P.L. 74-198)—the Magna Carta of Labor—was
greatly weakened by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947
(also known as the Labor Management Relations
Act) passed over the veto of President Harry
Truman by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Actually, the attack on labor that culminated in
the Taft-Hartley Act began in the late 1930s
(Piven & Cloward, 1977). Taft-Hartley prohibited
many forms of strikes, secondary boycotts and
closed shops. Particularly important was its
requirement that union officers sign noncommu-

nist affidavits. Along with the accelerated anti-
communism ofthe 1950s, this resulted in the loss
to the labor movement of its most progressive
leaders, those more inchned to organize women
and minorities in the expanding service sector
(Schrecker, 2000; Yates, 1997). A labor move-
ment temporarily strengthened by alignment with
New Deal Democrats was weakened and less able
to resist later efforts by capital to turn back the
clock. Nonetheless, in the postwar yean labor
bargained for substantial economic gains for its
membership that enabled many blue-coUar
workers to achieve a middle-class lifestyle.
STAGNATION AND CHANGE OF COURSE
By the late 1960s, the war-shattered economies of
Europe and Japan had recovered, leaving a com-
placent U.S. manufacturing sector insufficiently
competitive. The 1973 oil embargo of the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
created inflationary pressures at the same time that
the economy was stagnating. This perplexing new
phenomenon, inflation and stagnation together,
was called stagflation. Inflation vas also related to
the government's failure to raise taxes to pay for
the Vietnam War. These developments contribut-
ed to a "profit squeeze," a drop of 40 percent in
the average net after-tax profit rate of domestic
nonfinancial corporations between 1965 and the
second half of the 1970s (Bowles, Gordon, &
Weisskopf, as cited in Harrison & Bluestone,
1985). Other challenges to the U.S. economy
cited by economist Richard Wolff (2009) include
technological innovation, globalization, increased
immigration, and rising labor-force participation

of women. However, the effects of some of these
are debatable, as is their timing in relation to the
U-turn. Although technological advancement dis-
places jobs in one sector, it may create employ-
ment in another. A surge in immigration was not
a factor at the time. Moreover, research on the
employment effects of immigration on various
population groups is inconclusive (Goldberg,
2002). Women's employment, particularly labor
market entry of mothers with young children,
was partly a response to, rather than a cause of,
their husbands' displacement and lower wages,
and it was also a necessity for the increasing
numbers of divorced, separated, and never-
married mothers. Women's entry also created jobs
in child care, fast-foods, the automotive industry,
and so forth, and they seldom displaced men.
Indeed, women had to fight hard to be hired in
jobs tradidonally taken by men. In any case, eco-
nomic woes shattered faith in the reigning
Keynesian economic paradigna that prescribed a
larger and more strategic government sector, and
the eclipse of Keynesianism gave impetus to the
revival of market supremacy and laissez-faire gov-
ernment policies.
In an effort to reduce its competitive disadvan-
tage, business could have stepped up investment
to increase productivity and innovation. Instead,
most businesses adopted alternative strategies
that increased inequahty (Harrison & Bluestone,

1985). In response to the profit squeeze, business
squeezed labor—through wage freezes and new
work arrangements that increased the flexibility
with which worken could be hired, fired, and
scheduled. Globalization—transfer of capital and
business operations to lower-wage areas of the
world—was another strategy that followed rather
than preceded the U-turn, and it was encouraged
both by federal tax policies that give more favor-
able treatment to income earned abroad than
stateside and government financing of overseas
manufacturing plants. Still another strategy was to
abandon production for paper profits, again re-
sulting in manufacturing job losses. For example.
General Electric sold off its consumer apphance
manufacturing division and concentrated on its
more profitable credit corporation (Phillips, 2002).
Similarly, General Moton emphasized financial
services over auto production (Wolff, 2009). Still
another strategy was to lobby govemment to
reduce taxes and regulations.
Ideological Change
Through an unprecedented political mobilization,
the business community and its allies in the media
and academia sought to relegitimate the free
market and to effect a return to a govemment that
keeps its hands off the economy. This process was
initiated in 1973 and 1974 by a small group of
Washington's most influential corporate lobbyists
(Edsall, 1984). At the beginning of the 1970s, a
handful of Fortune 500 companies had lobbyists
in the District of Columbia, but by the end of
the decade, 80 percent were represented there
(Greider, 1992). Political action committees
(PACs) were established to get around restrictions

on individual campaign donations, and by the end
of the 1970s, business PACs gready outpaced
labor unions as major contributors to pohtical
campaigns (Greider, 1992).
Corporations began to advertise their ideas
in the media and to pour money into new and
refurbished foundations and think tanks to
develop and promulgate the revived ideology of
laissez-faire (Goldberg & Collins, 2001). Social
theory reconstructed the poor, recasting them as
an "unworthy" and undeserving "underclass."
This campaign culminated in the 1996 repeal of
Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC) (for examples of recasting the poor, see
Gilder, 1981; Murray, 1984).
Antigovernment Ideology in the Oval
Office
In 1980, Republicans succeeded in uniting the in-
terests of their fiscally conservative, pro-business
base with a portion of the Democrats' New Deal
coalition. As Edsall (1991) observed, such issues as
affirmative action, the welfare expansion, school
busing, women's liberation, gay rights, abortion,
and perceived high taxes had become offensive
to numerous, former Democratic voters (1991).
Many white people, including blue-coUar workers,
defected from the party they associated with these
policies, particularly because it was no longer seen
as the purveyor of prosperity.
The 1980 election of Ronald Reagan landed a
principal proponent of limited govemment in the
White House. The watchword of his administra-

tion, set forth in Reagan's inaugural speech, was:
"Govemment is not the solution to our problem;
govemment is the problem" (Reagan, 1981).
What followed were the antüabor, antiwelfare,
pro-business, tax-reduction policies known as
Reaganomics. Of particular interest to this discus-
sion is Reagan's refusal to reappoint Paul Volker
as Federal Reserve chairman because Volker be-
lieved that financial markets must be regulated.
Instead, Reagan chose deregulation advocate Alan
Greenspan. The choice of Greenspan, as Nobel
laureate Joseph Stightz (2010) observed, signaled
that "dereguladon ideology ... had taken hold"
(p. XVÜ).
Centrist Democrats
The period following the U-tum, like earlier ex-
cessively money-driven eras, featured a centrist, if
GOLDBERG / Economic Inequality and Economic Crisis 215
not right-leaning. Democratic party. Historian
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1986) compared President
Jimmy Carter to President Grover Cleveland,
another conservative Democrat and businessman
who served two terms during the Gilded Age. Al-
though Carter initially expanded the Comprehen-
sive Employment and Training Act (P.L. 93-203),
the fint substantial government job creation
program since the Great Depression, and proposed
relatively liberal welfare reform, he became less
progressive later in his term. Carter's (1979)
"Crisis of Confidence" speech to the nation pre-
saged Ronald Reagan's much deeper denigration

of government's capacity to solve problems. The
later Carter years also included the beginning of
deregulation and a military buUd-up that crescen-
doed under his Republican successor.
Democrat Bill Clinton, despite a progressive,
populist penona, presided over the repeal of
AFDC and the quintessential New Deal banking
regulation, the Banking Act of 1933 (or the Glass-
Steagall Act) (P.L. 73-66). Repeal meant that
commercial and investment banks were no longer
separated and that the high-risk culture of the
latter that traditionally managed rich people's
money would prevail. Globalization policies that
largely ignored workers' rights and environmental
protection were also carried on by Clinton, virtu-
ally without change &om his Repubhcan prede-
cessor George Walker Bush.
Plutocracy
Former Nixon advisor Kevin Phillips (2002) de-
scribed "the relentless takeover of U.S. pohtics
and policymaking by large donors to federal cam-
paigns and propaganda organs" (p. 322). This, of
course, signifies the emergence of plutocracy and
consequent blunting of the capacity of a demo-
cratic government to reduce economic inequality
through regulatory and redistributive policies.
The increasing amounts of money spent in
election campaigns is a barometer of this change.
In 1976, winning Senate incumbents spent an
average of 1610,000; in 1986, $3 million; and by
2000, $4.4 mühon, a more than sevenfold increase
(Common Cause Congressional Hearing, as cited
in Phillips, 2002). In 1996, candidates who raised

the most money won 92 percent of the time in
the Senate and 88 percent in the House. At the
turn of the century, John McCain, then an advo-
cate of campaign finance reform, called the system
"an elaborate influence-peddling scheme by
which both parties conspire to stay in office by
seUing the country to the highest bidder" (Phil-
hps, 2002, p. 325). The recent Supreme Court
decision that government may not ban election
spending by corporations can only increase capi-
tal's stranglehold on democracy.
"Financialization"
The influence of the financial sector was
exemplified by President-elect Bill Clinton's
abandonment of the populism of his presidential
campaign. Candidate Chnton promised an
economy that "put people first." However, even
before taking office, Clinton recognized that rich
people were "running the economy" and that
"we help the bond market Pay lowering deficits]
and we hurt the people who voted us in" (Wood-
ward, as cited in PoUin, 2003, p. 91). Robert
Rubin, co-senior partner of Wall Street giant
Goldman Sachs, head of Clinton's National Eco-
nomic Council and later his treasury secretary, was
only one of several advisors urging the
president-elect to focus on deficit reduction
(Rubin 8c Weisberg, 2003).
The great increase of election contributions
from the financial sector was concurrent with its
rising prominence in the economy. Robert
Rubin had been a fundraiser for the democrats
since the early 1980s (Rubin & Weisberg, 2003).

Contributions to poHdcal campaigns from finance,
insurance, and real estate (FIRE) rose from what
Phillips (2002) described as "peanuts" in the early
1980s to the election cycle of 2000 when it was
collectively the largest donor. It was also the
biggest spender on lobbying—more than $200
million in 1998 (estimate by the Center for Re-
sponsive Politics). That was the same year that Wall
Street lobbied heavily and successftiUy for repeal of
Glass-Steagall (Phillips, 2002; see also, Kuttner,
2007). Big money spent on elections and lobbying
paid off—in the hands-off policy of government.
Actually, Wall Street had it both ways: deregu-
lation and government protection. The Gramm-
Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (also known as the
Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999)
(P.L. 106-102) extended Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation guarantee to investment banking. As
Johnson and Kwak (2010) pointed out, bank em-
ployees and shareholders could reap profits from
increasingly dsky activities, "but now the federal
government was on the hook for potential losses"
(p. 134). Only a few years later, the govemment
did bau them out.
The big campaign donations and lobbying that
bought deregulation for FIRE were financed with
off-the-chart FIRE salaries. The top 50 hedge and
private equity fund managers earned an average of
$588 million in 2007, 19,000 times that of the

average worker (S. Anderson, Cavanagh, Collins,
Lapham, & Pizzigati, 2008). By the mid-1990s
FIRE was responsible for a larger proportion of
the total economy than manufacturing (Phillips,
2002). The economy and politics had been
"financialized."
The Media and Inequality
The more economic inequality in a society, the
less open and free are its mass media. This is the
conclusion drawn from research on the media in
100 democratic nations (Petrova, 2008). Because
the economic interests of the wealthy are inimical
to those of the vast majority of voters, it is in their
interest to limit the range of policy options
covered in the media.
Contributing to that limitadon in the United
States was increasing "media monopoly." Between
1983 and 2004, the number of corporations con-
trolling most of the newspapers, magazines, radio
and television stations, book pubHshen, and movie
companies shrank from 50 to five (Bagdikian,
2004). The media watchdog. Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting (FAIR) held that "mergers in the
news industry have accelerated, further limiting the
spectrum of viewpoints that have access to mass
media" (FAIR, n.d.). The viewpoint of the media
was largely that of their owners.
Wage-setting Institutions
In studying "the collapse of low-skill wages"
economist David HoweU (1997) found that the
culprit was not primarily technological innova-
tion. Low-wage workers actually improved their
skills, but their wages nonetheless fell. The culprit

is policy changes leading to the decline of wage-
setring institutions, namely the federal minimum
wage and the labor movement. The steep drop in
the real value of the minimum wage has already
been noted, as have political changes that weak-
ened the labor movement, even in the period of
shared prosperity. Including 35 percent of wage
and salaried workers at its height, union
membenhip had already dechned by one-third
between 1950 and 1973.
Ronald Reagan declared war on labor by firing
striking federal air controllen, denying food
stamps to strikers not already on the roUs, and
making antüabor appointments to the National
Labor Relations Board. By 2004, the percentage
of union members among wage and salary
workers (union density) was only 12.5 percent,
just over half of the 1973 figure (G. Mayer,
2004). Govemment and business policies that
contributed to diminished employment in manu-
facturing—labor's former stronghold—were addi-
tional reasons for greatly reduced union density.
Union members have higher wages and better
workplace benefits (Mishel et al., 2007). Thus,
reduced union density, like decrease in the
minimum wage, increased economic inequality.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY AND ECONOMIC
MELTDOWN
In explaining the meltdown, economist Arthur
MacEwan (2009) emphasized the "nexus of
faetón" that have been identified in this discus-
sion: "growing concentration of political and
social power in the hands of the wealthy; the as-

cendance of a perverse leave-it-to-the-market
ideology which was an instrument of that power
and rising inequality, which both resulted from
and enhanced that power" (p. 23). This perspec-
tive takes into account both the commanding
heights of the economy and its lower reaches.
Arising from this "nexus of factors" are develop-
ments proximate to the meltdown that wül be
discussed in detaü later—the expanding role of
credit, increased deregulation, and the housing
bubble.
The approach taken here gives some weight to
agency, that it was a choice on the part of U.S.
business to make workers pay the price for the
profit squeeze instead of rising to its challenge
through innovation. By contrast, others on the
left hold that the factors associated with the melt-
down are endemic to capitalism—extreme eco-
nomic inequality, the consequent inabüity of
some consumers to meet their needs through
their earnings, a vast accumulation of profits creat-
ing "a giant pool of money" in the hands of
capital and lack of sufficient productive investment
outlets for it (Blumberg & Davidson, 2008 on the
"giant pool of money"; Foster, 2008; Magdoff &
Sweezy, 1988). The tendency of such analysts is to
regard the combination of sustained growth and
equity after World War II as unique in the history
of capitalism, only temporarily displacing its struc-
tural contradictions (Vidal, 2009).

The contrasting perspective—on agency and
choice—is consistent with the view that the polit-
ical economies of capitalist countries are not
homogeneous. Others, for example, are less wary
of "big government." Cross-national study shows
that wealthy capitalist countries differ substantially
with respect to poverty prevention and the size
and scope of their welfare states (Esping-
Andersen, 1999; Goldberg, 2002, 2010). Despite
retrenchment in nearly all welfare states in recent
years, the relative poverty rates (percentage of the
population with less than 50 percent of median
income) in 2000 were 7.3 percent and 8.4 percent
in France and Germany, respectively, compared
with over twice these rates, or 17.0 percent, in the
United States. Canada and the United Kingdom,
though often compared to the United States in
welfare state typologies (Esping-Andersen, 1999),
had considerably lower poverty rates (12.4 percent
and 13.7 percent, respectively). Lower rates,
ranging from 5.4 percent to 6.6 percent, were
found in the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland,
Norway, and Sweden (Luxembourg Income
Study, n.d.). In these capitalist countries, the range,
level, and coverage of social welfare benefits such
as subsidized child care, paid parental leave, elder
care, sickness insurance, and public pensions are
wide, and the extent to which government
income transfers reduce poverty based on market
income alone also differs greatly. Culture and polit-
ical traditions make a difference. Rugged individu-
alism is a recurring, if not persisting, value in the
United States, and so, from its founding, is wariness
of the power of a central government.

PREDATORY LENDING AND OTHER
REGULATORY FAILURES
Economic conditions created necessitous prospec-
tive borrowers and, owing to the recent accumu-
lation of a "giant pool of money," a financial
sector with a compulsion to lend, even at
increasing risk. AHve and well in contemporary
America, victim-blaming has it that greed and
overconsumption led to increased borrowing,
indebtedness, and bankruptcy. To the contrary.
Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren and
Amelia Warren Tyagi (2003) found that in 2000,
the average middle-class family with two children
and the male parent earning the median income
spent less (inflation adjusted) on food, clothing,
and appliances than their counterparts in 1973 but
more on health insurance and housing—the latter
to gain access to better, safer schooling for their
children. A second car and child care for the now-
typical two-earner family drove the expenses of the
average family in 2000 up still further. At the later
date, reasons for borrowing and indebtedness in-
cluded downsizing and lower wages. More than
doubling in the last 30 years of the century, single-
mother families swelled the ranks of indebted con-
sumers (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010a, Table 4).
In the 1980s the credit card industry began ag-
gressively marketing its services to a wider range
of consumers: middle-class people, worken un-
employed by corporate downsizing and recessions,
college students, retirees, the working poor, and
the recendy bankrupt. The result was huge profits

for lenders and rising indebtedness of ordinary
folks. Consumer debt rose from 67 percent of dis-
posable personal income in 1973 to 30 percent
more than disposable income in 2005 (Mishel
et al., 2007).
From the nation's earliest days, states had pro-
tected citizens from aggressive lenders by liiruting
the amount of interest that could be charged on
consumer loans. This changed when a 1978
Supreme Court decision {Marquette Nat. Bank of
Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp) permit-
ted lenders in a state with liberal usury or
interest-rate ceilings to lend at those rates to con-
sumers in states with more restrictive ceilings.
After the Marquette decision, banks aggressively
and successfully lobbied state legislators for liberal-
ization of state interest-rate ceilings (Ellis, 1998;
Manning, 2000). Following this, credit cards were
issued to people who previously would have been
denied credit altogether, or certainly large
amounts. The result was a huge increase in per-
sonal bankruptcies (EUis, 1998).
With the collapse of regulatory control over in-
terest rates, high subprime mortgage rates became
possible. Banks fat with profits from credit card
lending applied the same aggressive marketing
techniques they had used to increase credit cards
to the sale of subprime and other unconventional
mortgages that required little or no proof of
income and assets (Warren & Tyagi, 2003).
218 Soeiat Work VOLUME 57, NUMBER 3 JULY 2012

Dereguladon of finance abetted predatory lending.
Some buyen who qualified for convendonal terms
were nonetheless induced to take out subprime
mortgages because the interest rates on these were
higher. African Americans were targeted by preda-
tory lenders. In fact, middle-class African American
neighborhoods had higher rates of subprime mort-
gages than poor white neighborhoods (Warren &
Tyagi, 2003).
Intended to minimize the risk of these sub-
prime mortgages were the complex financial in-
struments known as derivatives. According to the
editors of the New York Times, derivadves were
"at the heart of the bubble, the bust, the bail-
outs." ("Congress passes financial reform," 2010,
p. A26; see also Stiglitz, 2009). Credit-default
swaps, a form of derivatives, are packages of mort-
gage loans for which banks that bought subprime
mortgages sought insurance. Because insurance
was regulated, the sellen of insurance on these
loans called them "credit default swaps" to escape
regulation. In 1998, the head ofthe Commodity
Futures Trading Commission proposed regulating
these derivatives but was roundly opposed by Bill
Clinton's Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his
deputy Lawrence Summen (later head of the Na-
tional Economic Council), and Federal Reserve
chief Alan Greenspan Qohnson & Kwak, 2010;
Kuttner, 2007; SdgÜtz, 2009).
Lenden were encouraged to extend credit to
riskier borrowen because they felt protected by
securitization of the insurance on their packages
of mortgage loans. Between 1998 and 2005, the

number of subprime loans tripled, and the number
securitized increased 600 percent (C. Mayer &
Pence, as cited in Johnson & Kwak, 2010). What
turned out to be false security was the result of the
dubious assumptions on which the experts based
their computer-generated estimates of default:
average defaults at an earher time when the assets
and income of borrowen were carefriUy scrutinized
(Blumberg & Davidson, 2008).
As long as housing prices rose, borrowen could
refinance when their mortgages became unafford-
able, and this, in tum, created more business for
the lenden. When the housing bubble bunt and
prices began to fall, it was no longer possible to
escape through refinancing, and many borrowen
were unable to cover their mortgage payments
through their regular incomes. When people de-
faulted on their mortgages, the value of credit-
default swaps fell steeply, their values could not
be determined, no one would buy them, and
some banks were left holding huge amounts of
"toxic assets" (MacEwan, 2009). The stage was set
for a federal bailout.
Leveraged buyouts (LBOs), another failure of
reguladon that spread in the 1980s, used tax-
deductible borrowed money to take over a target-
ed company with its own assets as collateral—an
example of making paper profits rather than im-
proving products and productivity. LBOs wrecked
good companies hke the once highly profitable
Simmons Mattress Company, destroyed jobs, and
at the same time, netted millions for the equity
groups that acquired companies through hostile

takeovers (Creswell, 2009). Congress and the
Securities and Exchange Commission could have
prevented hostue takeoven but did not. Kuttner
(2007) considered this an example of "a move
away from the prudent habits of an earher era—
one that remembered the excesses of the 1920s"
(p. 98). Forgetting the consequences of earher
free-wheehng periods is one explanation of the
wildly speculative behavior that emerged on Wall
Street before the crisis. Some observen consider
this a recurring process in capitahsm (Fox, 2009;
Minsky, 1986). The United States is particularly
prone to historical amnesia in this and other areas.
RECOVERY AND REFORM
The prescription for recovery and refomi can be
inferred from this analysis. Reregulation of the fi-
nancial sector; measures to reduce control of poh-
tics by economic ehtes; and a stronger, more
progressive labor movement are needed if we are
to reduce the fundamental problem of economic
inequahty. Policies to reduce inequality include
the following: increases in social welfare, both the
range of needs covered and the level of benefits,
and the assurance of living-wage jobs for all who
want to work. With increased income; broader
and more adequate coverage of health care,
housing, and child care; and availabüity and af-
fordability of public transportation, lower- and
middle-income consumen could meet their needs
without feehng obhged to borrow beyond their
capacities.
Full employment is more consonant with the
work ethic and penonal well-being than income-

support alone. To achieve this goal, govemment
can create hving-wage jobs that repair and recreate
flagging social and physical infrastructures as well
as green the economy. Such jobs, many of which
can be fiUed by the social work cuéntele, would
begin to meet our vast, unmet needs for child and
elder care, affordable housing, public transporta-
tion, retrofitting energy-guzzling structures, and
development of an alternative fuel infrastructure
(Baiman et al., 2009; Bell, Ginsburg, Goldberg,
Harvey, & Zaccone, 2007; Ginsburg 8c Goldberg,
2007).
Such job creation resembles the New Deal
work programs planned and administered by
social workers Harry Hopkins and Aubrey Wil-
liams. Path breaking though they were, these
work programs did not employ women and mi-
norities in proportion to their need (Rose, 2010)
We can improve on the New Deal model by em-
phasizing jobs in the social—child and elder care,
education, health care—along with the physical in-
frastructure. A new industrial pohcy to revive U.S.
manufacturing would create jobs, increase oppor-
tunities for productive investment outlets, and
decrease dependence on the financial sector
(Pollin & Baker, 2009). These changes would
require a substantial involvement of the federal
govemment.
How we can afford these changes? A tax on fi-

nancial transactions is a frequendy proposed
revenue source, as is decreasing military spending
to genuine defense needs, such as dismantling of
costly military bases around the world, not to
mention unjustified foreign wars. High on the list
is discontinuance of the Bush tax cuts that were
expected to cost the U.S. Treasury $2.5 trillion
between 2001 and 2010, over half of which ben-
efitted the richest 5 percent of taxpayers (Center
for Tax Jusrice, 2009). Before these tax reduc-
tions, the federal budget was not only balanced,
but also in surplus.
Ideology played a prominent role in economic
and political changes that increased inequality and
contributed to the meltdown. Reform requires a
different set of values. President Franldin Roosevelt
took advantage of financial collapse and its severe
aftermath to articulate different values: "The money
changers have fled from their high seats in the
temple of our civuization. We may now restore that
temple to the ancient tmths... [to] social values
more noble than mere monetary profit" (Roose-
velt, 1933). New Deal deeds often fell short of lofty
New Deal values, but these values were nonetheless
important underpinnings of the less-than-perfect
reforms that found their way into the statute books.
Is the ideology of the free or unregulated
market and hands-off govemment in decline? The
money changers, despite failures that nearly im-
ploded the world economy, remain in the temple.
In the view of some knowledgeable observers, the
power of Wall Street has increased Qohnson &
Kwak, 2010). So far, it has fared better than Main

Street. The stock market recovered, but unem-
ployment hit the double-digit mark in October
2009 and continued to hover near 10 percent for
months. Financial interests are opposed to reregu-
lation. By late 2009, lobbyists representing banks
and other business interests working on financial
regulation outnumbered consumer advocates 25
to one Qohnson & Kwak, 2010), and financial in-
terests spent nearly 1600 mülion to weaken regula-
tory reform ("Congress passes financial reform,"
2010). Yet Congress enacted the first regulatory
legislation in a generation in July 2010. Although
the legislation may not go far enough to hmit the
speculative practices that preceded the meltdown,
it has a powerful consumer protection component.
The real question is how effectively the new law
will be implemented. Financial interests are pre-
paring a "lobbying blitz" hoping to succeed in im-
plementation where they fell short in blocking
enactment (Lichtblau, 2010). Wall Street still
cooks up exotic schemes. After the meltdown,
bankers were planning to buy "'hfe settlements,'"
insurance poUcies that elderly people sell for
cash—$400,000 for a SI miUion policy was one
figure. These poUcies would be packaged into
bonds and resold to investon who would receive
the payouts when insurees die (f. Anderson, 2009).
The perpetrators of these and similar schemes,
such as taking out mortgages for dead people,
would be at home in Gogol's satire of a would-be
landowner who purchased "deal souls" or de-
ceased peasants from their masters as collateral for
the purchase of land.
WHAT CAN SOCIAL WORKERS DO?

Social workers need to be concemed with a
wider range of policy and advocacy issues than
their current repertoire, including some that were
important in the profession's infancy. A critical
issue is control of the political system by econom-
ic ehtes. More social workers should become in-
formed about political organizations and more
actively involved in them. NASW's Political
Action for Candidate Election is one way to work
for candidates who support social work's policy
agenda. It is particularly important to become in-
volved with organizations that seek to Umit the
pohtical power of wealth, thus facüitating election
of officials less beholden to economic elites and
freer to support measures to reduce inequality. A
task for social work educators is to increase stu-
dents' understanding of how democracy is under-
mined by the heavy hand of money.
Although some social workers were in the fore-
front of government job creation in the 1930s,
the profession thereafter has been more concerned
with welfare than with work. Unemployment,
even at half the current rate, leaves millions jobless
or marginally employed, not to mention the
social and economic effects of loss of income and
a valued social role. Social worken could contrib-
ute to the reduction of inequality by participating
in organizations that advocate direct job creation
by government. Successful living-wage campaigns
and efforts to raise the minimum wage and the

Earned Income Tax Credit would decrease in-
equality. A stronger labor movement would also
contribute to this goal and be a powerful voice
for the working class. A way to do this is to
support the Employee Free Choice Act of 2009
(H.R. 1409) that would make it easier for
worken to join unions and reduce firing and
harassment of those who take part in union orga-
nizing. Another would be for more social workers
to join unions and, as members, to advocate
for labor's comniitment to reforms benefiting
workers generally, not just union memben.
Social workers are well aware of the country's
abysmally low poverty standard that, at $21,756
for a family of four (2009), excludes all but the
extremely poor. Their advocacy of a higher stan-
dard could result in increasing the beneficiaries
and constituencies for reform. We could follow
the European model by defining poverty in terms
of inequality rather than lack of bare necessities.
Wealthy European democracies have long defined
poverty as excessive inequality or an income less
than 50 percent of the median. In recent yean,
most of these countries nations have adopted a
higher relative standard, less than 60 percent of
the median. In 2004, that would have meant nearly
one in four Americans was poor (Luxembourg
Income Study, n.d.). One-fourth of a nation would
be harder to ignore than the 14 percent counted as
poor by the official U.S. standard (2009). An alter-
native, developed by social worker Diana Pearce,
realistically estimates family expenses in different
geographic areas. In 2010, meeting basic needs or
achieving self-sufficiency in the Bronx, the

New York City borough with the lowest living
costs, required $60,934 for a family of three, over
triple the official standard of $18,310 (Pearce,
2010). Beginning in 2011, the Census Bureau will
use a supplemental poverty measure (SPM) intend-
ed to measure a broader set of expenditures but not
expected to replace the current standard. Social
worken should evaluate the SPM, determine
whether it or another measure should replace the
official standard, and advocate for their choice.
The high cost of meeting basic family needs
shows that numerous families above the median
income, including many social workers, are hard-
pressed and vulnerable to predatory lending. Who
was protecting families against these predaton? In
earlier days, some setdements would have taken
on that role, and they advocated as well for con-
sumer protection and regulatory measures. In
addition to consumer education, social worken
should press for implementation of recently
enacted consumer protection laws.
Revening the continuing march toward egre-
gious economic inequality requires a movement
comparable in scope and commitment to the
great mobilizations that brought civu and political
rights to all our people. Social movements are
thought to consist of both direct beneficiaries and
conscience constituents (Edwards & McCarthy,
2004), but this analysis of the relationship
between economic inequality and economic dys-
function implies a blurring of this distinction. If
great inequality harms the economy and puts
much of the population at risk, then reducing
economic injustice would aid the income groups

that have lost the most ground since the great re-
venal of the 1970s and those who collectively
have lost trillions of doUan in homes, wealth, and
jobs as a result of the economic crisis. Much of
the rest of the population who are less directly af-
fected by the crisis would, nonetheless, stand to
benefit from a more stable economy and less lop-
sided distribution of income.
With this penpective social worken might be
more likely to identify their interests with those of
their clients—as some did in the social worken'
rank and fue movement in the 1930s (Ehrenreich,
1985). In addition to becoming politicized by rec-
ognizing their own position in the economic
system and their stake in economic justice, social
workers might be more likely to engage in politi-
cal socialization of their clients: the reframing of
social experience or consciousness raising such as
that which led women to seek political redress of
gender inequality. Social workers could also "bear
witness" to the suffering wrought by inequality
and the unemployment crisis and could encour-
age their clients to do so as well.
In meeting their ethical obligation to challenge
social injustice, social worken can appeal not orüy
to a substantial portion of the public that faUs
short of self-sufficiency. They can also appeal to
Americans in all economic strata, who stand to
gain from an economy that is at once more just

Evidence in Socio-Cultural Anthropology: Limits and Options for Epistemological Orientations

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