Urban Poverty and the Social Consequences of Privatized Food Assistance

Abstract

:Urban affairs research has not examined how broad social forces and policy changes affect daily life in urban communities, organizations, and families. Drawing on ethnographic field work in urban food assistance sites as well as analyses of the comparative roles of government and the voluntary sector in responding to social problems, this study provides evidence that: (1) voluntary organizations (in this case food assistance providers) have been drawn into a growing institutionalized "shadow government" (Wolch, 1990); (2) this newly institutionalized voluntary bureaucracy closely parallels the bureaucracy, the rigidity, and the depersonalization of government agencies; (3) willingly or not, this increasingly institutionalized food provision network contributes to the continued view of poverty in America as primarily the result of personal defects and temporary misfortunes requiring only an "emergency," albeit virtually permanent, response from society; and (4) these changes have consequences for the transfer of responsibility for assistance from the public to the private sector under welfare reform.