The Shaming State - by Sara Salman (Paperback)

About the Book

"The Shaming State is a comparative study of the impact of market fundamentalism on late modern American society. By looking at refugee resettlement and post-disaster relief programs, the book argues that withholding social welfare generates feelings of shame which are transformed into punitive feelings and expressions of hostility against marginalized groups"--

Book Synopsis

A riveting indictment of a government that fails to help citizens in need of aid, protection, and
humanity

The Shaming State argues that Americans have been abandoned by a government that has relinquished its duties of care toward its citizens. Sara Salman describes a government that withholds care in times of need and instead shames the very citizens it claims to serve, both poor and middle class. She argues that the state does so by emphasizing personal responsibility, thus tacitly blaming the needy for relying on state programs. This blame is pervasive in the American cultural imagination, existing in political discourse and internalized by Americans. This book explores how shaming is exhibited by state and political institutions by showing the ways in which the state withholds care, and how people who need that care are humiliated for failing to be self-sufficient.

The Shaming State investigates the vanishing horizon of social rights in the United States and the dwindling of government support to both lower- and middle-class people. Focusing on Iraqi refugees and white home-owning New Yorkers, Salman demonstrates how both groups were faced with immense difficulty and humiliation when searching for access to assistance programs maintained by the government. Looking at the long-range trends, she argues that the last forty years have made the United States a market fundamentalist country, where the government does not offer unified aid and increasingly asks citizens to assume personal responsibility in the face of uncontrollable disasters. Whether it was Hurricane Katrina almost two decades ago or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the indifferent and stagnant response by the American government not only amplified the consequences of these disasters but also increased hostility towards the vulnerable groups who needed help. Ultimately, The Shaming State tells stories of abandonment, loss, shame, and rage experienced by Americans and how the government has let them down time and time again.

Review Quotes

"The Shaming State offers a brilliant ethnographic analysis of how the supposedly compassionate welfare state produced just the opposite of its explicitly stated intentions. Focusing on problems faced by immigrants in Michigan and by people traumatized by Hurricane Sandy in New York City, Sara Salman shows similarities and differences in the two U.S. cases while calling for a genuinely more caring approach to public policies and governmental assistance. Scholars, policymakers, and activists will learn much from this detailed, insightful, and beautifully written study."-- "Lynn S. Chancer, author of After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a Revolution"

"In moments of acute need and social vulnerability arising from displacement and persecution, how does the state respond in aid to groups in need? Salman examines with rigor, humanity, and beautiful prose how two seemingly dissimilar groups experience cultural notions of worthiness, precarity, suspicion, and responsibility. As the book centers the psychology of shame and moral worth, readers learn how government bureaucracies communicate deservingness to groups and in so doing the limits of a caring state and the American Dream."-- "Lauren Duquette-Rury, author of Exit and Voice: The Paradox of Cross-Border Politics in Mexico"

"This is an intriguing, timely, and insightful book that examines how care is administered and vulnerability is mitigated in the US. Or not administered or mitigated because of longstanding hostility to such assistance from whichever political party is in office. Instead, these aspects of American society have made it a shaming state."-- "John Pratt, author of Law, Insecurity and Risk Control: Neo-Liberal Governance and the Populist Revolt"

About the Author

Sara Salman is Lecturer in Criminology at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.