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Criticism of the invisibility of women in many studies of political resistance has engendered a broadening of traditional conceptions to include not only overt protest, but also everyday and hidden forms of dissent. Different theories of resistance, however, make different claims about the nature of personhood, power and discourse. In this paper, I explore resistance and its opposite, accommodation, within a poststructuralist problematic. I draw on a 17-month study with two welfare rights groups, during which I tape-recorded, transcribed and then analyzed everyday conversation for expressions of complicity and contestation. Foucault's concept of “reverse” discourse proved particularly useful in analyzing talk that deploys dominant ideologies for subversive purposes. I argue that, while not undermining the value of structuralist analyses of discourse, a poststructuralist approach provides useful insights into the relationship between acquiescence and dissent, as well as into the implications of this relationship for conceptualizations of human agency and intentionality.

Historically, the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand symbolize opposite poles of an individualist‐collectivist welfare state continuum. Until recently, Aotearoa/New Zealand was known as a "cradle‐to‐grave" welfare state, with "universal" employment and coverage in health and education. U.S. history, in contrast, is marked by an unabashed individualism and a residualist approach to welfare. Recent neoliberal reforms, however, have engendered a convergence between the two countries in the conceptualization and organization of assistance for poor single mothers. Most notable are the "workfare" provisions of legislative changes made in 1996 in the two countries, which work to reconstitute poor mothers as potential able‐bodied workers. In this article we analyze welfare reform in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand, with particular reference to how poor single mothers respond to, comply and cope with, or resist neoliberal strategies. Analysis is based on participant‐observation, interviews, and focus groups conducted between 1989 and 1999. [welfare reform, neoliberalism, globalization, gender, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand]

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Neoliberalism has emerged as one of the key concepts for studies of cultural and political-economic change on a global scale. Yet its enthusiastic adoption and application in recent anthropological work raises some significant theoretical and political problems. At the center of these is the challenge of discerning its limits. This Special Issue argues for the need to move beyond abstract and totalizing approaches that treat neoliberalism as a thing that acts in the world. We argue instead for approaches that stress its instabilities, partialities, and articulations with other cultural and political-economic formations, and that direct attention to the ways that culture, power and governing practices coalesce into concrete governmental regimes with their attendant patterns of inequality. Specific articles probe the limits and boundaries of neoliberalism as it plays out in different cultural and political-economic contexts.

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In this article, I explore the conversations, debates, and constructions that inform and precede actual policy formation regarding homelessness in a small Canadian prairie city. On the basis of analyses of videotapes of public hearings coupled with participant‐observation and interviews with decision makers, my discussion focuses on two related phenomena: first, the interactional production, via indexicality and omission, of an unmarked categorization of the homeless person as “male Aboriginal addict”; and, second, the destructuring, individualizing influences of discourses of “diversity.” I conclude with a discussion of the policy implications of both phenomena, with particular emphasis on unintended consequences.

Recent analyses of public policy have focused on the bureaucratic encounter as a location for the co-production of policy by providers and recipients of various forms of public assistance. In this article I examine a dierent kind of co-production, namely that which occurs among welfare providers in their everyday conversations with each other. Drawing on a 17-month ethnographic study of recipients and providers of welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and food stamps) in the USA, I explore providers' co-productive activities in a context in which strict ocial lines are drawn between policy formation and implementation. This division of labour, which characterizes providers' place in the welfare bureaucracy, creates an environment conducive to control-orientated rather than service-orientated provision, eectively precluding the establishment of a positive co-productive relationship between providers and recipients.