A. Scott Henderson

Bio: A. Scott Henderson is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Welfare state & Gender studies. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 10 publications receiving 701 citations.

Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century

Abstract: (2003). Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. History: Reviews of New Books: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 130-130.

From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America

Abstract: (2000) From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America History: Reviews of New Books: Vol 29, No 1, pp 8-9

Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s

Abstract: about colonial exploitation undermined its pacifist vision, but it also analyzes the failed attempt of socialist leader Jean Jaures and the Second International to unite workers against capitalist wars, and it explores the dream of Parisian banker Albert Kahn to promote peace with a collection of 75,000 photographs of the world’s people. Chapter four “1948: Human Rights” both inaugurates his shift to the theme of liberation and concludes his focus on France by exploring the determination of Rene Cassin to foster the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to “desacralize” the concept of national sovereignty. The final two chapters are less narrowly focused. Winter uses these chapters to analyze four liberation movements of 1968, including the aforementioned liberation theology and Prague Spring. His chapter on 1992 considers the Pinochet and Bhopal cases in the most detail, but covers many other topics, such as universal citizenship and the global struggle for equality. Although its structure emphasizes episodic utopias rather than sustained reform, and scholars of utopian movements and literature may disagree with his use of “utopia,” Dreams is an engaging general audience book by an eminent historian.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Abstract: Introduction 1 Freedom's Just Another Word 2 The Construction of Consent 3 The Neoliberal State 4 Uneven Geographical Developments 5 Neoliberalism with 'Chinese Characteristics' 6 Neoliberalism on Trial 7 Freedom's Prospect Notes Bibliography Index

Privatizing Risk without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social Policy Retrenchment in the United States

Abstract: Over the last decade, students of the welfare state have produced an impressive body of research on retrenchment, the dominant thrust of which is that remarkably few welfare states have experienced fundamental shifts. This article questions this now-conventional wisdom by reconsidering the post-1970s trajectory of the American welfare state, long considered the quintessential case of social policy stability. I demonstrate that although most programs have indeed resisted retrenchment, U.S. social policy has also offered increasingly incomplete risk protection in an era of dramatic social change. Although some of this disjuncture is inadvertent—an unintended consequence of the very political stickiness that has stymied retrenchment—I argue that the declining scope of risk protection also reflects deliberate and theoretically explicable strategies of reform adopted by welfare state opponents in the face of popular and change-resistant policies, a finding that has significant implications for the study of institutional change more broadly.

Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories can Become Self-Fulfilling

Abstract: Social science theories can become self-fulfilling by shaping institutional designs and management practices, as well as social norms and expectations about behavior, thereby creating the behavior they predict. They also perpetuate themselves by promulgating language and assumptions that become widely used and accepted. We illustrate these ideas by considering how the language and assumptions of economics shape management practices: theories can “win” in the marketplace for ideas, independent of their empirical validity, to the extent their assumptions and language become taken for granted and normatively valued, therefore creating conditions that make them come “true.”

Contemporary Discourses of Citizenship

Abstract: Meanings of “citizenship,” a concept that has informed teaching practices since nation-states first institutionalized schooling, are shaped over time and through cultural struggles. This article presents a conceptual framework for the discourses that currently construct the meanings of citizenship in contemporary Western cultures, particularly the United States. Using discourse analysis, the authors examine texts related to citizenship and citizenship education from 1990 through 2003, identifying seven distinct but overlapping frameworks that ascribe meaning to citizenship. The “civic republican” and “liberal” frameworks are the most influential in shaping current citizenship education; five others are the most active in contesting the terrain of citizenship practices in lived political arenas. The “transnational” and “critical” discourses have yet to significantly challenge the dominant discourses that shape citizenship education in schools. This article questions the view of political life in Western de...

From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate:

Abstract: To understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony, we compare the U.S. 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act and the English 1834 New Poor Law—two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones. Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by “the perversity thesis”—a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from “poverty to perversity.” We use the term “ideational embeddedness” to characterize the power of such ideas to shape, structure, and change market regimes. The success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism, theoretical realism, and the conversion narrative. In the poverty to perversity conversion narrative, structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves...