From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America, 2nd edn, Walter I. Trattner. Free Press, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. (1979), 290 pp. $12.95 (paper) $5.95

Carceral Capitalism is a timely book that provides a nuanced and far-reaching analysis of the political economy of the US carceral state. The book incorporates multiple forms and genres – autobiographical (the author’s brother is incarcerated in Florida), poetry, academic essay – and draws on numerous disciplines and traditions – legal analysis, Marxism, political economy, biopolitics, black studies and political theory – in order to illuminate various dimensions of racial capitalism as understood through the predatory industrial prison complex. The essays collected in the book span a wide range of topics including, the political economy of fees and fines, juvenile delinquency, algorithmic policing, and cybernetic governance. The result is a beautifully curated book that, in the context of the hostile environment, the building of US-style “mega-prisons”, and the NHS migrant fee and debt regime, has pressing relevance to debates in Britain today. Below I focus on three key themes that arise throughout the essays.

Carceral capitalism: by Jackie Wang, South Pasadena, CA, Semiotext(e), 2018, 360 pp., £8.50 (paperback), ISBN 9781635900026

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the interrelationships between COVID-19 pandemic impact and architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) organizations. To achieve that aim, the objectives are to: identify the critical pandemic impact (CPI) of COVID-19 on AEC organizations;compare the CPI between the different organization characteristics;and analyze the interrelationships between the CPI. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review of 519 articles and in-depth interviews with 40 AEC practitioners were carried out, yielding 12 COVID-19 impacts. Then, data on the 12 impact’s criticality were collected through a survey among AEC practitioners. In total, 127 valid responses were received and analyzed using mean ranking analysis, analysis of variance and Spearman’s correlation. The findings were also compared with pandemic impacts from prior works. Findings: Five CPI exist among the 12 impacts, namely, “reduced construction productivity,” “reduced foreign investment in the construction industry,” “reduced demand on construction-related works,” “disruption in the supply chain” and “reduced number of public projects.” “Reduced foreign investment in the construction industry” and “reduced demand on construction-related works” significantly impact small-medium enterprises than large enterprises. Also, “disruption in the supply chain” and “reduced construction productivity” are recurring impacts in all countries compared. Finally, moderate relationships exist between “reduced foreign investment in the construction industry” and “reduced demand on construction-related works” and “disruption in the supply chain” and “reduced construction productivity.” Originality/value: The findings can be used to prioritize available resources in developing short-term responses for COVID-19. Also, action plans can be developed to mitigate the CPI from recurring. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Critical analysis of pandemic impact on AEC organizations: the COVID-19 case

In clinical fashion, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s book Race for Profit examines the implementation and impact of late 1960s and early 1970s federal housing policy changes that responded to the urban c...

Race for profit: how banks and the real estate industry undermined black homeownership: by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2019, 349 pp., US$30 (hardcover)

An online survey was conducted to identify factors associated with financial insecurity, food insecurity and poor quality of daily lives of adults in Nigeria during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The associations between the outcome (experience of financial loss, changes in food intake and impact of the pandemic on daily lives) and the explanatory (age, sex, education level, anxiety, depression, HIV status) variables were determined using logistic regression analysis. Of the 4439 respondents, 2487 (56.0%) were financially insecure, 907 (20.4%) decreased food intake and 4029 (90.8%) had their daily life negatively impacted. Males (AOR:0.84), people who felt depressed (AOR:0.62) and people living with HIV -PLHIV- (AOR:0.70) had significantly lower odds of financial insecurity. Older respondents (AOR:1.01) had significantly higher odds of financial insecurity. Those depressed (AOR:0.62) and PLHIV (AOR:0.55) had significantly lower odds of reporting decreased food intake. Respondents who felt anxious (AOR:0.07), depressed (AOR: 0.48) and who were PLHIV (AOR:0.68) had significantly lower odds of reporting a negative impact of the pandemic on their daily lives. We concluded the study findings may reflect a complex relationship between financial insecurity, food insecurity, poor quality of life, mental health, and socioeconomic status of adults living in Nigeria during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/15/7925/pdf

Factors Associated with Financial Security, Food Security and Quality of Daily Lives of Residents in Nigeria during the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The Great Recession and the unfolding COVID-19 Pandemic Recession-two major disruptions to the economy that occurred just one decade apart-unequivocally confirm the importance of the economy and economic environments for understanding families' financial stress and well-being. However, recent published literature places too little emphasis on the economy and economic environments and instead focuses on explanations rooted within individuals and families. In this article, we review research on families' financial stress and well-being published in JFEI between 2010 and 2019, which analyzed data collected during the Great Recession and were subsequently published in the shadow of the economic downturn. We discuss the economy and economic environments as gaps in the literature and encourage future research to focus on these explanations of stress and well-being, especially in response to the pandemic recession.

/pdf/families-financial-stress-well-being-the-importance-of-the-iinkv1kez7.pdf

Families' Financial Stress & Well-Being: The Importance of the Economy and Economic Environments.

The indirect effect of bullying on adolescent self-rated health through mental health: A gender specific pattern

Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) are interventions
designed to build educational assets for school-age children. The positive effects
of having a CSA has been established for mental health and developmental outcomes,
yet no studies to date have examined how CSAs affect children’s physical health.
This study uses data from Harold Alfond College Challenge, the oldest and one of
the most well-known CSA programs in the United States, to evaluate the association
between a CSA and children’s physical health status measured by parent-rated children’s
health. Results indicate CSA ownership is associated with a greater chance of reporting
excellent or very good health than those families who did not receive a CSA. Implications
on research and CSA programs are discussed.

/pdf/association-between-children-s-saving-account-and-parent-p7t2306970.pdf

Association between Children’s Saving Account and Parent Rated Children’s Health: A Preliminary Study

Banking as an industry and banks as organizations play central roles in determining access to credit and routine retail banking. However, the persistence of well-documented inequalities necessitates questions about how banks provide access. Through in-depth interviews with 36 bank employees, we deployed theories of racialized and gendered organizations to explore banks’ familiar, routinized practices and procedures. Bank employees’ highly predictable, patterned narratives offered supportive evidence of banks as racialized and gendered organizations that diminish the agency of marginalized groups, legitimate unequal resource distribution, credential Whiteness, and decouple practices from official procedures in ways that uphold racial and gender hierarchies. In the context of banks’ familiar and mundane roles of retail banking and customer service, our findings speak to the depths of these organizations’ reliance on racial and gender hierarchies with wide-reaching implications.

Banks as Racialized and Gendered Organizations: Interviews with Frontline Workers

ABSTRACT The ability of individual-level interventions to improve people’s financial conditions is compromised when the root causes of precarity develop at systems levels. While it can be a challenge to intervene at the systems-level, we contend that one approach is for social work and allied professions to treat financial education as political education. Building on the activist organizing approaches of Paulo Freire and the Black feminist scholarship of bell hooks, we offer a framework to target systems as critical sites for change. If we wish to empower people to transcend rather than cope with the oppressive power of racial capitalism, there may be no choice but to find ways to raise people’s consciousness about structural oppression as the root cause of financial precarity. Implications for practice are discussed in the contexts of labor organizing and the Black cooperative movement.

So’phelia Morrow

Papers

Families' Financial Stress & Well-Being: The Importance of the Economy and Economic Environments.

The indirect effect of bullying on adolescent self-rated health through mental health: A gender specific pattern

Association between Children’s Saving Account and Parent Rated Children’s Health: A Preliminary Study

Banks as Racialized and Gendered Organizations: Interviews with Frontline Workers

Financial education as political education: a framework for targeting systems as sites of change