The Shaming State

How the U.S. Treats Citizens in Need

Sara Salman

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English

New York University Press
04 April 2023

Society & Social Sciences; Social impact of disasters; Anthropology

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.

By: Sara Salman
Imprint: New York University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 422g
ISBN: 9781479814541
ISBN 10: 1479814547
Pages: 248
Publication Date: 04 April 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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

Reviews for The Shaming State: How the U.S. Treats Citizens in Need

This is an intriguing, timely, and insightful book. It is also very well written. Based on the experiences of recent Iraqi immigrants in the US and the victims of Hurricane Sandy, the book examines how care is administered and vulnerability 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 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, Salman shows similarities and differences in the two US 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 about what to do differently in the future than has occurred in the recent past.-- 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? In The Shaming State, Sara Salman examines with rigor, humanity, and beautiful prose, how two seemingly dissimilar groups - Iraqi refugees negotiating resettlement in Michigan and New York citizens internally displaced by Hurricane Sandy - experience cultural notions of worthiness, precarity, suspicion, and responsibility. Centering 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