Catherine Kingfisher
Biographic Data
| ID | 640903 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Catherine Kingfisher |
| GIVEN NAMES | Catherine |
| FAMILY NAME | Kingfisher |
| SIGNATURE | KINGFISHER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lethbridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Writing Collaborative Happiness
In this article, I discuss a collaborative research project with two urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo, and Quayside Village, in North Vancouver. The project focused on the joint production of the good life in the two communities, both of which situate well-being as simultaneously social and subjective, thus expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness narrowly focused on the individual. In what follows, I describe the part…
Situated meaning frameworks in ethnic policy communities: Translating ‘engagement’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Recent government-initiated efforts to foster an inclusive New Zealand society have focused on engaging minority ethnic groups in policymaking processes. Research suggests that the outcomes of participation are paradoxical; while they can be empowering, they can simultaneously regulate marginal groups. This paper examines the contradictions of participation through an analysis of the meaning-frameworks that policy actors bring to the process of e…
Happiness: Notes on History, Culture and Governance
In this paper, I explore the emergence of happiness and well-being as keystones of contemporary EuroAmerican culture. Drawing on the relationship between disciplinary enterprises and forms of governance, as well as on cross-cultural comparison with fa’asamoa (the Samoan Way), I work to situate the current EuroAmerican obsession with happiness and well-being as a cultural formation – that is, as an artifact of a historically and culturally unique …
Beyond Transformation and Regulation: Productive Tensions and the Analytics of Inclusion
The inclusion of marginal groups is increasingly becoming part of contemporary governance. Critical appraisals categorize inclusionary mechanisms either as politically transformative or as regulative and part of the state's broader agenda of social control. In this article, we argue against both these positions and propose instead that inclusion is simultaneously regulative and transformative, that is, it is practiced in a state of—what Chantal M…
Continuities, Travels and Directions
What D/discourse analysis can tell us about neoliberal constructions of (gendered) personhood
How do the commonsense claims of Discourse (systems of knowledge production) relate to those of discourses (informal conversations, texts)? Under what conditions does a Discourse become commonsense and how, when, and under what conditions does it lose this status? How can we track changes in gendered D/discourses over time? This paper explores these questions with reference to the neoliberal, gendered constructions of personhood accompanying welf…
Discursive constructions of homelessness in a small city in the Canadian prairies: Notes on destructuration, individualization, and the production of (raced and gendered) unmarked categories
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 categoriz…
The Dialectic of Insecurity
Poor Women as Economic Agents: The Neo-Liberal State and Gender in India and the US
Drawing on neo-liberal economic norms, India and the US are increasingly marking and constituting women in poverty as new economic agents. Though based in vastly different socio-economic polities, poor women in both countries are subject to state- led agendas that seek to alter their economic conditions and their subjectivities. Discourse in the US seeks to shift women from welfare to that of workfare and thereby integrate them into the normative…
Western Welfare in Decline: Globalization and Women's Poverty
Western Welfare in Decline explores the plight of poor single mothers in five English-speaking countries that have implemented welfare restructuring: the United States, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand.
Poverty and Downward Mobility in the Land of Opportunity
Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. Katherine S. Newman. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1999. 328 pp."So You Think. Drive. Cadillac?": Welfare Recipients' Perspectives on the System and Its Reform. Karen Seccombe. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 246 PP.Braving the Street: The Anthropology of Homelessness. Irene Glasser and Rae Bridgman. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. 132 pp
Reforming Women in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Comparative Ethnography of Welfare Reform in Global Context
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…
Rhetoric of (Female) Savagery: Welfare Reform in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand
How providers make policy: An analysis of everyday conversation in a welfare office
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 different 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 …
Milk Makes Me Sick but My Body Needs It: Conflict and Contradiction in the Establishment of Authoritative Knowledge
This article takes lactose intolerance as a topic for exploring clashes power, authority, and knowledge in clinical interactions and interpretations oflaywomen. In clinics providing maternal and child care, staff clients jointly produced authoritative knowledge, most often a version biomedicine. The Euroamerican staff tended to give advice that was biologically appropriate for them but not for many of their patients, a process reflecting what we …
Women on Welfare: Conversational Sites of Acquiescence and Dissent
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 …
Reforming Women in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Comparative Ethnography of Welfare Reform in Global Context
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…
Discursive constructions of homelessness in a small city in the Canadian prairies: Notes on destructuration, individualization, and the production of (raced and gendered) unmarked categories
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 categoriz…
Women on Welfare: Conversational Sites of Acquiescence and Dissent
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 …
Milk Makes Me Sick but My Body Needs It: Conflict and Contradiction in the Establishment of Authoritative Knowledge
This article takes lactose intolerance as a topic for exploring clashes power, authority, and knowledge in clinical interactions and interpretations oflaywomen. In clinics providing maternal and child care, staff clients jointly produced authoritative knowledge, most often a version biomedicine. The Euroamerican staff tended to give advice that was biologically appropriate for them but not for many of their patients, a process reflecting what we …
What D/discourse analysis can tell us about neoliberal constructions of (gendered) personhood
How do the commonsense claims of Discourse (systems of knowledge production) relate to those of discourses (informal conversations, texts)? Under what conditions does a Discourse become commonsense and how, when, and under what conditions does it lose this status? How can we track changes in gendered D/discourses over time? This paper explores these questions with reference to the neoliberal, gendered constructions of personhood accompanying welf…
Poor Women as Economic Agents: The Neo-Liberal State and Gender in India and the US
Drawing on neo-liberal economic norms, India and the US are increasingly marking and constituting women in poverty as new economic agents. Though based in vastly different socio-economic polities, poor women in both countries are subject to state- led agendas that seek to alter their economic conditions and their subjectivities. Discourse in the US seeks to shift women from welfare to that of workfare and thereby integrate them into the normative…
Situated meaning frameworks in ethnic policy communities: Translating ‘engagement’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Recent government-initiated efforts to foster an inclusive New Zealand society have focused on engaging minority ethnic groups in policymaking processes. Research suggests that the outcomes of participation are paradoxical; while they can be empowering, they can simultaneously regulate marginal groups. This paper examines the contradictions of participation through an analysis of the meaning-frameworks that policy actors bring to the process of e…
Beyond Transformation and Regulation: Productive Tensions and the Analytics of Inclusion
The inclusion of marginal groups is increasingly becoming part of contemporary governance. Critical appraisals categorize inclusionary mechanisms either as politically transformative or as regulative and part of the state's broader agenda of social control. In this article, we argue against both these positions and propose instead that inclusion is simultaneously regulative and transformative, that is, it is practiced in a state of—what Chantal M…
Poverty and Downward Mobility in the Land of Opportunity
Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. Katherine S. Newman. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1999. 328 pp."So You Think. Drive. Cadillac?": Welfare Recipients' Perspectives on the System and Its Reform. Karen Seccombe. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 246 PP.Braving the Street: The Anthropology of Homelessness. Irene Glasser and Rae Bridgman. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. 132 pp
Women on Welfare: Conversational Sites of Acquiescence and Dissent
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 …
How providers make policy: An analysis of everyday conversation in a welfare office
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 different 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 …
Milk Makes Me Sick but My Body Needs It: Conflict and Contradiction in the Establishment of Authoritative Knowledge
This article takes lactose intolerance as a topic for exploring clashes power, authority, and knowledge in clinical interactions and interpretations oflaywomen. In clinics providing maternal and child care, staff clients jointly produced authoritative knowledge, most often a version biomedicine. The Euroamerican staff tended to give advice that was biologically appropriate for them but not for many of their patients, a process reflecting what we …
Rhetoric of (Female) Savagery: Welfare Reform in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand
Poverty and Downward Mobility in the Land of Opportunity
Falling from Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence. Katherine S. Newman. Berkeley; University of California Press, 1999. 328 pp."So You Think. Drive. Cadillac?": Welfare Recipients' Perspectives on the System and Its Reform. Karen Seccombe. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. 246 PP.Braving the Street: The Anthropology of Homelessness. Irene Glasser and Rae Bridgman. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. 132 pp
Reforming Women in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand: A Comparative Ethnography of Welfare Reform in Global Context
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…
Western Welfare in Decline: Globalization and Women's Poverty
Western Welfare in Decline explores the plight of poor single mothers in five English-speaking countries that have implemented welfare restructuring: the United States, Canada, Britain, and New Zealand.
Poor Women as Economic Agents: The Neo-Liberal State and Gender in India and the US
Drawing on neo-liberal economic norms, India and the US are increasingly marking and constituting women in poverty as new economic agents. Though based in vastly different socio-economic polities, poor women in both countries are subject to state- led agendas that seek to alter their economic conditions and their subjectivities. Discourse in the US seeks to shift women from welfare to that of workfare and thereby integrate them into the normative…
The Dialectic of Insecurity
What D/discourse analysis can tell us about neoliberal constructions of (gendered) personhood
How do the commonsense claims of Discourse (systems of knowledge production) relate to those of discourses (informal conversations, texts)? Under what conditions does a Discourse become commonsense and how, when, and under what conditions does it lose this status? How can we track changes in gendered D/discourses over time? This paper explores these questions with reference to the neoliberal, gendered constructions of personhood accompanying welf…
Discursive constructions of homelessness in a small city in the Canadian prairies: Notes on destructuration, individualization, and the production of (raced and gendered) unmarked categories
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 categoriz…
Continuities, Travels and Directions
Beyond Transformation and Regulation: Productive Tensions and the Analytics of Inclusion
The inclusion of marginal groups is increasingly becoming part of contemporary governance. Critical appraisals categorize inclusionary mechanisms either as politically transformative or as regulative and part of the state's broader agenda of social control. In this article, we argue against both these positions and propose instead that inclusion is simultaneously regulative and transformative, that is, it is practiced in a state of—what Chantal M…
Happiness: Notes on History, Culture and Governance
In this paper, I explore the emergence of happiness and well-being as keystones of contemporary EuroAmerican culture. Drawing on the relationship between disciplinary enterprises and forms of governance, as well as on cross-cultural comparison with fa’asamoa (the Samoan Way), I work to situate the current EuroAmerican obsession with happiness and well-being as a cultural formation – that is, as an artifact of a historically and culturally unique …
Situated meaning frameworks in ethnic policy communities: Translating ‘engagement’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Recent government-initiated efforts to foster an inclusive New Zealand society have focused on engaging minority ethnic groups in policymaking processes. Research suggests that the outcomes of participation are paradoxical; while they can be empowering, they can simultaneously regulate marginal groups. This paper examines the contradictions of participation through an analysis of the meaning-frameworks that policy actors bring to the process of e…
Writing Collaborative Happiness
In this article, I discuss a collaborative research project with two urban cohousing communities: Kankanmori, in Tokyo, and Quayside Village, in North Vancouver. The project focused on the joint production of the good life in the two communities, both of which situate well-being as simultaneously social and subjective, thus expanding beyond mainstream approaches to happiness narrowly focused on the individual. In what follows, I describe the part…
Sociology (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Gender Studies (6 works)