A Tale of Two Communities

Fighting Poverty in the Great Society (1964-68)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4862110
AutoresEvelyn L Forget (0000-0001-6169-995X, autor de correspondencia)
Año2011
Volumen43
Número1
Páginas199-223
Fecha de publicación2011-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHistory of Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0018-2702 • E-ISSN: 1527-1919
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00182702-2010-048
OpenAlexW1992621449
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas11

The Office of Economic Opportunity was established, under the leadership of Sargent Shriver, to fight President Johnson's War on Poverty as part of the Great Society program. Between 1964 and 1968, two intellectual communities vied for supremacy within that office. In the early years, a group of intellectual radicals drew inspiration from social psychology and gave their support to the controversial community action programs that drew criticism from the Senate, Congress, local governments, and Democratic Party insiders. Over time, a second community, built upon the values and insights associated with the Office of Research, Plans, Programs, Evaluation, brought the evaluation perspective of RAND to government spending and gradually began to dominate. This essay examines the internal and external pressures of the period and uses the insights of Randall Collins, Michael Farrell, and J. B. Morrell and G. L. Geison to explain why one intellectual community flourished while the other declined

Action (physics · Community organizing · Criticism · Democracy · Government (linguistics · Perspective (graphical · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Poverty · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Data Analysis and Archiving · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Law · Public Administration