Blame

Abstract: First published in 1992, this volume follows on from the programme for studying risk and blame that was implied in Purity and Danger. The first half of the book Douglas argues that the study of risk needs a systematic framework of political and cultural comparison. In the latter half she examines questions in cultural theory. Through the eleven essays contained in Risk and Blame, Douglas argues that the prominence of risk discourse will force upon the social sciences a programme of rethinking and consolidation that will include anthropological approaches.

Abstract: Politicians are motivated primarily by the desire to avoid blame for unpopular actions rather than by seeking to claim credit for popular ones. This results from voters' ‘negativity bias’: their tendency to be more sensitive to real or potential losses than they are to gains. Incentives to avoid blame lead politicians to adopt a distinctive set of political strategies, including agenda limitation, scapegoating, ‘passing the buck’ and defection (‘jumping on the bandwagon’) that are different than those they would follow if they were primarily interested in pursuing good policy or maximizing credit-claiming opportunities. These strategies in turn lead to important policy effects, including a surrender of discretion even when it offers important credit-claiming opportunities.

Abstract: D EPENDENCY HAS BECOME a keyword of U.S. politics. Politicians of diverse views regularly criticize what they term welfare dependency. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke for many conservatives in 1980 when he vilified his sister: "She gets mad when the mailman is late with her welfare check. That's how dependent she is. What's worse is that now her kids feel entitled to the check, too. They have no motivation for doing better or getting out of that situation" (quoted in Tumulty 1991). Liberals usually blame the victim less, but they, too, decry welfare dependency. Democratic Senator Daniel P. Moynihan prefigured today's discourse when he began his 1973 book by claiming that "the issue of welfare is the issue of dependency. It is different from poverty. To be poor is an objective condition; to be dependent, a subjective one as well.... Being poor is often associated with considerable personal qualities; being dependent rarely so. [Dependency] is an incomplete state in life: normal in the child, abnormal in the adult. In a world where completed men and women stand on their own feet, persons who are dependent-as the buried imagery of the word denotes-hang" (Moynihan 1973, 17). Today, "policy experts" from both major parties agree "that [welfare] dependency is bad for people, that it undermines their motivation to support themselves, and isolates and stigmatizes welfare recipients in a way that over a long period feeds into and accentuates the underclass mindset and condition" (Nathan 1986, 248).