Speaker Series: Gabriel Winant

This presentation opens a new angle of inquiry on the brittleness of the institutions of the welfare state constructed during the New Deal. Whereas the traditional account of those institutions holds that they were the product of a “culture of unity” among the New Deal’s mass base, and were vitiated at the elite level, this paper explores a more complex and fractious dynamic at both levels of the liberal coalition. This approach suggests that the institutional contradictions that ultimately led to the defeat of New Deal liberalism were not external impositions only (from business or from the Dixiecrats), but arose in important ways from divisions within the “culture of unity” itself—the mass base of urban industrial workers in the North.

To register, contact Sophie Kofman at skofman@abfn.org. 

Dr. Gabriel Winant is a historian of the social structures of inequality in modern American capitalism. His work approaches capitalism as an expansive social order—not confined to the market alone but rather structurally composed of multiple, heterogeneous spheres. He focuses on the relationship between economic production and formal employment on the one hand, and the social reproduction and governance of the population on the other. Broadly, he is interested in transformations in the social division of labor and the making and management of social difference through this process.