Domestic Contradictions

“Priya Kandaswamy brings to light the struggles of African American women to navigate the competing and contradictory demands placed upon them after emancipation. By linking the question of state assistance in the aftermath of the Civil War to the contemporary welfare debate, Kandaswamy enables readers to see the endurance of anti-Black racism and heteronormativity as well as how state power operates to enforce labor discipline and maintain social stratification. The parallels between these two time periods are eye-opening.” - Premilla Nadasen, author of Household Workers Unite: The Untold Story of African American Women Who Built a Movement

“Domestic Contradictions is remarkably original in its historiographic perspective and structure. Rather than offering a ‘long history’ of race, gender, and welfare, Priya Kandaswamy boldly juxtaposes two key moments in welfare-state history and, in so doing, is able to successfully demonstrate the haunting of Reconstruction's violent limitations in the late twentieth century. Sharp and innovative, this will be an influential work in gender theory and gender history. Indeed, Kandaswamy's impact on feminist scholarship and public debates will be very significant.” - Sarah Haley, author of No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity

“In Domestic Contradictions, Kandaswamy offers an important perspective on the well-established idea that welfare policies are deeply classist, racist, and sexist.... I strongly recommend this book to welfare scholars and students of social policy who want to understand more deeply our uniquely American social safety net.” - Leah Hamilton, Affilia

“Domestic Contradictions makes an important contribution to both intersectional thought and feminist analyses of the American welfare system. . . . The author compellingly argues that today’s welfare system reforms aim at producing a class of lower wage workers whose identities mirror the racial discriminatory ideological presuppositions that have persisted since the Reconstruction Era.” - Giada Mangiameli, Feminist Encounters

"Domestic Contradictions is remarkably original and vitally important. ... Kandaswamy’s scholarship joins the best work in the history of gender and sexuality by demonstrating how patterns of social life that often get framed as preordained have, in fact, been shaped through concerted state action."