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Frances Fox Piven (born October 10, 1932) is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982. Previously, she had been a member of the political science faculty at Boston University.

Life and education

Piven was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, of Russian immigrants. Piven immigrated to the United States when she was one and was naturalized as a United States Citizen in 1953. She was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. She attended P.S. 148 and Newtown High School. She received a B.A. in City Planning in 1953, an M.A. in 1956, and a Ph.D. in 1962, all from the University of Chicago. She attended on a scholarship and she waitressed for living expenses.

Career

Piven was married to her long-time collaborator Richard Cloward until his death in 2001. Together with Cloward, she wrote an article in the May 1966 issue of The Nation titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" advocating increased enrollment in social welfare programs in order to collapse that system and force reforms, leading to a guaranteed annual income. This political strategy has been referred to as the "Cloward–Piven strategy". During 2006/07 Piven served as the President of the American Sociological Association.

While at Boston University, she and her political science department colleagues Murray Levin and Howard Zinn refused to go back to work after the settlement of the 1979 American Association of University Professors strike. Clerical and support staff had also gone out on strike at the time of the AAUP, and Piven, Levin, Zinn and others refused to cross their picketline. The "B.U. Five" were threatened with dismissal by B.U. President John Silber.

Silber later backed down, and Piven and the others eventually returned to the classroom. Piven eventually left B.U. for C.U.N.Y.

Activism and legislation

Throughout her career, Piven has combined academic work with political action. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In 1983 she co-founded Human SERVE (Service Employees Registration and Voter Education), an organization with the goal of increasing voter registration by linking voter registration offerings with the use of social services or state Departments of Motor Vehicles. Human SERVE's initiative was incorporated by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, colloquially known as the "Motor Voter Bill".

She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and serves as one of the eight honorary chairs of that organization.

Writings

Some of Piven's major works include Regulating the Poor written with Richard Cloward, first published in 1972 and updated in 1993, which is a scrutiny of government welfare policy and how it is used to exert power over lower class individuals; Poor Peoples' Movements, published in 1977, an analysis of how rebellious social movements can induce important reforms; Why Americans Don't Vote, published in 1988 and a follow up book Why Americans Still Don't Vote published in 2000, each of which look at the role of current American electoral practices which tend to discourage the poor working class from exercising their right to vote; The War at Home published in 2004, a critical examination of the domestic results of the wars initiated by the Bush administration; Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, a look at the interaction of disruptive social movements and electoral politics in generating the political force for democratic reform in American history.

Honors and awards

• American Sociological Association Career Award for the Practice of Sociology (2000)
• Charles McCoy Career Achievement Award of the Caucus for a New Political Science of the American Political Science Association (2004)
• Mary Lepper Award of the Women's Caucus of the American Political Science Association (1998)
• American Sociology Association Lifetime Achievement Award for Political Sociology
• Tides Foundation Award for Excellence in Public Advocacy (1995)
• Annual Award of the National Association of Secretaries of State (1994)
• President's Award of the American Public Health Association (1993)
• Lee/Founders Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems
• Eugene V. Debs Foundation Prize
• C. Wright Mills Award

Bibliography

• Labor Parties in Postindustrial Societies (Oxford University Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-19-520927-3)
• The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism (New Press, 2004, ISBN 978-1-59558-092-4)
• Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006, ISBN 978-0-7425-6316-2)

With Richard Cloward

• Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare (Pantheon, 1971, 2nd ed: Vintage, 1993, ISBN 978-0-679-74516-7)
• Poor People's Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail (Pantheon, 1977, ISBN 978-0-394-72697-7)
• New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences (Pantheon, 1982, ISBN 978-0-394-70647-4)
• Why Americans Don't Vote (Pantheon, 1988, ISBN 978-0-394-55396-2)
• The Breaking of the American Social Compact (New Press, 1997, ISBN 978-1-56584-476-6)
• Why Americans Still Don't Vote: And Why Politicians Want it That Way (Beacon, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8070-0449-4)

With Lee Staples and Richard Cloward

• Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing (Praeger, 1984, ISBN 978-0-275-91800-2)

With Lorraine Minnite and Margaret Groarke

• Keeping Down the Black Vote: Race and the Demobilization of American Voters (New Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59558-354-3)

The Frances Fox Piven Papers are held by Smith College.

References

1. "A Celebration of Women Writers: Canada". Digital.library.upenn.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
2. ^ Frances Fox Piven Papers - Biographical Note, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Five Colleges Archives & Manuscript Collections
3. Ehrenreich, Barbara (November 2006). "ASA Presidents - Frances Fox Piven". ASA Footnotes. Retrieved January 24, 2011. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
4. ^ Interview with Cornel West, "The Weight of the Poor," "Guernica" magazine, September, 2011, http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/3076/west_piven_interview_9_15_11/
5. Cloward, Richard (May 2, 1966). "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty". The Nation. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
6. Reisch, Michael (2001). The Road Not Taken. Brunner Routledge. ISBN 1-58391-025-5. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthor= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
7. Rogin, Richard (September 27, 1970). "Now It's Welfare Lib". The New York Times. p. SM16. The Cloward-Piven Strategy, as it became known, had a simple radical appeal. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
8. "American Sociological Association - Results of 2005 ASA Election". .asanet.org. 2005-07-13. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
9. Zinn, Howard. "Remembering Murray Levin". Monthly Review. Retrieved 6 December 2011.
10. Zabel, Gary. "The Boston University Strike of 1979" (PDF). Retrieved 6 December 2011.
11. McCain, Nina (May 20, 1979). "BU's Piven No Cloistered Academic". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 22, 2011.
12. “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” January 30, 1968 New York Post
13. "Democratic Socialists of America - Constitution and By-laws" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-12-01.
14. "Democratic Socialists of America - Our Structure". Dsausa.org. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
15. Left Forum. "Board and Staff". Left Forum. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
16. "Regulating the Poor:". Kensprogress.com. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
17. Kish, Matt. "Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail by Frances Fox Piven - Powell's Books". Powells.com. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
18. Author: Frances Fox Piven (1970-01-01). "Why Americans Still Don't Vote - And Why Politicians Want It That Way". Beacon.org. Retrieved 2011-12-01. {{cite web}}: |author= has generic name (help)
19. http://gritsandroses.org/2011/02/06/francis-fox-piven-and-the-war-at-home/
20. "Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (Polemics)". Pdfcast.org. Retrieved 2011-12-01.
21. "CUNY Faculty Home Page and Bio". Cuny.edu. Retrieved 2011-12-01.

External links

This article's use of external links may not follow Misplaced Pages's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (February 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

• Frances Fox Piven faculty page at CUNY Graduate Center
• Column archives at The Nation
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Frances Fox Piven at IMDb
• Template:Worldcat id
• Frances Fox Piven Papers at Five College Archives & Manuscript Collections
• 2010 Rekindling the Radical Imagination - Frances Fox Piven, Brian Jones, Arundhati Roy, and Noam Chomsky, March 21, 2010, Vimeo
• Frances Fox Piven (October 15, 2010). "How Labour is (Part of) the Problem in Building the Left". Retrieved February 8, 2011.
• Frances Fox Piven (February 8, 2011). "The real threat of Glenn Beck's fantasies". The Guardian. Retrieved February 8, 2011. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)

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• American sociologists
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