I am a sociologist who studies social problems, which means I am interested in how and why particular issues come to public attention. Folklore—particularly in the form of contemporary legends and joke cycles—often plays a part in these processes. If we think of the people who initially draw attention to some troubling condition as making primary claims, and the media relaying those reports as making secondary claims, then the reactions of members of the public—social media posts, responses to opinion polls, contemporary legends, and the like—can be thought of as making tertiary claims. That is, the people who tell legends about topical issues typically are responding to either primary or secondary claims. Tom Mould’s Overthrowing the Queen offers an incredibly thorough exploration of the ways people make tertiary claims about social problems.
Mould’s topic is stories of recipients abusing the social welfare system, particularly tales of those spotted using food stamps to pay for expensive food (and then driving away in luxury cars), or the “welfare queen” who manages to gain lavish benefits by exploiting the system. Stories with these themes have been around for decades. But what do they mean, and how should we think about them?
Mould approached this complicated topic by enlisting students to interview dozens of people, of course including those who told variants of welfare legends, but also people who were or had been recipients of social welfare program benefits, individuals who work providing social services, supermarket cashiers, and members of the general public. In addition, he found further data in about a hundred polls asking about public attitudes toward welfare, and in a large collection of pieces of welfarelore.
Triangulating this range of sources expands our perspective in fascinating ways. Thus, accounts of people who report having witnessed beneficiaries paying for expensive steaks with food stamps (technically, these days, the program is SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Aid Program]) by handing the cashier an EBT card (an Electronic Benefit Transfer card that reflects the balance of the individual’s unused allotted benefits) and then driving off in a Cadillac seem to prove that recipients of social services don’t really need much help, supporting the broader critique that tax dollars spent of social welfare are wasted. But compare these stories with benefits recipients’ accounts of their difficulties making ends meet on their allowances, and the legends seem less plausible. And the interviews with supermarket cashiers reveal that they indeed have stories about the frustrations of dealing with EBT payments, but their tales involve people bringing more goods to the checkout than they can pay for with the balance on their cards, forcing the supermarket employees to restock the goods the customers can’t afford. It turns out people have lots of stories about welfare; they’re just very different from one another.
Mould ventures into quantitative analysis of some of his data by, for instance, cataloging the luxury items mentioned in the narratives, or the types of people targeted in antiwelfare posts on social media. However, the most sophisticated part of his analysis is theoretical; it involves exploring the many types of narratives about welfare, and the rhetoric of the discourse of both welfare’s critics and its defenders.
In recent decades, thanks particularly to Jan Harold Brunvand’s series of books aimed at a popular audience, the study of contemporary legends has become a highly visible form of folklore scholarship. The takeaway for most reporters has been that urban legends are simply false. But this leads to a trap. The welfare queen story that Ronald Reagan used as a centerpiece in his critique of social welfare programs drew upon press reports of a woman who had successfully manipulated the system (although Reagan of course improved the story in the course of repeating it). If Reagan’s claims were based on something that had happened, then the public might ask whether that fact debunks the urban legend label.
Of course, most folklorists are indifferent to the truth or falsity of a legend, as they understand that it is the process of spreading a story that makes it legendary. Mould does an extraordinary job examining the ins and outs of this debate. His book certainly contributes something to our understanding of the place of social welfare in contemporary culture, but it also offers a model for guiding future legend scholars.
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[Review length: 716 words • Review posted on May 6, 2024]