A Genealogy of the Good and Critique of Hubris: A History of the Discourse on Social Welfare in the United States

In A Genealogy of the Good and Critique of Hubris, Phillip Dybicz employs a deep historical analysis to the field of social welfare in a highly untraditional manner. Rather than seeking to map out a tale of linear progress and advancement in society’s understanding of social welfare and its administration, this book seeks to address the following question: Are we morally progressing in our understanding of social welfare and its administration?
Geared toward both academics and practitioners, rather than focusing upon gains in technical know-how and knowledge of social welfare, Dybicz explores what gains are being made across various eras in our wisdom to humanely provide relief to those in our society that are oppressed, dispossessed, and in need in a manner that avoids moral pitfalls such as social control.

Adopting Michael Foucault’s genealogical method of historical investigation, Dybicz reaches back to the seventeenth century and describes four distinct eras in which a particular discourse dominated our understanding and efforts at social welfare. He examines how economic, political, social, and even geographic conditions shape society’s perceived needs in social welfare. As well as examining how prominent intellectual thought, a philosophical paradigm describing reality and knowledge generation, defining cultural features and themes, and concepts of the self, all serve to shape our understanding of social welfare and what its desired qualities and aims should be. Together, the above elements coalesce to form a grand discourse that in the Foucaultian tradition speaks to an underlying urgent need of society, and various rules-of-right that shape knowledge generation.