Published: June 24, 2020, 3:24 p.m.
Frances Fox Piven is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982. Piven is known equally for her contributions to social theory and for her social activism. A veteran of the war on poverty and subsequent welfare-rights protests both in New York City and on the national stage, she has been instrumental in formulating the theoretical underpinnings of those movements. Over the course of her career, she has served on the boards of the ACLU and the Democratic Socialists of America. 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; and '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.