ood which has been hard hit, in terms of increased unemployment, by industrial decline, and thus has been forced to depend on that welfare system.
Susser also notes that this community is similar to other urban communities throughout the nation which have suffered the same decline in employment and accompanying reliance on welfare. This reflects the impact of the changes on the macro level upon the micro entities in the economic and political systems. By understanding the neighborhood studied by Susser, we can begin to understand every similar urban community in the nation, to varying degrees.
With respect to the welfare system and its regulation, Susser argues that there are bureaucratic and regulatory processes built into the system which work against the very people the system is supposed to serve.
Susser points out first that welfare recipients in this community are people who do not seek public assistance unless they are forced to do so. The welfare system, however, is structured in such a way that it sees its clients as adversaries, as if they were trying to cheat the system simply by becoming a recipient of assistance:
Bureaucratic intransigency either cripples and confines recipients or provokes ingenious responses which distort relations between clients and welfare officials; the relationship then easily becomes one of adversaries (12).
Susser examines a number of specific cases in which the bureaucratic and regulatory forces of the welfare system are used to keep the recipients of welfare frightened and intimidated. The system forces the recipients into that adversarial relation
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