Abstract:
When race-class marginalized people strive to access state bureaucracies, they often experience indignity, or a perceived lack of worth and autonomy. This talk argues that indignity in state governance is constituted and reproduced relationally, with implications for inequality and social policy. Two studies build this argument. First, drawing on insights from a court ethnography of attorney-client relationships in Boston, I show how interactions with lawyers constitute indignity among disadvantaged defendants in ways that likely shape their legal outcomes. Second, I present findings from a multi-method study in Silicon Valley that examined—and sought to implement—defendants’ visions for changing the attorney-client relationship. Based on their visions, I designed and implemented a “systems navigator” program for felony clients in the San Jose public defender’s office. Leveraging the program’s quasi-experimental design, analysis of administrative and survey data finds that assignment to a navigator is associated with enhanced perceptions of dignity. Analysis of interview and ethnographic data uncovers five dignity-affording tasks enacted by navigators: building rapport, giving voice, explaining the process, bridging gaps with bureaucrats, and navigating spaces. I conclude with implications for theories of poverty governance and the value of policy interventions envisioned by marginalized people.