Stigma, neoliberalism and welfare reform

Dr. Brigit McWade :: Sociology Department, Lancaster University @Brigit_McWade :: @StigmaDoctrine :: http://thestigmadoctrine.wordpress.com

‘permanent state austerity has emerged, driven by and legitimated through a hardening anti-welfare commonsense’ (Jensen & Tyler 2015, 470)

‘getting tough on welfare continues to be good politics at both the state and national level. ...Four factors – whether real or perceived – have historically produced crises over welfare: increase in public costs and threats to the work ethic, family values, and social order’ (Handler 1995, 2)

The invention and/or exploitation of crises secures consensus for ‘the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation of corporations and skeletal social spending’. (Klein 2007)

‘Shock and Awe are actions that create fears, dangers, and deconstruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine, and disease can engender Shock and Awe.’ Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, the military doctrine for the US war on Iraq (cited in Klein, 2007:1)

a new global economy involving the radical privatization of war, disaster and the state according to free market theories of capitalism

Looking at the ‘the ways in which neoliberal modes of government operate not only by capitalizing upon “shocks” but through the daily, pervasive production and mediation of stigma’ (Tyler, 2013).

@StigmaDoctrine :: http://thestigmadoctrine.wordpress.com

‘the situation of the individual who is disqualified from full social acceptance’

(Goffman, [1963] 1990, p. 9)

‘The Greeks, who were apparently strong on visual aids, originated the term stigma to refer to bodily signs designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of the signifier. The signs were cut or burnt into the body and advertised that the bearer was a slave, a criminal, or a traitor - a blemished person, ritually polluted, to be avoided, especially in public places.’ (p.11)

Focuses on individuals and the ‘moral career’ of the stigmatized

Lots of research continues to study the stigmatized and how they negotiate stigma

This does very little to address the cultural and political economy of stigma as a form of power and a means of oppression that benefits certain sectors of society.

We need to “study up” (Nadar, 1972); study the stigmatizers and the mechanisms of stigmatization as a means to securing political, economic and cultural capital.

Welfare policy ... still lies in the shadow of the sturdy beggar. (Handler 1995, 5)

We have heard these scroungers and benefit cheats stories before… (Tyler 2013)

‘certain desired truths become lived as truths, as if they were truths, thus producing all sorts of material traces and evidences of these truths, despite what counter-evidence may exist’ (Puar, 2006: 68)

providing aid destroys the work ethic (Handler 1995, 4)

welfare dependency is a moral issue; it is a failure to have the proper work ethic (Handler 1995, 4)

Individuals are seen as needing clear incentives for good behaviour and punishment for failure. Risk and uncertainty and the real danger of failure are necessary to human and social functioning. ...People need the discipline of insecurity and failure. (George and Wilding 1994, 23)

growth is dependent on the motor of inequality

(George and Wilding 1994, 24).

The behaviour of the individual rather than the environment should be changed. ... People who want to work can work (Handler 1995, 4)

Compulsory positive affect and psychological authority are being applied in workfare in three (overlapping) ways: • to identify psychological barriers to

gaining employment • to punish people for non-compliance • to inculcate attributes and attitudes

said to increase employability (Friedli & Stearn 2013)

David Cameron’s 2012 New Year address

“Weaponising” welfare policy

‘By fuelling public hostilities towards populations imagined to be a parasitical drain on resources, these weaponised cases are employed to sway voters and are so affectively powerful that they disable oppositional attempts to produce alternative political narratives’ (Jensen & Tyler 2015, 480)

Stigma = • The ways in which certain bodies are ‘mediated,

imagined and ‘made’ in public’ (Tyler 2013) in order to justify, explain and naturalise inequalities

• A culture of blame Oppression = • Ideologies that perpetuate and naturalise

inequalities • Subjugation by cruelty and force, affliction and

torment • Coercive control of body/mind in ways that

dominate the imagination – limiting what you can do, think or feel

Don’t make caveat statements about the existence of benefit fraud, reject the way in which this debate has been framed

Reclaim dependency Fight for the right NOT to work Imagine and create alternatives

Abberley (1987) ‘The Concept of Oppression and the Development of a Social Theory of Disability’ in Disability, Handicap & Society.

Boycott Workfare campaign: http://www.boycottworkfare.org/?page_id=16

Friedli & Strearn (2013): http://centreformedicalhumanities.org/whistle-while-you-work-for-nothing-positive-affect-as-coercive-strategy-the-case-of-workfare/

George & Wilding (1994) Welfare and ideology Graby (2016) Unworkable conditions: work, benefits and disabled

people’s resistance to capitalism: https://www.academia.edu/28495623/Unworkable_Conditions_work_benefits_and_disabled_peoples_resistance_to_capitalism_2016_

Gillies, V. (2005). Raising the 'meritocracy': parenting and the individualization of social class. Sociology, 835-853

Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: notes on the management of a spoiled identity

Grover & Piggott (2016) Disabled People, Work and Welfare. Handler (1995) The Poverty of Welfare Reform

Jensen & Tyler (2015) ‘Benefit Broods’: The Cultural and Political Crafting of anti-welfare commonsense: https://www.academia.edu/16700661/_Benefits_broods_The_cultural_and_political_crafting_of_anti-welfare_commonsense

McWade, B. (forthcoming) ‘Recovery-as-policy as a form of neoliberal state making’ in a special issue of Intersectionalities journal entitled: ‘Mad Studies: Intersections with Disability Studies, Social Work and Mental Health.’

Nadar, L. (1972) Up the anthropologist: perspectives gained from studying up: http://www.dourish.com/classes/readings/Nader-StudyingUp.pdf

Puar, J. (2007) Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times.

Shildrick & MacDonald (2013) ‘Poverty talk: how people experiencing poverty deny their poverty and why they blame ‘the poor’’ Sociological Review.